returning the art to art education

National Art Education Association

Returning the Art to Art EducationAuthor(s): Vincent LanierSource: Art Education, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Mar., 1975), pp. 28-33Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192058 .

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Returning the ART to

Art Education

Vincent Lanier

Many years ago there was a popular, half-facetious expression which went something like this: What America needs is a good 5? cigar-the kind of comment which might have been coined or at least quoted by W.C. Fields. We might adapt that expression today in our own field to read: what art education needs is a strong central concept. While there is nothing in- herently destructive in the kind of fragmentation of ideas which now ex- ists in art education-after all, we've been surviving this way for quite a time-it is also by no means as productive for the field as a more cohesive conceptual framework might be.

It is probable that no one reading this paper needs to have described the range of ideas presently espoused by art educators. Most of us are very aware of the competing concepts available. We have read and do read about creativity, visual literacy, art therapy, intellectual development, com- munication, leisure time activities, environmental design, social responsibility, skill development, professional training, and aesthetic eduqation, to name but a few.

Needless to say, some of these ideas are more potent or popular than others, and, like everyone else involved in the teaching of art, I have my favorites and you have yours. However, what is probably most interesting about this range of ideas is that only the last three deal primarily with learnings in art. All of the others are concerned, for the most part, with the development of individual qualities or characteristics not necessarily related to art, or even to aesthetic experience. Another way to put this is that most of the ideas which purport to provide curricular direction in the field do not reflect unique con- tributions of art education, benefits which no other area of study can offer to education.

One might readily suspect and probably be justified in concluding that 28 Art Education, March 1975

this extra-art orientation in concepts of teaching art has been due to the overbearing influence of the behavioral sciences. During the last four decades, psychology, and later-and much less-sociology and anthropology have directed the attention of those in art education to non-art develop- mental and social concerns. Indeed, titles of books such as Education Through Art', Spontaneous and Deliberate Ways of Learning2, Through Art to Creativity3, and Becoming Human Through Art4, suggest (even when the contents of the volume do not) that art experience is merely a means to some more worthy end-not important in itself but as a vehicle. This is Eisner's contextualist as opposed to essentialist position.5

For some years now, I have believed and have been preaching much the same position, although the worthy goal towards which I have wished to direct our attention is a social one rather than an individual one6. My candidate for the directing idea in art education programs has been to use art as a means to clarify the ways in which the social, economic, and political world works and how it can be improved. This is, of course, art in the service of social responsibility. I still believe in it and will continue to preach it, but I am convinced such effort is futile. The zealot sooner or later be- comes tiresome, and that is a far more debilitating experience even than being wrong. Consequently, I will con- centrate for the moment on an inter- mediate and essentialist step: the development of a strong central concept related to art concerns.

Also, there may be no compelling reason to doubt or deny that personal developments outside of aesthetic prowess or response can be promoted by art activities in the classroom. Perhaps art can make you more crea- tive in general (whatever that is?). Perhaps it can make you perceive your physical or social environment more efficiently. Perhaps it can help resolve your emotional inadequacies, raise

your I.Q., enrich your retirement, or promote world peace and good will. Perhaps it can even make you taller or richer or slimmer or more devastating an opponent in ping pong or pool play- ing. All we have to insist upon is that these other facets of individual growth need not be and should not be the prin- cipal focus of the teacher of art; that the preeminent concern of the art teacher should be development within the domain of visual aesthetic transactions. If other ancillary benefits result from art activities, all the better. If, however, they do not, the educational role of art will not have been betrayed-as long as growth in visual aesthetic capabilities has taken place. Consequently, I am suggesting that we assess as objec- tively as we know how all that we do now in the classroom and that we re- orient our thinking in a direction that deals more specifically with learning in art rather than personal development in qualities not necessarily related to art. In short, I am suggesting that we, in effect, return the art to art education.

