teaching students to understand their artwork

National Art Education Association

Teaching Students to Understand Their ArtworkAuthor(s): George SzekelySource: Art Education, Vol. 38, No. 5 (Sep., 1985), pp. 38-43Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192858 .Accessed: 14/06/2014 05:24

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Teaching Students to Understand Their Artwork

Art Education September 1985

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George Szekely

t the conclusion of an art lesson, I often ask students to put up their artworks around the room. As the

works fill the space. I review them with excitement and pride. My being openly joyful often leads to conversations with students, many of whom do not see, feel, or share my joy or understand my reasons for celebration. One group of students is satisfied because they made the teacher happy, in hopes of a good grade. Others have created innovative and beautiful works but have little comprehension of their merit or beauty. There is always that small but vocal group who openly hate their works and don't see what I could possibly admire in them. After these ex- changes, I inwardly adjust my celebrations and begin reexamining a lesson that produced beautiful art but failed to teach students how to comprehend their own work and accomplishments. How can students be taught to see and feel in their own art a sense of beauty and invention and begin to understand its possibilities? How can students get to know their own artworks better? Answers to these questions have far- ranging implications for the design of an art lesson. A teacher's simple judgment, based on his or her values and interests, that a work is of high quality does not say anything about how a student values the work or the experience of making it. Students must be taught how to understand, or evaluate, their own works.

Students who understand works they have created are able to set goals for themselves and, by examining each new work at various stages of completion, guide their artworks during the process of creation. Once a work is completed they are able to describe it, assess it, and compare it with previous efforts; they can read in it clues to the utilization of the experiences it has pro- vided. They understand how tools and materials worked for them and go beyond examination of their works to self-examination; each new work gives them a surer sense of their capabilities and interests. They have learned about themselves as artists from having gone through the process of producing the work. Students who really know their works and who through their works

In this article ... Szekely suggests

many processes for helping students to understand their art

works. "Self-criticism is an important step

toward artistic independence. Of course, outside criticism can be

valuable because it encourages students to reflect about their works, but it cannot

substitute for the students' own evaluation."

have examined the process and experience of making art, are able to devise both short-term and long-term goals. ART ANALYSIS AS A CREATIVE ACT Learning about one's art is a slow process. An artwork is seldom completed without careful examination of each stage of development, and these stages are often recorded or explored through a series of new works. A finished artwork is evaluated in light of previous works, works by other artists, and one's own goals. In a school art class, a rush to clean up often ends the period. Stu- dents aren't given enough time to learn about their own works or to consider how to extend their ideas even though this type of reflection is essential to the artistic process.

It may be difficult to get children to slow down. They are impatient and unobservant, and everyday seeing takes place at a considerably faster pace and lower level of concentration than is needed for examining artworks. Few activities in school demand such intense periods of concentration. Stu- dents therefore need to be taught a slower pace of seeing. Of course, one cannot force a child to look, but playful activities can be introduced that in-

crease student interest - and skill -in observation. Too often, students are taught what

to see, not how to see. Art students in a museum fill in handout sheets and re- spond to questions that focus attention on the artworks. They may learn cor- rect answers but still miss seeing and experiencing the art. Telling students what to see in a museum, or in their own work, must be done in general terms, or students' responses will not be creative and personal. Really seeing an artwork is not merely responding to questions raised by someone else but of posing relevant questions oneself. Stu- dents need to feel free to consider all questions that may guide the creation of their artwork.

Seemingly inactive states need to be viewed as active and productive periods because artmaking requires pauses. Changes are often made in a work without touching it. Indeed, an artwork is made by thinking about it as much as by active physical working. Time spent waiting or away from one's work is often useful, because it allows contemplation of the work's possibilities. Periods of sitting in front of a work or walking about the room are necessary to our thinking. They may be described as periods of creative contemplation.

Unfortunately, creative contemplation is seldom encouraged or tolerated in schools. A pause implies being stuck, which demands teacher assistance, and leaving one's work if only to think may be regarded as possibly leading to disruptive behavior. Walking away from one's work for short periods should be allowed in school. Students will return to their work with a different outlook, a new approach to comple- ting the task, a new understanding of what they are trying to create.

