Facilitating Critical and Aesthetic Inquiry

Aesthetics and the Middle School Learner

            I found this article last summer while researching Middle School Identity.  It is one that I think of often, as I feel it applies to my goal as an art educator.  The article starts with two simple questions: “What is beautiful to a Middle Schooler? How often are middle schoolers asked to think about what they find beautiful and why?”  Aesthetics is defined as “The study and appreciation of beauty.”  The article argues, “Recognizing and creating beauty are critical to achieving the full potential of an adult mind and spirit.”  The art educator’s responsibility is to “make obvious the underlying elements of what is beautiful” and “help students explore their ability to create beauty themselves.  This is especially important for those students who come to school with little exposure to beauty.”  This makes me think of my Intro to Art for non-majors course, as most of the students haven’t been in an art class since elementary school.  They haven’t been asked to think about aesthetics or what they find beautiful in years (if ever). 

            The article references John Dewey and his progressive education philosophy, in which an art educator is an artist who facilitates the development of the child as artist.  “Dewey defined the eternal quality of great art as its capacity for further defining experiences… Dewey believed that no intellectual activity is complete without aesthetic quality.”

            Read, one of Dewey’s followers in the field of humanist education, “argues that the general purpose of education is to foster the growth of the individual while harmonizing the individual with his or her social group.”  Furthermore, “Educators such as Broudy assert that the use of the arts to teach other disciplines results in lessons that are more concrete, motivating, and engaging.  Thus, Broudy argues, aesthetic lessons foster higher academic achievement.  It is this integrative approach to aesthetics that has the most potential for reaching all students.”

            Seeing as aesthetic education today often takes the form of “encore” or “elective,” it is entirely possible for students to leave elementary school and never be exposed to any study of the visual arts again.  “Even in today’s art and music curriculum there appears to be less emphasis on aesthetic study and more on technical skills.”  I have found this to be true in regards to the syllabus I am to outline in my Intro Class for the University.  It is divided into units based on the elements of art and principles of organization, without any discussion of content or concept.  It has been a challenge to transform each unit into something more in depth and investigative for each student, while having to teach one individual technique at a time. 

            The study of beauty should be an integrated across subjects.  “Rarely do history, mathematics, and science become vehicles for the study of beauty.  Yet science and aesthetics are not divorced.”  As an educator, tt is important to ask: “How can knowledge of content enrich and complement the beauty inherent in each subject?”  Furthermore, How can middle school learners, or any learner, “Be surrounded by beauty so that it becomes part of the schema of a rich adult life?”

Topic Proposal:

            I would like to investigate an approach to designing curriculum for an intro to art class for non-majors at a university.  I hope to propose a syllabus with creative and dynamic investigations, leading to visually literate and culturally aware graduates exposed to creative productivity. 

The result and culmination of my investigation will be in the form of a zine.  I am choosing to create a zine because it is important that the form follow the function, in a way. It makes sense that my presentation of teaching art is in itself an artwork.  

Facilitating Engagement with the Art-Making Process

Investigating Materials and Ideas

“Teachers who orchestrate thoughtful investigations of materials help students develop a repertoire of ideas about materials and expertise in using artistic media and processes.”  Giving students the opportunity to explore, develop, and personalize both 2D and 3D materials and processes is a vital part of meeting the needs of students with different modes of thought and expression.  By supplying students with encounters that challenge students’ use of materials develop creative thinking, problem solving, and more in-depth explorations.  “Greater investment arises out of work that is guided by internal motivations to express personally significant ideas.” 

Structuring for Creative Thinking

“Teachers who structure conditions for creative thinking help students discover and understand more about the nature of creativity in the visual arts and its rewards.”  Several strategies can be implemented in the classroom to create structure for creative thinking such as: introducing “closed” problems to beginning students, adding constraints and limitations, tasks that match the students’ ability, asking essential questions, considering open-ended problems for more advanced students, encouraging brainstorming and play, synthetic thinking, material investigations, guiding intuition, and metaphorical and conceptual thinking, process portfolios, reflections, and assessment. 

