1. Arthur Wesley Dow

2. Arthur Wesley Dow was an artist and teacher who wrote a book that became the bible of art students and teachers and provided the standards by which art was taught at all levels from grade school to college. With a clear insistence on the basic principles, Dow made his design program easy to follow. His goal was to give students simple compositional techniques to create beautiful objects. Dow was the first Art Educator or Artist to identify and classify the elements He described the elements as LINE, NOTAN or dark & light, and COLOR

3. By turning away from the direct replication of nature to a synthetic art emphasizing the essential – shapes, flattened forms, and decorative line and using a prescribed formula that could aid the student in making individual choices. Dow gave students a vital, unrestrictive tool with which to work. The elements of line, notan, and color were modified by 5 supportive principles: 1.Opposition 2.Transition 3.Subordination 4.Repetition 5.Symmetry

4. Dow championed the arts and crafts aesthetic and never considered crafts inferior to fine arts. He taught his students to appreciate the elegance of pure design, based on nature but not replicating it. Dow’s own approach to the arts and crafts aesthetic came as much from his appreciation of the decorative arts of non-Western cultures, particularly Japan and China. His book Composition is widely recognized as having laid the stylistic foundation for the American Arts & Crafts movement. Dow influenced many of America’s leading artists. Georgia O’Keefe Max Weber - considered one of the most significant early American Cubists

5. Refereneces: http://archive.org/stream/compositionserie00dowauoft#page/n5/mode/2up Green, N. E. (1999). Arthur Wesley Dow: His Art and his Influence, New York: Spanierman Gallery, LLC. Arthur Wesley Dow. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ipswicharts.com/artists/dow http://www.ipswicharts.com/artists/dow Green, N. E. (1999). Arthur Wesley Dow. New York: The American Federation Of Arts. Mock-Morgan, M. (1985). The influence of Arthur Wesley Dow on art education. In B. Wilson & H. Hoffa (Eds.), The history of art education: Proceedings from the Penn State conference (pp. 234-237). Reston, VA: National Art Education Association. http://www.tfaoi.com