‘ ~ The College News VOL. XVIII, No. 18 WAYNE AND BRYN MAWR,. PA., WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1932 Price, 10 Cents Dr. Gray o— Valuable -Old Chinese: Vases Main Artistic Factors Shape, Color and Surface Texture VASES. EDUCATE TASTE (Specially Contributed By Dr. Howard Gray) - A Chinese pot is an object. to be looked’ at rather than written about. Nonetheless, it is possible to note the aspects of it which -are naturally in one’s mind when looking at it.. From the artist’s point of view these are The first- is the Through being in the round it shares with sculptured _ objects. generally the advantage of ehanging its line and mass as the eye moves round about it. The possibili- ties. of differing combinations are therefore numerous. The line of the top of a bowl varies from being a circle to. being ellipses of different widths, while the supporting lines of the sides are elongated or shortened at will. Perhaps the diversion to be got from these shifting. combinations of line are the subtlest ones which many pieces of pottery give us; and it is the distinction of the Tang per- iod (seventh to ninth centuries) that it created the best shapes. A second aspect of a pot is its color. In this it is more akin to a painting, especially to an abstract one. Al- though earlier Chinese pots are usu- ally in one or two colors, the grada- tions and hence the refinements are considerable. Age and burial have often given delicacy. ‘The rather com- monplace green of a Han jar may have changed into irridescent silver. There are three such in Wanamaker’s at the moment. Later centuries experiment- ed extensively in colors, the Sung, Yuan and Ming periods (tenth to six- teenth centuries), devloping many which were rich, many splendid. Ming and still later centuries. turned to blue-and-white, in which again every- thing depended in the qualities of these tones. There were never the raw blues of modern wares. From Sung days there was painting on pots and to this technique blues-on-white particularly lent itself. The third aspect of a pot is more peculiar to it, although here the im- mediate relationship is with ivories and silks.. This aspect is surface tex- ture. Three elements go to the mak- ‘-ing of the surface of a pot—the body of. the clay, which sometimes show through and in porcelain adds trans- lurency, the slip or color pigment, and the glaze. The excellence of each of the three and‘ of the combination var- ies greatly. In Han and in most Tang pots it is not great. In the Sung period it reaches what-’many think its height; but the older col- lectors, preferred the sumptuous por-. celains of the sixteenth and later cen- turies. Many of the collections in our museums (perhaps for this reason) are rich in these and a collection to be sold in New York this week seems to have many of them. Any taste can thus be met by the great diversity in Chinese pots. And—what is more im- portant—any taste can be educated by carefully looking at them. From the hierarchic forms of the bronzes of Han days to ‘the boudoir dainties of _ Chieng: Lung, all are there. primarily three. shape of the pot. Registration Mrs. Manning hopes that all stu- dents will give considerable thought to their registration for courses for next year, as classes were held up for ten days this fall due to numerous changes. If a student is hesitant about the selection of her major course, she should discuss the vari- “ous possibilities with the heads of the departments in question, and get all the advice she can’ before making her decision. Changes in schedule will be heavily penalized next fall, if the Dean’s office has not been notified of these changes by letter before Septem- ber fifteenth. Are | ‘Order Will Gradually | Evolve Out of Russia Countess Skariatina, Author of | Two Books, Says. Crisis | Was Inevitable [BARELY ESCAPED ALIVE - “The world must. go on. It is a pity about*the lovely things that are destroyed, but their destruction is in- evitable.” With this astonishing phil- osophy, the Countess Irina Skaria- tina, heiress of a thousand years of Imperialist tradition, summed up the |cataclysm of the Russian revolution. 'The courage needed to take a liberal | View of the Soviet, admitting that i good has come to the Russian people jalong with the necessary evil “that they killed us all off,’ has been mias- tered by this exile, -who admits “that ithe old. regime -had become an ana- chronism in the twentieth century.