Forming Elegant Problems 

“Teachers who structure units around an elegant problem make it possible for learners at different levels of ability to engage with the problem while promoting choice making, originality, elaboration, and the creation of work that has personal meaning and value.”  By incorporating investigation into units, students can learn from big ideas, themes, and metaphors.  Big ideas, or themes, are “broad constructs that accommodate a wide range of ideas’ they are also engaging and interesting for considering similarities and contrasts.”  Metaphors are used to make meaning and sense of an experience through the creation of a coherent structure.  Metaphors allow us to understand “experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”

Designing Problems Based on the Real World of Work

“Teachers who draw problems from the real world of work in the visual arts develop a wired range of valuable kills in their students while exposing their students to future career options.”  In other words, this idea of authentic, problem-based learning is helpful in integrating creative thinking into real world problem solving.  Authentic problems result in real products.  Here, “Visual thinking strategies can be employed in gathering ideas and planning, observing and recording information and making connections, displaying information and reflecting and assessing.”

Facilitation Dialogue and Discourse About Student Work

“Teachers who focus dialogue and discourse on student work and the meanings that can be found in it can make such dialogues constructive and productive.”  Forms of dialogue within the art classroom might include peer sharing, small group discussions, large group conversations, and critiques of artwork.  In class critiques can provide feedback and suggestions and give students opportunities to “read” works back to their peers. 

Article: Understanding the Artmaking Process: Reflective Practice

By Sydney Walker in Art Education 

The problem Walker raises is “Teachers frequently lack sufficient and tangible understandings of the processes that distinguish artmaking activity.”  Having knowledge on the process of artmaking is required in order to plan and give effective artmaking instruction in a classroom. 

Walker gives two essential questions for discussion: What is it that artists do when they create artworks?  How do artists pursue meaning?

Walker was a part of research in which the goal was to “understand conceptual approaches to artmaking and comprehend how specific artistic practices enabled conceptualization.” 

One effective strategy Walker discusses is the importance of exposing students to professional artistic practice in order to develop student understandings about the artmaking process.  He says, “Professional artistic practice can serve as a productive model to instruct students about the artmaking process and its conceptualization.”  Walker references political activist artist, Edgar-Heap-of-Birds Hachivi, “The first step in teaching is one of informing and inspiring the student with various methods of artistic practice concentrating particularly upon the conceptual themes of artists… This examination of artists’ notions is best done through video-taped artist interview.”  Of course, this automatically makes me think of the importance and value of Art 21, giving free access to contemporary artists and their work. 

Walker introduces the use of big ideas within artists’ work and in classroom curriculum.  He characterizes the big idea as “themes, issues, or perhaps questions that captivate the artist for extended time periods, often years.”

Walker found that artmaking is most successful with the artists is conscious of his or her artmaking process.  He references Schön on the idea of the reflective practitioner, “Sometimes we think about what we are doing in the midst of performing an act.  When performance leads to surprise—pleasant or unpleasant—the designer may respond by reflection in action: by thinking about what she is doing while doing it, in such a way as to influence further doing.”

If in artist is conscious of their artmaking process it might also lead to increased confidence as an artist and a new understanding of meaning making within artmaking.  Walker discusses a study in which “students who were judged to be more creative tended not to utilize pre-conceived ideas or principles, but rather let the artmaking solution gradually emerge during the process.”  Many well known practicing artists consistently delay closure in the production of their artworks and some even begin their work without clear end-goals and “engage cycles of problem reformulation throughout the process.”

Walker concludes by saying, “artmaking can be about meaning making that has both personal and larger social consequences.  Additionally, the use of big ideas, personal connections, knowledge, artmaking problems, and boundaries nourishes and enables the employment of meaning in artmaking.”

