The League of Masters

6  | The League of Masters T he Art Students League is not a conventional educational institution. It has no entrance requirements, it has no prescribed course of study, it grants no diplomas, it keeps no attendance records. It is an institution that is most difficult for the conventional academic mind to understand. Yet its results have been so successful. The League has no entrance requirements because it believes it is impossible to recognize a talent before it develops. A talent develops as the individual matures. The League has learned from experience that a significant artist cannot be recognized by the mere facility he displays in the beginning. No tests have been devised to measure the potentialities of an artist. These potentialities may lie in any individual in any walk of life. The League believes that only artists can teach artists and it employs as instructors those who have achieved eminence in their field. No one in the League may interfere with the method an instructor employs in his classroom or with the way in which he conducts his class. This complete freedom has produced teachers of national reputation and their many students are in the forefront of American art today. The League believes that its teachers should be practicing artists of high reputation but it is very seldom that these artists are accredited as teachers by the State. The League is a professional school whose single purpose is to develop artists — and in this purpose it has been more successful than any other school in the country. If the League were to issue diplomas it would have to meet certain regulations of the State which would defeat its purpose. Who judges Phidias, Michelangelo, Cezanne by their degrees and diplomas? An artist is judged by his work alone. It is the experience of the League that the student comes with the purpose of being developed into an artist. The League imbues the student with the understanding that his success depends upon his own efforts to improve himself — his skill and mind. His rewards are not credits toward a degree, but the satisfaction of seeing his work improve. He soon learns, there being no examinations given and no attendance taken, that he can bluff no one but himself. The individuality of the artist is his most precious possession. He must be constantly on guard that his individuality be retained, that it is not popularized or cheapened. He must be true to himself according to his own standards. He is in grave danger from those who seek to regulate him and force conformity upon him. His is the last free spirit left in our society. It is the responsibility of the League to protect and encourage this spirit. Stewart Klonis The Art Students League of New York Executive Director, 1946–1980 President of the Board of Control 1937–1945 This excerpt, which states the Art Students League’s raison d’être, first appeared in the catalogue for the League’s 75th Anniversary Exhibition at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which opened March 16, 1951, a time when freedom of expression in the United States was at risk. LETTER STEWART KLONIS Yasuo Kuniyoshi teaching at the Art Students League, 1950. Photo by Alfred Puhn, courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.