Thus the strong central concept presently needed by art education might be stated simply as: increasing the scope and quality of visual aesthetic experience. I cannot refrain from noting that this same concept, stated in substantially the same terms, was proposed and published in an arti- cle entitled, "Schismogenesis in Con- temporary Art Education" in 19637, nor should I omit the fact that this central concept is almost identical to the general goal for aesthetic education as stated in Guidelines by Barkan, Chapman, and Kern published in 19708. Nor is it, I might add, too different from the key assumption of the Framework for Art Education in California, formulated in 1970.9

Let us presume that we can all agree that this central concept is both viable and desirable and that most art educators wish to work towards this end. How best can we do this?

There are, it seems to me, four as- sumptions we must make, assump- tions that are reasonable and proper,



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RTARTARTARTARTARTTAR although we have little or no sys- tematically collected evidence to support them, in order to design effective curricula in art directed towards this end.

The first is that aesthetic experience in general and visual aesthetic experience as one aspect of it is already enjoyed by the individual before entering school. Thus we do not initiate it in our pupils, but build upon what is already there. The second is that the visual arts, which among other stimuli provoke visual aesthetic experience, must today include far more than the gilt- framed oil or pedestaled marble in the museum. They must include the folk arts and the popular arts, in particular, electronic media such as film and television.

The third is that studio production in art is not necessarily the most effective way to promote increase in scope and quality of visual aesthetic experience. In fact, one might legitimately question whether studio production provides any help at all towards this end, in the absence of any evidence,

either speculative or empirical, to support the idea. The fourth is that only the individual who is adequately informed about the nature of aesthetic experience can easily increase the scope and quality of that experience. Thus, curricula in art education should be focused on aesthetic education. How- ever, "aesthetic education" as we know it today is actually improperly named, since it does not deal with aesthetic questions, but relies for its conceptual parameters upon the be- havior models of artist, historian, and critic.

It is shocking to read in the literature of our field the kind of statement which suggests by implication or even sometimes directly that art education will (like dispensing alms to the poor) confer aesthetic experiences upon those who have never had any nor could ever have any without us. This sort of unconscious arrogance is at least unrealistic if not obnoxious.

Let me provide an example from All the Arts for Every Child by Stanley Madeja. "The overall goal of the Arts in

General Education Project was to develop an aesthetically perceptive and responsive individual."10 Or another from CEMREL'S Aesthetic Education: A Social and Individual Need is "The Aim of the Aesthetic Education Program is to create within individuals an aesthetic sensitivity."" In the latter quote the active verb is "to create", clearly asserting the initiation of what does not yet exist; in the former, the verb is "to develop", which can, by implication, be understood the same way. In contrast, the central concept argued here uses the word "increasing" which avoids this error, as does the general goal statement from Guidelines, for example, which uses the same word.

If the individual does have aesthetic experience, visual as well as other, before entering school and outside of school-which appears to me to be a perfectly reasonable point of view- then what are the stimuli which provoke these reactions? One of these stimuli is very likely to be the natural environment. One does not have to

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have had a course in junior high school art appreciation or even a third grade batik activity to react with awe and pleasure at the sight of a fine sunset or a giant redwood ora blue-green ocean. Another of these stimuli is, evidently, the folk arts-those quilts that grandmother made, the old furniture we in- herit from ourfamilies, the napkin rings carved from whalebone. These are hardly the high art of the museum, but they seem often to give us at least the same kind of eye pleasure for its own sake which we associate with the more honorific visual arts.

Another and perhaps even wider category of these stimuli which provoke aesthetic responses without the benefit of formal education is the popular arts. So much has already been written about them that it is likely to be unnecessary to elaborate at this point. It can be said, however, that comic strips, clothing, billboards, posters, television, motion pictures- all these and more seem to elicit responses in all of us including those un- trained in art, at leastsimilartowhat we

feel about the fine arts. It may be that these responses to popular arts are somewhat different in quality or in quantity from the engagement of those who are informed about art with the fine arts. Even if this were so, it would in no way detract from the tremen- dous value even a basic similarity of visual aesthetic experience can have for the teaching of art, once it is recog- nized and properly exploited.

