They could have been playing stickball. Or whittling. Or pushing a hoop around with a branch. Or whatever kids did for fun in the 1920s. But no, they were at the Minneapolis School of Art at the crack of dawn drawing a mini pugilist, dwarfed by the platform he’s perched on yet ready to punch your lights out if you mentioned it.
It was Saturday Morning Sketch Class on December 17, 1927. The art school was then tucked behind the MIA on what is now the campus of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. And it was no casual affair. You began with a year of general training in drawing, modeling, and design before specializing in painting, sculpture, illustration, commercial design, interior decorating, decorative modeling, or textile design. These kids were in the so-called juniors class and that, presumably, is a fellow junior up on the stage.
In the 1920s, sketching was seen as a bit old-fashioned, a boring if necessary stage before moving on to three-dimensional art, which was all the rage. Students were required to spend a great deal of their first year modeling with clay—“a radical measure,” the MIA proffered in 1920, “and it is true that it has brought forth some protests from our students.” But the school was convinced of its value: “The time is close at hand when both fine arts sculpture and decorative modeling will be more fully appreciated by the general public. As a means to this end, more modeling should be done in the grade schools, for it is natural for the child to see things in three dimensions; even the savage modeled before he drew.”
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