Day 2 - Curriculum in Art Ed

Teaching Visual Culture – Chapter 2

Here were my thoughts while reading this chapter: “Wow. This book is so rich,  it’s so knowledgeable, every line deserves a pause for a reflection on what that indicates or how that effects my thinking up to this point.”  I enjoyed reading about the evolution of the philosophy of aesthetics’ role in education, as well.

Here are some quotes from the chapter that I found too important not to write down somewhere:

“Education can provide a way of enriching students’ lives by helping them to critique and advance the ideas connected to visual culture and its meanings.” 

“New forms of visual culture have been created, embodying a sophisticated aesthetic previously only imagined that make apparent levels of experience not previously considered.  These changes force us to reconceptualize aesthetics as well as other philosophical concepts, such as knowledge, value, and identity.”

“The range of aesthetic influences suggests that several aesthetic theories should be considered when teaching visual culture and that a contemporary education in aesthetics must respond to experiences inside and outside of school.”

“Aesthetic judgments were made outside of cognition.” – Kant’s division of reason into different spheres

“Contemporary experience with the sophisticated visual culture we see every day, and the knowledge we construct through our many overlapping and associative visual experiences, tells us that the aesthetic exists in many forms and is as interested as it is sublime.”

“Of course, form is critical to visual culture, it is the immediacy and seductiveness of form that makes visual culture so powerful.  The problem of curriculum is not form, it is an overreliance on formalism in education.  To conceptualize aesthetics in curriculum as only formalist or expressionist does not do justice to the complexity of visual culture.”

Crossing Cultural Borders:

“It is no longer easy to view cultures or subcultures as totally separate because they interact on many levels through many media.”

“Some forms suggest a range of common meanings, but the emphasis of those meanings may be different to different groups of people.”

“Because people with different backgrounds and interests do not have the same foundations for interpretation and will experience the same visual culture in different ways, the value of visual culture changes from one cultural context to another.”

Dewey viewed art as “Fundamentally providing an integrative experience connecting body and mind... For Dewey, art was part of the natural state of the world and the union of fine art and life was vital.”

“Meaning is inherent to aesthetic experience.”

Postmodern conceptions of aesthetics “involve a social relationship between people mediated by visual culture.”

TERRY BARRET

Principles for Interpreting Art/About Art Interpretation for Art Education

“Artworks have ‘aboutness’ and demand interpretation.” – I love the word aboutness used here.  There will always be something about a piece of artwork.  Regardless of whether the artist had an intention with the interpretation of the piece, the viewer will automatically connect the piece to their experiences, memories, exposures, etc., therefore consciously, or subconsciously, interpreting the piece to connect it into their world.

I think an important point Barrett makes is “No single interpretation is exhaustive of the meaning of an artwork and there can be different, competing, and contradictory interpretations of the same work.”  Viewers will have a different way of interpreting the artwork based on what they’re bringing with them as an individual viewing a work. 

“Interpretations imply a worldview.”

We interpret everything, including art, through the lens of the way in which we view existence.

“Interpreting art is an endeavor that is both individual and personal, and communal and shared – Seeking balance between the personal and communal: An interpretation that is wholly individual and personal runs the risk of being overly idiosyncratic or too personal.  An interpretation that is too personal is one that does not shed any light on the object that is being interpreted.”