National Art Education Association

Clarifying Visual Culture Art EducationAuthor(s): Paul DuncumSource: Art Education, Vol. 55, No. 3, Back to the Future: [Re][De]Fining Art Education (May,2002), pp. 6-11Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193995 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 23:44

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.96 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:44:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

n a recent article in this journal, Elliot Eisner (2001) offered some comments on the proposal that art education adopt a visual culture paradigm. His comments echo some

of those that are frequently made whenever I present Visual Culture Art Education (VCAE) at conferences and to students. The paradigm has been employed by many art educators (eg. Chalmers, 2001; Congdon & Blandy, 2001; Freedman, 2000; Stokrocki, 2001; Tavin, 2000),

S and Visual Culture Art Education is unlikely to evolve into just one thing. What I seek to do here is to clarify my understanding of what VCAE is and to rectify some common misunderstandings.

1/ KMMI

I

I

I

i

?t Education VCAE sees making and critique as

symbiotic. The critique and making of images need to go hand-in-hand, with the one

-~. ~-. ^supporting the other in a symbiotic relationship.

~7%?.: k' ? 0Critical understanding and empowerment-not ?b ~WK

' ^ :*'~artistic expression-are the primary goals of

VCAE, but critical understanding and empower- ment are best developed through an emphasis on image-making where students have some freedom to explore meaning for themselves.

However, the objection is often raised that VCAE dislodges the central place of image- making in favor of critique. It is argued that more than anything else, making images sets art apart from other school subjects. Through making images students learn about art as a practitioner; they learn how artists think, and

BY PAUL DUNCUM

ART EDUCATION / MAY 2002

I% .i}t.

I7I

i1 c

'.. . . ..... ft

" VI,

>~~~~~~5 v ' C' 'l

,,: 0- .:e.- )!,

I O*

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.96 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:44:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

students have the opportunity to explore a unique way of thinking for themselves. To stress critique at the expense of making images would destroy the subject in the eyes of students and teachers alike. While developments in our field over the past few decades have emphasized the value of critique, making images remains central to art education and for good reason.

This argument is a helpful caution against a singular stress on critique that some advocacy of VCAE may have implied. I don't believe anyone wishes

By contrast, Buckingham and Sefton- Green provide an exemplar for VCAE by focusing on making images that combine critical questions with the freedom for individuals and groups to explore meaning for themselves. In emphasizing making as central to peda- gogy, they effectively take their model for teaching from art education. At the same time, they used making activities to have their students explore a much broader, socially conscious range of questions about cultural practices than is usually explored in the art class.

A visual culture approach requires a substantial shift in what is to be known about images and thereby has

far-reaching implications for changing the pre- and in- service training of teachers. Knowing about television

production and audience reception is different from

knowing about Monet, for example.

to turn visual culture into just another academic subject as some proponents of Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) were once accused. Stressing critique at the expense of making images in an exploratory way can have serious detrimental effects, as Buckingham and Sefton-Green (1994) warn in their examination of Media Studies in Britain. There, making is often subservient to teacher-determined ideas; making activities merely illustrate pre-existing critical positions. The legacy of this transmission model is students who are able to regurgitate the ideology of their teachers but unable to transfer learning to their lives outside formal schooling.

Critical issues that informed making activities included the roles played by imagery in society, audience reception, media ownership, the construction of their own multiple subjectivities, and the nature of representation. In short, this model is founded on a framework of critical pedagogy within which students are encouraged to explore issues for themselves.1

Making images in a visual culture curriculum would therefore not always be the same as it exists in some art classes today. Artmaking is often a process of open experimentation without a clearly articulated set of ques- tions, and art in schools sometimes

follows this expressive model. By contrast, image making in VCAE would tend to adopt more of a design proce- dure- such as discovering, planning, doing, and assessing-than the open- ended exploratory approach of some artists. As well as learning skills, students maintain freedom to explore while focused on questions related to the nature and function of visual culture in society and its impact on their lives. Though making takes on a different accent from some mainstream art educa- tional practice, it remains central.

VCAE is a new paradigm. One of the most often used methods of under- mining what is new is to fail to recognize it as new and to claim it as nothing more than a repackaging or an extension of already existing and accepted practice. Thus the emphasis of VCAE on working with and on expanding students' own cultural experience is said to be nothing more than sound, traditional art educa- tion practice. Linking the world of art with the world of students is what all good teachers do, it is claimed.