Here, then, is one way-and I think an effective way-in which we can "increase the scope and quality of visual aesthetic experience." We can develop curricula and teaching strategies which are capable of moving the pupil from already existing aesthetic in- volvements with the natural environment, the folk arts and the popular arts, to the fine arts, that special province of the artteacher. Done this way, art in the classroom can be a natural outgrowth of the pupil's extra-school interests rather than what it so often turns out to be: an alien highbrow exercise, amus- ing as an "easy" class in school, but not nearly as exciting as the arts of the

street and the screen. If this curriculum idea (which I have

previously called "canalization")12 is difficult to visualize in our own field, it may be clearer when applied to another. In the teaching of music, for example, the pupil could develop an appreciation of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms by understanding similarities in some musical qualities to the music of Mac Davis or Brownsville Station. In fact, music education appears to in- creasingly recognize the powerful curriculum potential of popularmusic. In a recent issue of an educational journal, Clyde Appleton writes:

Many music educators through- out the United States are looking at popular musical styles with a new respect as they realize the central role that music plays in the cultural patterns of American youth. They understand the necessity of becoming conversant with popular musical styles before they can adequately develop music curricula that serious- ly take into account the cultural backgrounds of their students.13

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I am suggesting that there are viable parallels in the visual arts to the popular musical domain Appleton and others speak of. Indeed, it might be said that in our field, such parallels are much more widespread and, therefore, universally available. There are, after all, far fewer musical sounds that might be called "natural" than sights which provoke aesthetic response. The whisper of the wind, the crackling of thunder, the barking of a dog-these are natural sounds to which we might respond, but they are far less numer- ous and less diversified than natural sights with customary aesthetic potential. The same is true of the so-called folk arts. There are many more visual items such as grandmother's quilt than there is folk music-as wide a field as that may be. And if one accepts as broad a range of popular visual arts as I would recommend, the same disparity will be evident in that category.

Therefore, those of us who are in the visual arts should be even quicker than those in other art forms to exploitthese areas for education. That we have not yet done so in any appreciable scale might well be a result of our heritage of artistic elitism. Most of us have sub- scribed in varying degrees to Dwight Macdonald's Law of Raspberry Jam: the wider you spread it, the thinner it is, exuding suspicion about the artistic merit of anything enjoyed by the masses of humankind. Happily, times and conceptions change, and in our era all too quickly. After all, it was as recently as 1947 that I took my first ceramics course in the Industrial Arts rather than the Fine Arts Department! Certainly it is not too soon to suggest a catholicity of viewpoint in the visual arts, a viewpoint which will include folk and popular under the rubric of art along with by now traditional forms such as painting, printmaking, and pottery.

Of course, each individual pupil- child or adult-will have his or her own particular existing visual aesthetic interest, that point from which he can be moved to a broader involvement. For one it might be grandmother's quilt and for another the personality poster. We must exploit these individual interests. However, curricula are commonly designed for groups rather than individuals; and, therefore, it is important to discover or estimate those popular visual arts which might serve as the broadest common denominator of

32 Art Education, March 1975

youthful interest. From general observation, from what has been written on the subject and from common sense, it would appear that the most extensive and pervasive type of "aesthetic persuader" (I am indebted to Robert Reeser for the term) of the young is the area of filmed media-particularly motion pictures and television.

There are several significant reasons why this seems to be the case. The screen arts are dramatic and musical as well as visual and thus have a many- faceted impact. They are contemporary in style rather than dependent upon historical modes of conception. Their popularity is shared by the mass of citizenry rather than being limited to an elite, no matter how large, of social class or education. Their "artistry" is more often obvious rather than subtle, though this is not necessarily a comment on their quality. Also, and perhaps not least of all, they often deal with situations and issues to which most of us can relate; they are much more typically than the museum arts what in the sixties would have been called "relevant." For these reasons, if for no others, the screen arts might well

be the way in which we as art teachers can reach the young and increase the scope and quality of their visual aesthetic experiences.

In any case, even if we do not emphasize the screen arts, the assumption of an existing pre- or extra- school visual aesthetic experience and its corollary dependence upon a breadth of art to include folk, popular, and media, are essential concepts to structure future art programs in the schools. These two ideas alone (which, incidentally, are practiced by more than a few art teachers and without complex theoretical rationales such as this one) could do much to bring art education theory into a more appro- priate correspondence with contemporary American life.