The aim, then, is to develop students' critical abilities. With each new work, students learn to determine what is pro- gressing well, what shows promise, and what needs to be pursued further. Each student becomes his or her own best audience. My research (Szekely, 1979) indicates that students who regularly evaluate themselves are able to remem- ber more details of their art and to form a more complete impression of it than those who do not. Consequently they are able to discuss their own works more thoughtfully and knowledgeably.

Self-criticism is an important step toward artistic independence. Of course,


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outside criticism can be valuable because it encourages students to reflect about their works, but it cannot substitute for the students' own evaluation; students need to move away from re- liance on the teacher. I discourage students from depending too heavily on my advice by telling them, "Now don't lis- ten to me completely; examine your work and follow your thoughts and be true to your own plans." After all, the student is in the best position to judge where the work is coming from and where it should go. Students simply need the opportunity and confidence to make their own choices. It is perfectly natural for some students to walk away from class dis- satisfied with their art. This is a posi- tive artistic response if the student comprehends the problem and is able to devise ways to change the artwork. How can students be taught to understand their works? LEARNING ABOUT ART THROUGH ART Using art to understand art helps focus on the work before, during, and after its creation. Art can be used to sort ideas in preparation for creation of a work, to follow its progress, and to summarize it upon completion. The de- cision-making process is thus slowed

down, opening a wider range of possibilities. Responding to art by producing art promotes an active seeing, not merely a passive execution, of the work.

When art is used to learn about art, the student can imitate, vary the medium, movement, scale, materials, or even the techniques used to produce the work, or simply examine the art through drawings or sculptures. Imi- tating the art - that is, restating or copying it - helps the artist explore feelings and ideas that occured at various stages of the work; the inspiration is captured anew. Giving the work a new format also provides an interesting perspective. When the color, scale, or medium is changed, the work is changed, allowing comparisons with the original and the experience of working with the original. For the in- experienced artist, it is often easier to explore and clarify a work using art processes that to verbalize comments and criticisms.

What new format we choose depends on what we want to look for. Rub- bings, for example, may be useful in exploring the feel of the surfaces of an artwork. Placing a piece of sculpture in a new environment, surrounded by different or seemingly unrelated shapes,

can change our view of its scale or form. To further study the lines of a painting, we can bend linear material such as strings or wire to approximate the feel, movement, and line qualities of the original or cut, fold, or tear tapes to approximate the original. Xeroxes can provide innumerable posi- tive and negative images that can be freely cut, torn, and marked over. Slides that can be projected at many different angles and in many different scales can be focused on a screen on which tracings can be made. Drawing directly from an artwork provides opportunities to observe it intently so that details can be observed and remembered. Even simple devices such as tracing paper allow quick diagramming of an artwork. Such diagramming is useful; it gives us easy access to the work.

Aside from carefully examining a work through drawings made from it, there are other ways of looking that provide a fresh and detailed perspective. The work can be viewed from different angles or in different settings or viewed only in part. Works can be viewed from different angles by turn- ing them sideways or upside down. These playful turnings change the relationship of the framing edge and base- line, suggesting new compositional


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possibilities. Works can be even taken outdoors, where a change of setting and different lighting reveals new space and object relationships. Covering different parts of a work isolates areas, letting us focus on selected details and breaking up relationships that may be too firmly set in our minds. Looking at a work in these different ways alters the familiar perceptions we have of it and suggests to us new possibilities. EVALUATING THE COMPLETED WORK The creativity used to make a work of art can be used to evaluate it when it is completed. Students must learn to judge their creations. Was the original intention carried out? What is the work's most meaningful aspect, and should it be pursued in future works? Quite simply, what is the work really like? Students need to go beyond the subject of their works to answer these questions, and therefore they need to develop new skills. Students need to learn to observe so that they can describe the visual qualities of their art. In order to do this, students need to develop concepts that will help them to identify characteristics of an artwork. They need to develop the ability to compare and contrast the visual elements of a single work and to see similarities and differ-

ences among works. To enhance their understanding, they need to compare their works with the works of other artists. Students need to be able to see alternative solutions that are available to the problem posed by the work. Students need to know how they feel about their works and recognize the tastes, values, and preferences the artwork represents.