However, despite similarities between existing practices (e.g., Wilson, 1997; Dobbs, 1998) and VCAE, they are substantially different. They have different fundamental starting points and goals and require of teachers a different orientation to the curriculum as a whole. A visual culture approach requires a substantial shift in what is to be known about images and thereby has far-reaching implications for changing the pre- and in-service training of teachers. Knowing about television production and audience reception is different from knowing about Monet, for example.

MAY 2002 / ART EDUCATION

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.96 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:44:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Mainstream art education begins with the assumption that art is inher- ently valuable, whereas VCAE assumes that visual representations are sites of ideological struggle that can be as deplorable as they can be praiseworthy. The starting point is not the prescribed, inclusive canon of the institutionalized art world, but students' own cultural experience. A major goal is empower- ment in relation to the pressures and processes of contemporary image-

VCAE... would focus on the extraordinarily diverse ways people deal with the visual

products of global capitalism as people negotiate, resist, and appropriate the

meaning of images in terms of their own cultural predispositions.

makers, mostly those who work on behalf of corporate capitalism, not the cherishing of artistic traditions and the valuing of artistic experimentation. The basic orientation is to understand, not to celebrate.

The kinds of people attracted to existing practices may also be different from those attracted to visual culture. People sometimes appear to select to be art teachers because they feel like outsiders and want to celebrate cultural expression that takes them away from the general, driven impetus of society. They see themselves on the margins of society in general and curriculum in particular, and in reaction to both they adopt a defensive position. By contrast, a visual culture approach requires teachers to deal directly with the images of mainstream society and in place of a defensive position to locate themselves at the core of the curriculum.

DBAE has taught us that there is more to art in schools than making

pictures; there is the need to learn how to discuss images sensibly. To this extent, DBAE has provided an essential stepping-stone to Visual Culture Art Education. It would have been impos- sible to move from a self-expression approach to a visual culture approach without the intervening period where critique of art became accepted as an essential component of curriculum. Thus, VCAE is indebted to DBAE, but it is a mistake to see it as merely an extension of existing practice. Indeed, the implications are far-reaching for theory and classroom practice, the orientation of teachers to their colleagues, and the recruitment and training of teachers.

VCAE is pr-ufoundly historical. To exclude the perspective that history offers would be a serious failing if it were true, but as texts on visual culture demonstrate, nothing could be further from the truth (e.g., Barnard, 1998; Darley, 2000; Evans & Hall, 1997; Mirzeoff, 1999; Walker & Chaplin, 1997). Because VCAE places great stress on examining images in their contexts, and one of the major contexts of images is the history of images, this history is a vital component of a visual culture curriculum. The history of repre- sentation is often far more determining of contemporary representations than anything in contemporary life. Where, after all, do visual stereotypes derive if not from previous visual representa- tions? This is true of gendered images, images of violence, beauty, motherhood, family, authority, and numerous other subjects.

The history of images also provides a useful corrective to the idea that the bright and colorful of contemporary visual sites represent the cheap and tacky, while restraint exemplifies the good taste of fine art. For example, Leddy (1997) demonstrates that what he calls an aesthetic of "sparkle and

| ART EDUCATION / MAY 2002

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.96 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:44:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

shine" was at the core of the concept of beauty from the Greeks to the Romantics, a matter of special pride to Realist painters, and only fell out of favor during the 20th century.

To fully understand contemporary cultural sites it is necessary to study their history. However, the history of visual culture is not the same as the history of art. Just as the canon of images is greatly expanded under a visual culture approach, so is the history of images. For example, Darley (2000) develops a history of popular pictorial practice over the past century as a succession of steps-realism, simula- tion, and interaction-that rarely mentions conventional art. A visual culture curriculum is profoundly historical, though it reframes what history means.

VCAE is cr-ubmcultural. VCAE is inherently cross-cultural, though, again, it offers new meaning to cross-cultural study. It would focus on the extraordi- narily diverse ways people deal with the visual products of global capitalism as people negotiate, resist, and appropriate the meaning of images in terms of their own cultural predispositions. However, opponents fear that a focus on what are often the cultural sites of global, corpo- rate capitalism, takes precedence over the cross-cultural study of art. They argue that a focus on cultural sites that appear everywhere the same dislodges an interest in the differences between cultural groups and their search for their own unique identity.