My Artist History/Development

Age 4 - Combining Shapes to make simple Symbols

(The Preschematic State - First Representational Attempts)

Age 5 - Embellishing symbols

(The Preschematic State - First Representational Attempts)

Age 5 - Organizing a picture

(The Preschematic State - First Representational Attempts)

Age 7

(The Preschematic State - First Representational Attempts)

Age 8

The Schematic Stage - Achievement of a Form Concept

Age 9

The Schematic Stage - Achievement of a Form Concept

Age 10

The gang age - The Dawning Realism

Age 11

The gang age - The Dawning Realism

Age 13

The Pseudo-Naturalistic Stage - Age of Reasoning

High School

Adolescent art - The Period of Decision 

College

Week 3 - Survey of Art Education

Better Visual Arts Education

Drawing on Imagination, Memory, and Experience

            For students to successfully draw from imagination, memory, and experience, it is important to implement strategies that promote idea generation and image formation.  Some of these qualities might include previsualization, guiding questions, verbal prompts, and existential questions. 

            Previsualization “aims to create a full and rich image in the mind’s eye prior to beginning work.  Questions used to guide previsualization typically involve who, when, where how, and why.”  The questions asked of the students should prompt them to visualize and locate the self in relation to memory.  “When a full and rich image has developed in the imagination, work can begin to bring the image into visual form.”

            Guided questions should be designed to solicit a creative response.  This may include verbal cues and open-ended questions that focus on “visual qualities such as size and shape, tactile and sensory qualities such as texture, feel, smell, and taste; and distinguishing characteristics or details that lend character or form to the imagined subject.”

            Verbal Prompts can be another strategy that enables working from the imagination.  “Here very descriptive language loaded with strong visual cues, stimulates imaginative imagery.”

            Existential questions such as “Who am I? Why am I here? What is this journey about?” may offer another approach to working from imagination and intuition.  These questions can start a process that “extends into a method for sharing imagery that focuses upon deeper reflection rather than critical analysis.

Tapping the Narrative Impulse

           

            “Teachers who allow the narrative impulse to fund image making help learners of all ages construct personal meaning while developing a repertoire of representational and expressive skills.”  A range of questions and prompts can foster narrative thinking and invite responses for a visual narrative.   “Narratives that deal with everyday life provide students important opportunities to reflect upon and find meaning in their experiences.”

            In order to successfully create visual narratives, it is important students develop a proper vocabulary that will allow them to create characters, settings, illustrate change over time, use different points of view, create drama to a story, draw people, show action and emotion, etc. 

Developing an Expanded Vocabulary for Visual Form

           

            “Teachers who use both formal and informal approached to the exploration of visual form build vocabulary and concepts related to art, nature, and systems theory while facilitating deeper thinking about live and art and about visually communicating ideas, thoughts, and feelings… A look at both the past and the present suggests that beliefs, values, vocabulary, and concepts have shaped, and continue to shape, the way visual-spatial forms operate, and create meaning, in art and design.”  Here, we see two types of visual form discussed: A Formalist Approach and An Intuitive Approach.  Within a formalist approach, visual form holds the primary focus, while in an intuitive approach, intuitive exploration is key.  Intuitive exploration includes existential questions, ideas, and possibilities with a focus on art media, where visual form is a result of this process. 

Expanding the Repertoire for Visual Perception and Artistic Response

            “Teachers who foster development of a repertoire of representational skills prepare students to make expressive and responsive choices to serve their needs and interests.”  Different types of representation apply to 3D and 2D forms.  Within these types of representation exist different modes of response.  An approach that fosters perceptual awareness as well as artistic response might be most valuable.  In order to facilitate this kind of response, teachers should incorporate opportunities for students to work from imagination, memory, and experience, narratively and from observation. 

Article #2
While researching an article to further investigate on the topic of Developing a Repertoire of Skills for Visual Perception and Artistic Response, I decided to choose an article written by an artist who creates work on the ideas of visual perception.  In a sense, the article reads as a detailed artist statement.  If we are to understand the relationship between artistic response and visual perception, perhaps it is helpful to look closer at an artist creating work on that very relationship.  

The artist, Paul Pratchenko, begins by addressing the importance of investigating the meaning and enigma of visibility.  He says, “We react to our visual perceptions and these perceptions directly produce concepts of truth and human values… Much of the ‘power of art’ lies in the fact that how and what we see is closely associated with what we do and believe.”

            Pratchenko discusses the illusions of depth and three-dimensional form on a flat picture plane as well as the illusions of reality we construct based upon our perceptions.  He creates images containing metaphors for his process of visual perceptions, his understandings of the world that result from these perceptions, and the way new information influences the evolution of his worldview. 