However, even the most contemporary course content will not ensure the kinds of growth our strong central concept suggests if it is implemented by less than adequate classroom procedures. If we reduce the curriculum in art to embroidering denims, producing films or videotapes, designing or redesigning urban spaces, drawing comic strips, in short, performing all those studio "activities" long beloved by the art teacher, now within the ex-

panded range of folk, popular, and media arts, it is more than likely that our pupils will still be essentially limited in the growth we might provide for them. Decades of virtually un- diluted studio curricula do not seem to have produced a population massively affectionate toward the fine arts. There is no reason to suppose that expand- ing the range of studio content per se will promote any larger response to any of the visual arts. Indeed, if we want their expanded appreciation to include the museum and gallery arts as well as folk, popular, and media (and I assume this is at least part of the "increase" desired) we had better look for ways other than studio to perform the task.

This preoccupation of art education with studio practice might well turn out to be the most unwholesome of our many problems. Certainly our collec- tive unwillingness to question such practice raises it to the level of a "shib- boleth", a watchword or slogan often suspect of adequacy. I was amazed when I questioned this unquestion- able in 1969, at the vehemence with which I was assaulted by many colleagues. One might think I had in- sulted motherhood or endorsed sin!

Once we dare to question, however, we find that there are reasonable criticisms which might be leveled at studio practice as the dominant curriculum idea of art education, whatever the breadth of that practice. One of these is that no other arts area (with the possible exception of dance) stipulates that increased understanding in that area can result only from production in that area. Neither music, nor poetry, nor drama requires totally and con- sistently, a producing curriculum in a formal educational context. Only the visual arts are and have been so con-

stituted. Are we, then, in some way so different from these areas? Another criticism rests on the fact that most if not all of us have reasonably adequate responses as adults to these various art forms without ever having practiced them. Let the reader ask himself or herself how his own adequate response to, let us say, theatre or cinema has developed without having written, produced, directed, or acted in a play or film. Does one have to play football in order to understand and enjoy it? Apparently, considerable understanding and appreciation can develop as a result of non-productive experiences in other arts and non-arts areas. Why not in the visual arts? The usual



response to this issue, that after all, most if not all of us take classes involv- ing the use of language, while few take art classes in our schools, is not a useful answer. In fact, if one includes the non-museum and gallery arts, it seems that most of us as we mature have as wide an exposure to visual aesthetic experience and decision- making as to verbally-oriented art forms.

Thus, if our primary attention as art teachers is directed towards increasing people's capacity to experience art rather than to produce it, we might well have little need, if any, for the elaborate, expensive, and time- consuming procedures of studio art programs. Surely they can and should exist as elective options for any age, both inside and outside the school, since the delight and satisfaction they provide is no mean contribution to liv- ing. But in the very limited time we have in formal education to engage the young in required art experiences, we might find patterns of curriculum more accurately focused on developing visual aesthetic response. So many of us in art education piously proclaim that we do not teach to produce artists. Yet what we do in the classroom may not be productive towards any other end and is certainly not adequate to that one.

The fourth and last necessary assumption, that aesthetic dialogue is the shortest and most efficient route to broadening and deepening aesthetic response, is the most troublesome concept of all. Not the least of the problems raised by this idea is the lack of simple language with which to in- vestigate aesthetic questions. It almost seems as if philosophers, much like physicians, have deliberately con- cocted an esoteric jargon with which they can restrict aesthetic dialogue to their own councils. Part of the reason, of course, is that questions of aesthetics are by no means simple and obvious. Indeed they are, in their present substance, complex and tenuous as well as inadequately developed. Nonetheless, if they are important and if their content affects all our lives, they should be available in some approach- able form for all of us. Unfortunately, those in art education most competent to undertake the task of simplification have been no more concerned with it than the rest of us. We deal with ethical, political, and sociological problems within the context of formal education, motivated by the conviction that these are areas of human concern, significant to every citizen. If we are similarly convinced of the values of aesthetic insight, we should attempt to expose aesthetic inquiry to the broadest possible population.

