Day 3 - Curriculum in Art Ed

The Social Life of Art

“Art history is grounded in the serious and thoughtful research of selected objects, but it generally gives little attention to larger social, political, economic concerns that are the contexts of artistic production.  In fact, some of the most sophisticated analyses of contexts of art are called ‘social history’ or not considered part of the discipline at all because they address those complex concerns.”

This chapter discusses, in depth, the emphasis placed on the idea of connoisseurship as it relates to art history.  Students are exposed to only what is thought to be “good” art based on technical attributes of the work.  “The methods of valuation developed by art historians have influenced the ways in which educated people think about art.”  The chapter therefore argues that, unlike the connoisseur, the social historian is “concerned with the signs of the various roles played be artwork in simultaneously generating, sustaining, and reflecting broader, social, cultural and historical processes” and this view should be included in our curriculum. 

            Context in which the art is created is just as important as the art itself.  Therefore, it is important to draw this connection into the curriculum.  “Context is not peripheral to visual culture, or any given work of art; it is a part of visual culture.  Contexts provide the conceptual connections that make images and objects worthy of study and is as much a part of art as its form, function, or symbolic meaning.”

“All aspects of the mind bear on art, be they cognitive, social, or motivational… An education in visual culture must be thought of from interdisciplinary and extradisciplinary positions that allow information from inside and outside of school to be connected to school subjects.”

“The problem is that much of the art judged to be good by the old criteria is at best only indirectly connected to, and at worst is irrelevant to, the cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, multimodal experiences of students’ daily lives… We must ask, What art is worth teaching? (Which is not the same questions as, What art is good?)… We can conceptualize quality not as great value (inherent), but as powerful (social) influence.”

“New educational representations of the past that infuse ideas and practices involving the social relevance of visual culture are important to making meaning in the postmodern world.”

Art and Cognition

            “The relationship between form, feeling, and knowing is an important part of cognitive processing.  In regards to visual culture, this relationship involves the processing of contexts as part of the processing of images and objects.”

            A viewer may only interpret art as their experience affords them.  As John Dewey said, “A work of art… is actually, not just potentially, a work of art only when it lives in some individualized experience.  This chapter goes on to say, “In other words, an expressive object, regardless of the meaning of the production for the artist, does not have inherent meaning; the experience of an audience with visual culture makes it meaningful.”

              Within the education system, “Interpretation must include critical reflection.  The infusion of critical analysis and interpretation when making and viewing visual culture leads to learning conceived as a highly interactive process.  At the same time students develop ideas, attitudes, and beliefs in and through visual culture, they should be reflecting on that development and the way in which it changes them as they learn.”

             As Vygotsky argued, “Learning not only occurs in context, but is driven by context.”  His constructivist teaching philosophy has five general conceptions of learning:

1.     Learning is not the result of development; learning is development

2.     Disequilibrium facilitates learning.

3.     Reflective abstraction is the driving force of learning.

4.     Dialogue within a community engenders further thinking.

5.     Learning proceeds toward the development of structures.

Man of Steel – Richard Serra

Importance of context and the meaning of art changes due to the visual cultural climate.  “The Richard Serra retrospective, opening Sunday, arrives at the Museum of Modern Art virtually a foregone matter, in the way that Picasso and Matisse shows arrived in the old days.”

“The public’s perception of Mr. Serra’s work has also obviously changed from the bad days of ‘Tilted Arc,’ a quarter-century or so ago. That same vocabulary of curved, giant metal walls, once vilified as art-world arrogance, is now better understood and broadly admired. This is how radical art operates.”

Transmediation as a Metaphor for New Literacies in Multimedia Classrooms

Favorite Quotes from the article:

“This article explores how transmediation extends the new literacies found in multimedia classrooms. For our purposes here, “transmediation” means responding to cultural texts in a range of sign systems -- art, movement, sculpture, dance, music, and so on -- as well as in words. “New literacies” means the ability to read, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and produce communication in a variety of textual environments and multiple sign systems.”

Taking the Critical Turn

“Semiotic representation can become a way of talking, thinking, and interpreting the sign systems that stand for or represent meaning embedded in texts about race, class, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and other identities. Students and teachers who undertake such a semiotics-based critical approach examine sign systems as vehicles of meaning in a culture.

Here, our central concerns are two:

• What is the relationship between what students know and the signs they encounter in their classrooms (about race, class, gender, disability, and sexual orientation)?
• What meaning do they make of these semiotic systems in their literacy practices?

In this context, semiotic representation is a reflection of the new literacies.”

“Transmediation has the potential to capture the postmodern reality of multiple texts, multiple meanings, and multiple interpretations. Multiple forms of representation provide us with a critical framework for unpacking assumptions that underlie cultural practices. When the school’s curricular agenda is diverse, diverse aptitudes and experience can come into play…We believe that the habits of mind embedded in the pedagogy of new literacies provide students with the space and ability to imagine and value points of view different from their own. These new ways of seeing and knowing can strengthen, refine, enlarge, and reshape students’ and our own ideas. In this respect, we teachers must strive to encourage students and ourselves to feel comfortable -- and uncomfortable -- with transmedial representations.”