“Visual perception must involve some combinations of our knowledge about what is observed and what is directly viewed.  Our understandings are always subjective to some degree; we something of what we expect to see.”

Pratchenko also says his work addresses the idea of memory and how it’s existence affects an individual’s visual perception based on their past experience and exposure.  “Our sight is altered by previously stored information.”  He says our understanding of an artwork and our “ability to gather new information from painting systems are only possible through the systems previously known by artist and viewer.”

Painting and Drawing as Manifestations of Visual Perception Author(s): Paul Pratchenko

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 273-279 Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574952 .

Accessed: 12/02/2013 21:41 

Artist: Allan McCollum

Big Idea: Identity Through Systems

Lesson Plan

Big Idea: Identity Through Heraldry

Heraldry: “The art of pictorial representation of genealogy, as through coats of arms, crests, etc.”

Connection to students’ lives: Students will represent their personal identity within a group identity (family, club, social group, interest, major, etc.) by creating a “Family Crest.”  Students must use shape to represent who they are, both individually and socially. 

Authentic art integration:  Students are encouraged to incorporate their interests and knowledge outside of the art classroom and bring it into their artwork.  Students are manifesting who they believe they are, how they identify themselves, and who they identify themselves with into this piece. 

Art criticism, art history, and aesthetics:  Students will research the idea and purpose of heraldry and view examples of crests (history).  Students will watch Allan McCollum Art 21 video.

Artmaking process:

Essential Questions:

1)    What is heraldry?

2)    What is its purpose?

3)    How does the idea of heraldry relate to identity?

4)    What is uniqueness?

5)    What is your personal identity?

6)    What is the identity of a group you belong to?

How can we represent our personal and social (group) identity through the use of shape? 

How can we apply shape to create a “Family Crest” that represents our unique identities?

Survey of Art Ed -- Week 2

Seven Principles for Visual Culture Education

Paul Duncum

Duncum suggests seven principles for examining various forms of imagery.  These principles are: power, ideology, representation, seduction, gaze, intertextuality, and multimodality.  They are not intended to be fundamental truths, rather, sources to allow for the creation of curriculum that coincides with the extent and complexity of today’s’ visually mediate world.” 

Power is the overarching principle that connects the others.  Power raises questions of “Who exercises power through imagery?  How, when, and why is it exercised?”  Due to the hierarchically ordered societies across the world, different groups display different degrees of power.  Therefore, images represent different agendas. 

Ideologies are represented through images.  This refers to ideas, ideals, beliefs, and values.  “It is a characteristic way of thinking, a style of thought, and interpretive scheme employed by people to make the world intelligible to themselves.”  Therefore, every image contains an ideology; even if that ideology is that there is no ideology. 

“Representation is closely aligned with ideology because it refers to how ideology is presented in visual form.”  It is important to look at not only what is represented in a piece of art, but also what is not represented.  For what is left out can be just as important or problematic as what is put in.

Seduction is used in a variety of ways.  “When images offer arguments that reflect back our own views, our own ideological positions, they offer the pleasure of confirmation… images are also seductive because they are sensory.” 

“The gaze concerns how we look at images and the circumstances under which we look.  It refers to our predisposition to see things in certain ways, what we bring to images, and the relationships we form with them.”  In the same way gaze can give power to viewers or subjects, it can also render them disempowered just as easily.  We must take into account who is doing the gazing, for what purpose, who knows about it, and who has the power because of it? “Considering the gaze is a way in which to understand ourselves as individuals and as a society.”

Intertextuality is the idea that “images draw from other sources, copy them, parody them, and, in turn influence other cultural texts.”  It is important to be able to make connections and associations from one idea to another, in order to understand the interconnectivity underlying bigger ideas. 

“Multimodality refers to the fact that there are no purely visual images; images never appear without words, music, or other sounds.”  Therefore we must take into account how our view of a visual image is being influenced by other forms of artistic expression at the same time. 

Commercial demonstrating Duncum's 7 Principles: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANhmS6QLd5Q&feature=player_embedded