The cultural sites of global capitalism only at first appear homogenous; they are everywhere interpreted differently. The meaning of global images is highly heterogeneous as different nationalities and ethnic groups interpret the same images in a range of ways. Just as we have learned from post-structuralism that audiences interpret images so diversely that they can be thought to be

co-creators, so different nationalities and ethnic groups interpret images according to their own cultural tradi- tions and contemporary needs. They undertake cultural translations and indi- genize images created elsewhere. Perry (1998) says that cultural translation is never a matter of mere transmission but involves creativity. Images sometimes take on wholly new meanings so that, for example, McDonalds? represents cheap fast food to many, but in some parts of the world McDonalds represents high status. Coca-Cola? represents the United States of America to many, but it also represents a range of other national identities. The image of Coca-Cola may be made in the USA, but, as Howes (1996) demonstrates, it is remade in many other countries. VCAE brings to cross-cultural study a focus on the polysemetic nature of global imagery.

VCAE is as natural as any other study of culture. Working with the flat digital screen of television or the Internet, it is claimed, can hardly be equated with the wonders of working with materials like juicy paint and clay. Squeezing clay through young fingers is an act of pure sensory delight that elec- tronic forms cannot possibly simulate. One is artificial, it is claimed; the other, natural. One is mediated experience and therefore always second-order experience; the other is authentic and reminds us of our essential humanity.

The argument for and against this position turns on what is to count as natural and authentic. Nature is perhaps the most contested word in the English language (Williams, 1983). Anthropology has taught us that the nature/culture opposition is arbitrary so that what is natural for one group is unnatural for another. Equally, in the West, the history of technological devel- opment is a history of naturalization where what is unnatural for one

generation becomes natural for the next (Johnson, 1997). Television, once a strange, new cultural intervention that the family gathered around to watch particular programs is now more likely to be left on as a background accompa- niment to numerous other family activities such as eating, cleaning, doing homework, and so on (Morley, 1995). What was once an intrusion into the flow of daily life has become naturalized. Similarly, digitalized image screens are seen by many as an unnatural affair, yet many youngsters are taking to them as fish to water (Thomas, 2001).

Arguments that evoke the values of what are assumed to be self-evidently natural and authentic are neither suffi- ciently cross-cultural nor historical. They are insufficiently conscious of their assumptions. Where older critics complain that our image culture is nothing but a hall of mirrors, younger critics like Johnson (1997) respond by saying the only people afraid of mirrors are vampires.

Moreover, the argument that paint and clay are natural conveniently over- looks the extent to which traditional materials have become cultural products. To visit the exhibitors' hall at NAEA conferences is to be made aware of the extent to which art materials in schools are the product of cultural contrivance.

MAY 2002 / ART EDUCATION N

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.96 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:44:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Learning to make media

images or to plan shop- ping malls or theme park rides involves as many aesthetic considerations as learning how to paint or create a clay pot. Yet some argue that the interest in visual culture is akin to replacing art with social studies.

They suggest that the

study of issues like media

ownership, audience

reception, ideology, and /

social reproduction appear to displace relishing the sensuous

qualities of images.

CAE values both aesthetic e and social issues. The Itomy between social studies and etics is false, as was an earlier te in aesthetic theory between etic value and ideology. Aesthetics )cial issue. On the one hand, utionalized art is inherently about s, beliefs, and attitudes, and if art es do not address them, they are y called art classes. On the other , television and cultural sites like ping malls and theme parks rely ly on aesthetic manipulations. ling to make media images or to shopping malls or theme park involves as many aesthetic derations as learning how to paint ,ate a clay pot. Yet some argue that .terest in visual culture is akin to cing art with social studies. They est that the study of issues like a ownership, audience reception, ogy, and social reproduction ar to displace relishing the ious qualities of images. , contrast, such issues place

etic experience within its proper 1 contexts. Ideology works best it is hidden, and the aesthetics of >ry appeal work to hide ideology so deology and aesthetics always go in hand. Witness how Monet is today to promote the depoliticiza- f art. For good and/or ill, ideology esthetics are always bedfellows Iways have been. A visual culture

curriculum would study how ideology works through aesthetic means or, conversely, how aesthetics works to promote ideology. A celebration of sensory delight would thereby be grounded in its problematic socioeconomic and political nature.