When a student has been struggling to express an idea in one or more works, a good way to summarize these efforts for evaluation is to create a final, or summary, work. The summary work is the essence of the student's investi- gation. Through it the student demon- strates mastery over the art problem that has been probed. The pressure created by the need to complete this final work before class is over forces the student to muster all of his or her experience and confidence. As a result a more conceptual piece, which states the ideas in the simplest form, is produced. The summary work, which may be considered an homage to the principal work, becomes a model that reveals both insight and direction.

If students need to discuss their works, then they need an audience, and this is the role the art teacher can play. The art teacher needs to be an audience to the student's dreams and ideas, both to help them understand what they've accomplished and to help new works come to fruition. I recently ex- pressed delight with a beautiful painting a student had made, but she felt only disgust and anger with the painting. "I struggled with this painting for days, but it does not reflect the ideas I want to express." She went on to tell me in detail what she really wanted to paint. It was my job as teacher, not to offer an opinion based on my experiences and expectations, but to be a supportive listener. By doing so, I helped the student see her ideas more clearly and feel greater confidence in developing them.

Art teachers can help students not just by listening but also by asking imaginative questions. Such questioning encourages students to explore their works playfully and creatively: students can take stock of what they have accomplished in a particular work or to look beyond it. Questioning may include the use of playful themes, for example, asking students to make believe they are flying over their own

works or picking a basket of colors from it. Even questioning that sounds ridiculous can be useful in creating a new mood, a new frame of reference for evaluating the work. For example, students can be asked to make believe that they have a magic scissors that let them cut out special parts of an artwork, revealing specific qualities, or magic glasses that pick up only certain details or colors in a work. If you have to advertise the unique qualities of your work in a flyer or announcement, what would the headlines say? Through such imaginary situations, students can change the work, draw information from it, or develop ideas based on what they now see in it.

Although a teacher's discussing or questioning a student's work can be fruitful, such activities must be handled with care. A teacher simply telling a student what he or she likes or dis- likes about a work does not allow the student to develop self-confidence and understanding. The aim should always be to help students learn to evaluate their works, not to have others provide the final assessment.

After a recent concert by Isaac Stem, my five-year old daughter stood in line for his autograph. She shook his hand and confidently said, "Hi, I'm Ilona, and I also play the violin." Students need to see themselves as artists and look at masters as colleagues. They can learn from their own works by taking pride in them when they compare them with the works of other artists. Being able to appreciate and evaluate the works of artists we like, helps us learn to evaluate our own work. TECHNIQUES FOR UNDERSTANDING ART Following are a number of techniques teachers can use to help students learn from their own works. They easily fit into school schedules and require simple materials and a relatively short amount of time. I've used these techniques with many children, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, and it has aided them immeasurably in understanding their artworks. Mapping and Diagramming Drawing is a means of recording and illustrating ideas found in a student's art. The drawings that result are actually quick sketches that summarize the student's observations and so are different from standard drawings. Map- pings, or diagrams, of a work can be

Art Education September 1985 41



executed on top of duplicates such as slide projections, xeroxes, or tracings. The result is a visual aid filled with personal marks that may be meaningful only to the artist. Thus, the student comes to understand his or her own work. Tracings Diagrams of two-dimensional artworks, made by placing tracing paper directly on top of a work, can reveal a great deal to the young artist. Each trans- parent layer can be used to explore different aspects of the work such as form or placement of colors; the trans- parent layers reveal how different elements relate to each other and to the edge of the work. Patterns, textures, and shapes are clarified, with individual tracings made of each detail. Painting, drawing, and prints are frequently created in layers, and so by using overlays the artist can study each layer, each idea, individually. The artist can also place one layer on top of another to see how the work has evolved. Coverings Students can wrap or cover three-dimensional works to discover their form. The act of covering simplifies the form by adding a sort of skin; we focus not on the function or subject of the work but on its shapes and edges. When foil, plastic, tracing paper, or cloth are used as coverings, details are outlined and edges defined. Coverings may be loose or tightly wrapped to reveal what is underneath. Even the use of light - with variance in distance, direction, and level - can reveal a form, sharpening our understanding of it. Cutting Apart and Placing Together Students can learn about the composition of a work by cutting apart a reproduction of it. When students evaluate a work, they take it apart visually; then can learn how to evaluate by actually taking the work apart with scissors as a tool. Cutting a work apart can help students learn about its forms and lines and how they combine to make a whole. Duplicates of each work can be cut differently, for different purposes, to gain a strong sense of how the artwork has been constructed. Works can be taken apart and put back together like a puzzle. Students can even display parts of a work that has been cut up. Color areas or shapes cut from a work become guides to understanding. Treating the cut-up work like a puzzle in reverse, students can

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study the whole image and the relationship of its parts to the whole. Estimating All works consist of lines and shapes that can be estimated - imitated in another medium - to learn more about them. By tracing the lines of a drawing with wire placed on top of it or ripping and cutting out paper shapes found in the work, students come to understand the original. If clay versions are made of sculptures students have completed, they have a chance to make adjust- ments in both how they see the work and adjust their knowledge of it.

Estimating yields a rich array of new works that make immediately accessible to the students all the elements that make up the original. Not only do they show us what we see, they show us what we missed when making the original. Estimating allows an active parti- cipation in a work that clarifies it for its maker. Framing Whatever we look at is given a frame by our vision. Whatever we create also has its own frame, which needs to be identified and studied. Reframing a work can teach students about the framing process. Paper or cardboard frames of different sizes and shapes can be placed around a work to reveal the relationship of the edge to the work itself. With pencil or tape, students can create new borders that reveal the structure of the work. A camera lens enables them to study the work in segments, so that they can focus on details

or areas they may like or may want to change. Since they're not tied tightly to the original edge, they can rethink the work's composition. Thus, framing exercises not only make students more aware of the frame and its effect on the relationships set up in the work, but they also loosen and thereby revitalize students' perception of it. Enlarging and Reducing Changing the scale of a work makes its creator more keenly aware of the work itself. Like any alternation of a work, enlargement or reduction calls for careful observation of the original, which allows the young artist to understand it better. Entire works or only sections or details thereof can be en- larged, reduced, or serialized. Indivi- dual enlargements of a section or detail fit together to provide a review of the whole piece. Students can engage in numerous enlargement and reduction plays, all of which can assist them in reevaluating their own works in detail. Seeing work in a different scale not only offers a new view of it but suggests exciting possibilities beyond the original. Simplification and Elaboration Simplifying a work is something an artist does continuously while making it. Students can learn about their works by adopting this approach, pruning areas or details that may not work or are not related to a student's central concerns. Simplifying can be accomplished visually or by cutting out, era- sing, painting over, covering up, or


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otherwise refining segments of a work or its reproductions. Teachers can have students cover up certain details as they trace over the original or describe a complex work in three lines or shapes to help them clarify its principal ideas. By simplifying, students learn to state the original more precisely. Projecting Projections of a work provide another format through which it can be examined. The artwork is reproduced in a variety of scales, making it readily accessible to redrawing and tracing exercises. Students can also work on the projected image, learning how the impact of the work changes as its size and scale change and gathering information from diagrams done on the screen. Projections allow students to choose from many different versions of a work and to examine its details individually or together by creating composites of slide images. All sorts of creation alternations of the projected image are possible: it can be viewed upside down; out of focus; projected over forms, colors, and textures; and so forth. Through playful projection, students can learn to see their works differently and discover new possibilities within them.

Video screens provide a different learning experience from slide projections. Projections on a video screen are continuous, stopped only by the viewer's needs. Changes in specific details are heightened through sequential viewings, which provide a journey over and through the work. Aerial views of a work's surface, closeups, freeze- frames, and views from all possible angles are available. The moving images on the screen duplicate the eye's searching through a work. Through video screens, then, students become their own audience. Playful Tools Photographers look through their fingers to frame the subject of a photo- graph; painters frequently use their thumb as a tool of measurement. Simple devices familiar to children can be used to create new conditions for viewing artworks. Students often enjoy using binoculars or tele- scopes to look at their works. Mag- nifying glasses, plastic mirrors, and magnification sheets allow multiple angles, multiple views, and closeups of areas or details. Car, truck, or makeup mirrors; mylar; and mirror

sheets create reversed images and unusual wide-angled views. These playful devices give students a sense of freedom that enables them to see their works in a new light. Celebrations and Performances Students can learn about their own works by using them in celebrations and performances. Celebrations help students get closer to their works, to consider the unique features of each. They promote an active state of mind that not only helps the student develop a work but also frees him or her to learn from it. Through celebrations students can express the joys of making art and making discoveries.

All types of artworks can be used in performance. For instance, drawings can be worn, made to talk or fly, or translated into poetry. Performances can even result in the creation of new works, for they can be documented through sketches, photographs, or films. Celebrations can include fashion shows, parades, and other imaginary presentations meant to engage an audience. The making, exhibiting, sel- ling, and review of artworks can be re- enacted, with students playing art dealers, critics, or buyers. Celebrations tend to highlight the unusual so they may reveal new aspects of a work that were not immediately apparent. Graffiti Plays Most of us disapprove of graffiti, but letting children freely work on duplicates of their creations in an un- restricted, unplanned, even humorous fashion can give them great insight. Graffiti works may seem silly, but marking over, marking up, and making fun of a work is not a senseless or destructive exercise. Tension, risk, and fear of failure is built into each creative act. Thus, there is a huge opportunity for self-expression in "letting loose," in casting aside these fears and insecurities to do what one wants with copies of the original art.

Graffiti plays allow free association of ideas, and it is sometimes through such irreverent or joking treatment of a work that new and useful ideas may appear. Serious changes fmay then be considered by the young artist. Able to be themselves in responding to their work, children don't block when it is time to evaluate their works. For them, the evaluation process is no longer a prescribed academic exercise. It is a part of creating a piece of art.

These and other techniques can be used by art teachers to help students at- tain a greater understanding of their works. It is important for teachers to include such techniques in each lesson, for the aim of teaching art to children is not just to have them create beautiful works. It is to have them create works whose intention, qualities, and poten- tial for further development they truly understand. U

Dr. George Szekely is Area Head of the Department of Art Education at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky.

Bibliography Chaet, B. (1970). Artists at work. Cambridge: Hill and Wang.

Fiedler, C. (1969). On judging works of art. Berkeley, University of California Press.

Plummer, G.S. (1974). Children's art judgment. Iowa: William C. Brown.

Schinneller, J. (1978). Art: Search and self dis- covery. Scranton, PA: International Textbooks.

Szekely, G. (1982, May). Conversations in the art class. Art Education 35 (3). 15-17.

Taunton, M. (1978, January). Reflective dia- log in the art class: focusing on the art process. Art Education 37 (3). 15-17.


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Article Contentsp.38p.39p.40p.41p.42p.43

Issue Table of ContentsArt Education, Vol. 38, No. 5 (Sep., 1985), pp. 1-54Front Matter [pp.1-3]EditorialNew Beginnings ... [p.4]

Finding Value and Meaning in Art[Introduction] [p.5]Teaching Aesthetic Perception in the Elementary School [pp.6-11]Aesthetic Dialogue for Children: Paradigm and Program [pp.12-15]Toward a Socially Defined Studio Curriculum [pp.16-18]Developing Aesthetic Literacy through Contested Concepts [pp.19-24]

Supplement: Instructional Resources [pp.25-32]Meditations [pp.33-37]Teaching Students to Understand Their Artwork [pp.38-43]The Art of Crafts [pp.44-46]Estimating Visual Judgments [pp.47-48]After WordsThe Wissa Wassef Experiment [p.49]

Artful BanterThe Phrenology of Art: Ruminations on Burt Benfang, Artist [pp.50-51]

Reviewsuntitled [pp.52-53]untitled [pp.53-54]

Back Matter

teaching students to understand their artwork

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