— They (the aristocrats) make the mis- take of thinking that all good in Rus- sia was their class, but: serfs. have the right of free speech.and educa- tion.” Education for the masses igone of | said, and when asked whether this education, almost pure propaganda, were not stunting, answered, “Yes, but when the students grow up, they will realize the falsity of what they have learned, and this education will act as a boomerang against the head Bolsheviks.” She, herself, during the War, came under the influence of Lib- eral ideas, first as a War nurse and then as a medical student. “I must seem slightly ‘Red’ to my friends, but contact with another world enabled me to see the defects of Imperialism.” Her feeling is that if Communism spreads, it will travel by means of the student class, in which~-it originated in Russian, not as Communism, but as a. movement against a rigid despot- ism. But since the Communist leaders have carried their revolution of cus- toms and religion so far, the pendu- lum is certain to swing back. “They bring up children without religion, but later the emptiness will become apparent, and the children, as men and women, will need religion and turn back to it. There will be an economic reaction also, as the peasant cannot bear standardization, but “likes to have his horse, and his plot, and cow.” The new eduaction itself has to cling to old standards to a certain extent, especially in art. Countess Skaria- tina praised the music as being “on quite a high plane,” and said that many found the new art interesting, also. Her liberality; however, was appar- ently not the result of any kind treats ment she received at the hands of the Communists, who imprisoned and sen- tenced her to death, from which she was saved by the American” Relief Administration, in October, 1922, when she was grudgingly allowed to leave the country. This was a small concession, as she was practically dead, “not having missed a trick” in the whole upheaval, as she lightly put it. The nerve-wracking periods from the setting up of the Soviet govern- ment until her release in 1922 was filled with wild scares. One awful day it was rumored that Trotsky, “who wanted to guillotine us all” had prevailed over Lenin, and that guillo- tines were being brought into the city. “Sure enough, when we looked out the window into Nevsky Prospeet, we saw carts bearing long black boxes entering the square. We were more curious than scared, however, and when it turned out that the boxes did not contain guillotines it didn’t make much difference.” — Calendar Thurs., April 21, 8.40 A. M.: President Park will speak in Chapel. Sat., April 23, 9.00 A. M.: ‘French Language Examination. the best points of Soviet rule,~ she | of the Amazons is ruled by women; Cornelia Otis Skinner as Sacrapant Cornelia Otis Skinner, who is shown above as she appeared in the presentation of Old Wives Tale on May Day eight, years ago, will, as Queen Elizabeth, again participate in the May Day festivities: at Bryn Mawr. Under the auspices of the Cosmopolitan Club, Miss.“Skinner is now appearing before Philadelphia audiences in her dramatic sketch, The Wives of Henry VIII, which attracted so much attention in New York this season. THE NEws highly recommends her performance and will publish a review in the next issue. The role of Sacrapant is traditionally considered to demand the most striking exhibition of acting ability. who is now connected with the Group Theatre, took t This. year it will be played by Miss Betty Young, the production of Berkeley Square rgaret Barker, e part in 1928. 32, who directed Miss Me this fall. K. Hepburn Playing in The Warrior’s Husband The Warrior's Husband, a comedy in. which Katharine Hepburn, Bryn Mawr, 1928, is now appearing, has brought to Broadway an entirely new comic theme. The plot is based on the ninth -labor of Hercules, which is to gain the girdle of Hippolyta. The land the men spend their time in riding side-saddle and flirting hopefully with every young warrior that comes their way. Hippolyta, ably and force- fully played by Irby Marshall; spends her time digging up wars to amuse her army, and hunting with her sis- ter, Antiope, played by Katharine Hepburn. Sapiens Pomposius, a young lad, who appears in a.curled Assyrian beard and a silk robe; which he «is “dying to wash to see if the color is fast,” becomes, through the machina- tions of ‘his mother, the husband of Hippolyta, a unqiue position in Pon- tus. Then comes the invasion of the Greeks, which provokes much mirth because the army is made up of men. Herculés turns 6ut to be a tremendous creature who prefers to be called “Herc,” and who runs screaming from Antiope when she frowns at him; Theseus is the bravest of the Greeks and devotes himself seriously to the acquisition of Antiope, who is much baffled at being the pursued instead of the pursuer; there is also Homer, who is Covering the expedition for a news- paper syndicate and who writes the herald’s speeches for him, enquiring nervously if his “iambic pentameters knocked ’em cold?” The Warriors Husband is unique in that it combines action with its comic lines instead of relying for its effect on lines spoken in a static posi- tion. The plot is amusing in itself, and the stage is never quiet; an army marches across it or a herald comes panting in on the average of once every five minutes. The humor of the sitaution is apparent and is empha- sized by having all the Amazon men at least four inches shorter than the women. The honors of the production go to Romney Brent for his Sapiens. He plays always very close to the line, but never once does he allow his (Continued on Page Three) “J Geology of Western Shore Studied by Field Trip Eight geology students and the en- tire geology statf