VCAE will emerge incremen- tally. Teachers claim that they are not equipped to deal with the complexity of contemporary cultural sites. We were trained in art schools, they say, where some of the central issues to do with visual culture were never even raised.

Teachers, for whom it is always Monday morning, have little time to keep abreast of developments that until recently may have appeared outside their immediate domain. Analyzing a theme park ride is not the same as analyzing a painting. Moreover, traditions of teacher practice, which are based on what is known to work in the classroom and what meets administra- tive and parental expectations, make it difficult for many teachers to change.

These arguments are founded on a conflation of a new paradigm and the actual dynamics of change. While realizing the need for new practice may take place in an instant, learning how to translate insight into the classroom cannot be expected to take place overnight. Change in education is always incremental, and so it must be with the transition from one art educa- tional paradigm to another. If, as Wilson (1997) suggests, the shift to DBAE was a quiet evolution, we should expect no more with the shift to VCAE. If a teacher starts by reading just one book on one contemporary cultural site and experiments with how to deal with it within the classroom, the process starts. Just one book on one site, one at a time, over time will mean that a new body of teacher knowledge is developed that comes to form a new art educational paradigm in practice.

ART EDUCATION / MAY 2002

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.96 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:44:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Paul Duncum is a Lecturer in Visual Arts Curriculum in the School of Early Childhood and Primary Education, Faculty ofEducation, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania, 7250, Australia. E-mail: Paul.Duncum@utas. edu.au

NOTE 1Many examples will be published in a special issue of the journal Visual Arts Research this fall. This issue is devoted to examples of how to deal in the classroom with such sites as theme parks, advertisements, tourist sites, tourist souvenirs, television, surfing culture, and adolescent bedrooms.

REFERENCES Barnard, M. (1998). Art, design and visual

culture: An introduction. London: Macmillan.

Buckingham, D., & Sefton-Green, J. (1994). Cultural studies goes to school: Reading and teachingpopular media. London: Taylor & Francis.

Chalmers, G. (2001). Knowing art through multiple lenses: In defence of purple haze and grey areas. In P. Duncum & T. Bracey (Eds.), On knowing: Art and visual culture, (pp. 86-98). Christchurch, NZ: Canterbury University Press.

Congdon, K., & Blandy, D. (2001). Approaching the real and the fake: Living life in the Fifth World. Studies in Art Education, 4(3), 266-278.

Darley, A. (2000). Visual digital culture: Surface play and spectacle in new media genre. London: Routledge.

Dobbs, S. M. (1998). A guide to discipline-based art education: Learning in and through art. Los Angeles: CA: The Getty Education Institute for the Arts.

Eisner, E. (2001). Should we create new aims for art education? Art Education, 54 (5), 6-10.

Evans, J., & Hall, S. (1997). (Eds.), Visual culture: The reader. London: Sage.

Freedman, K. (2000). Social perspectives on art education in the U.S.: Teaching visual culture in a democracy. Studies in Art Education, 41(4), 314-329.

Howes, D. (1996). Introduction: Commodities and cultural borders. In D. Howe (Ed.), Cross-cultural consumption: Global markets, local realities (pp. 1-16). London: Routledge.

Johnson, S. (1997). Interface culture: How new technology transforms the way we create and communicate. San Francisco, CA: HarperEdge.

Leddy, T. (1997). Sparkle and shine. The British Journal ofAesthetics, 37(3), 259-273.

Mirzeoff, N. (1999). An introduction to visual culture. London: Routledge.

Morley, D. (1995). Television as a cultural form. In C. Jenks (Ed.). Visual culture. London: Routledge.

Perry, N. (1998). Hyperreality and global culture. London: Routledge.

Stokrocki, M. (2001). Go to the mall and get it all: Adolescents' aesthetic values in the shopping mall. Art Education, 54(2), 18-24.

Tavin, K. (2000). Teaching in and through visual culture. Journal of Multicultural and Cross-cultural Research in Art Education, (18), 20-23.

Thomas, A. (2001). Cyber children: Discursive and subjective practices in the palace. disClosure:A Journal of Social Theory, (10), 143-175.

Walker, J.A., & Chaplin, S. (1997). Visual culture: An introduction. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Williams, R. (1983). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society (2nd. Ed.). London: Fontana.

Wilson, B. (1997). The quiet evolution: Changing the face of arts education. Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Education Institute for the Arts.

MAY 2002 / ART EDUCATION

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.96 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 23:44:14 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions