First Step: Learn to Draw

He is almost unknown to the lay public, but to experts the top authority on Italian Renaissance painting is so well known that they refer to him as "B.B." B.B. (for Bernard Berenson) thinks there is some hope for a modern renaissance in British art--if artists learn to draw. In London's New Statesman & Nation he wrote:

"How long does it take a medical student to get his degree? Six, seven, eight years before he is allowed to practice. How many youngsters are ready to work as hard learning to draw? Yet drawing is as difficult and takes as long a training, and without it the painter is only the kind of practitioner that the doctor is who has but a fake degree. . . . Having learnt to draw, and then the relatively easier discipline of painting, let the artist express himself--if he can afford to wait so long."

Berenson implied that one cause of bad painting (not to mention bad music and bad literature) is economic: the necessity of learning one's art too fast in a fiercely competitive and not very discerning market. But he was set against helping artists out.. "In the [United] States after the panic of 1929," Berenson wrote, "the New Deal tried to make work for thousands of painters at public expense. They were kept alive, but I have not heard of the masterpieces they created."

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