motored last~week- end to the little town of Prince Fred- erick, Md., on the first long field trip which the department has offered. Al- though stops were made along the way, a study of the cliffs along the western shore of the Cheaspeake Bay was the most important feature of the journey. Fair weather and novel surroundings contributed to its sue- cess. The face of the cliffs exposes ma- rine and fossil on which Dr. Dryden is‘an authority. Under his direction, the beaches were combed for ray plat- ed, sharks’ teeth, bits of coral and vertebrate bone, all relics of a time when the shore was an ocean bottom, teeming with life. The hope of dis- covering another whale, such as Dr. Dryden unearthed several years ago, was unfortunately disappointed, in spite of several false alarms. ' An appreciation of the ardours of scientific research was obtained dur- ing the course of a half-mile wading expedition along in the bay, alternate- (Continued on Page Four) Elections ° The Bryn Mawr League an- nounces the election of the Board for 1932-1933: President—Ellinor Collins. Secretary-Treasurer — ‘Helen Leidy. _ Sunday Rothermel. Bates House—Marjorie . Lee. Assistant, Bates House—Jane ‘Parsons. Summer School—Silvia Bow- ditch. Social | Work — Susan Trance. Maids—Emmaline Snyder. Maids’ Vespers — Marjorie - Trent. : Industrial group discussion— Ruth Bertolet. Americanization, Bryn Mawr —tTo be elected. Blind School—To. be elected. Haverford Community Center | 5 services — Josephine Tor- Johnson Lectures on _ Modern Architecture International Style Shown to be Influenced by Last Two Centuries NEW STYLE IN AMERICA Mr. Philip Johnson traced the de- velopment of the architectural schools of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which influenced the pres- ent International School of 1931-32, , lin his lectures before the Modern Art | class, last Tuesday and Friday of week. |" A Romantic movement, a revival of Classical Romanique, and Gothic ten- dencies swept over Europe in the nine- tenth’, century, following the decline of Baroque. This school evinced a longing for the distint in time and in place, and laid its emphasis on the un- usual. As the age progressed, eclec- ticism of style, the rejuvenating of an old accepted design by the architeet’s personality, resulted in eclecticism of taste, the feeling that the more like a forgery a building’ was, the better it was. This movement ushered in, at the same time, a spirit of, freedom, which accomplished two important things. It encouraged simplicity ,in decoration, and blazed the trail for the advent of rationalism in structure. In France this movement resulted in a formalized Academism, unpre- tentious and restrained. In England, a Gothic revival flourished, of which the House of Parliament, designed by Sir John Soane, with their florid richness of detail, are by-products. In Germany the movement reached its greatest development. Schinkel (1781- 1841), Germany’s finest Romantic architcet, practically designed the Berlin. of the thirties, He exercised discipline in the use of “sprayed-on” ornament, and was a firm adherent of rationalism, which is “the ten- dency to base the-architectural plan of the house upon its functional lines, considered from an engineering point of view.” It provides that the facade should reveal all these basic lines and abandons the axial type of design so commonly used in Baroque buildings. In America the Romantic: feeling took form in a strict Greek revival. To the inherited spirit of classicism was added a sense of scale.and a desire to create big and effective structures. Richardson (1838-1886), America’s greatest architect at this period, fol- lowed Schinkel’s theories of function- alism. In the early nineteen hundreds, there were a number of somewhat un- related movements which eventually came_to. be fused into International Style. The use of steel in the con- struction of buildings was regarded at first as a tour-de-force, and stone vaulting and piers were considered for—a—long= time indispensable sup- ports for steel itself. Now, however, with the advent of metal in place of masonry, strict engineering forms are made the basis of architectural design. Wagner, of Vienna, was the first to adopt this principle and as such he was the founder of the New or Indépendent Style (1895-1927). “A second movement (1903), known as tthe Viennese, was unimportant except for the achievement. of a new type of facade decoration, good but “finicky,” which used tiles almost exclusively. The Paris Exposition of 1925 creat- ed a zig-zag design, fantastic, mod- ernistic, and of no continuity or dis- cipline, which has been used to great (Continued on? Page Three) ¢ ss 2 Saree : Overwork The Curriculum Committee has in- vestigated the complaints of lover- work, and discovered a rather unani- mous criticism of some courses, and no vigorous opposition to the amount | of work in others. The results of the inquiry will be referred to the faculty. If the desired adjustments are not made, any further complaints should be brought to the attention of mem- ae Duany. bers of the student committee.