Given the availability of aesthetic dialogue to all of the young, it is plausi- ble to conceive a curriculum which will

promote thoughtfulness about the nature and function of one's own aesthetic responses. The concept of thoughtfulness as a desirable human condition should be by now less alarm- ing than it was during the Mc- Luhanistic mindlessness of the anti- rational sixties. A curriculum oriented in this direction might prompt the stu- dent to recognize and explore alterna- tives within the visual arts. If I can understand how I have arrived at a position vis-a-vis one social issue such as bussing or price-control or the death penalty, I can better analyze the other problems that society presents. Once I understand how I respond to what I already enjoy in the arts-and for most of our youth the areas of present engagement seem to be folk, popular, and media arts-I can then more readily exploit an introduction to these arts I do not yet appreciate.

No doubt the reader will assess these suggestions as a tall order. Such a curriculum orientation requires so many reversals of our usual beliefs in the field. that it is almost too much to ask for. We must admit to the domain of art a spec- trum of objects and events unhal- lowed by gallery or museum status. We must look to the pupil for guidance as to what constitutes fruitful content for the classroom. We must suppress or re- examine our virtually uncontrollable impulse to deal with studio production, nurtured to the status of instinct by the weight of decades of practice and our own earlier and often continu- ing preoccupation with personal artistic creation. We must embrace a kind of verbal intellectuality unpopular among both teachers and practi- tioners in the arts and attack the musty and obscure concerns of the philosopher. Yes, this is atall order. Yet I am convinced that there is no better way to perform the task our obligation provides. Unless, of course, we are satisfied with the present condition of art education.

The only reasonable reservation I cannot debate is that these ideas are essentially only broad outlines and that we need, among much more, some detailed plans for the kind of art program recommended here. Such planning probably demands a greater concentration of time and knowledge than any one art educator can provide. The only way I can see to get this done is to convene a group of art educators interested in and knowledgeable about this direction of curriculum planning. It goes without saying that such a col- lective enterprise is unlikely of ac- complishment without some sort of specific funding and this concept of art education is far too radical a departure from the mainstream thinking of the field to entice the support of any public or private funding agency. Instead we will probably continue to invest our none too copious available monies in

dubious enterprises such as, for example, the artists in the schools program, which if it is not inappropriately con- ceived as art education-which I believe it is-is at least unimaginative.

What can be anticipated, however, is that these ideas might intrigue or provoke those in art education who view the present status of the field with discomfort and who can tolerate assessment of even the most sacrosanct conceptions.

Vincent Lanier is professor of art education, University of Oregon, Eu- gene, Oregon.

REFERENCES

'Herbert Read, Education Through Art, London: Faber & Faber, 1943.

2Robert C. Burkhart, Spontaneous and Deliberate Ways of Learning, Scranton, Pa.: International Textbook Co., 1962.

3Manuel Barkan, Through Art to Creativity, Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1960.

4Edmund B. Feldman, Becoming Human Through Art, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

5Elliot W. Eisner, Educating Artistic Vision, N.Y.: Macmillan Co., 1972, p. 2.

6Vincent Lanier, "The Teaching of Art as Social Revolution", Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 50, No. 6, February 1969, pp. 314-319.

7Vincent Lanier, "Schismogenesis in Contemporary Art Education", Studies in Art Education, Vol. 5, No. 1, Fall 1963, p. 14.

8Manuel Barkan, Laura H. Chapman, and Evan J. Kern, Guidelines, CEMREL, 1970, p. 9.

9 , Art Education Framework, California State Department of Educa- tion, 1971, p. 2.

'0Stanley S. Madeja, All the Arts for Every Child, The JDR III Fund, 1973, p. 14.

1(No author listed), Aesthetic Education: A Social and Individual Need, CEMREL, undated, first insert page.

12Vincent Lanier, "An Experimental Course in High School Art Apprecia- tion," Improving the Teaching of Art Appreciation, David W. Ecker, ed.), The Ohio State University, 1966, pp. 75-105, or "Talking About Art", Studies in Art Education, Vol. 9, No. 3, Spring 1968, pp. 32-44.

'3Clyde R. Appleton, "Black and White in the Music of American Youth", New York University Education Quarterly, Winter 1973, p. 24.

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returning the art to art education

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