Discipline-Based Art Education || Beyond Current Conceptions of Discipline-Based Art Education

National Art Education Association

Beyond Current Conceptions of Discipline-Based Art EducationAuthor(s): F. Graeme ChalmersSource: Art Education, Vol. 40, No. 5, Discipline-Based Art Education (Sep., 1987), pp. 58-61Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193016 .

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F. Graeme Chalmers

Beyond Current

Conceptions Of

Discipline-Based Art Education

"Sociologists and anthropologists don't want to reduce anything. They simply want to add their

perspective."

Photos by the author.

When I hire a new employee, I want someone who can approach problem-solving from a broad perspective. I don 't want the narrowness of the specialist ... J. Paul Getty (as quoted in U.B.C. Reports, March 6, 1986, p. 2).

Sthough advo- cates of discipline-based art education may

profess to approach art education from a broad perspective (for example, Clark and Zimmerman (1981) see the "disciplines" that influence art education as including "education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy, English/langu- age arts, and the fine arts" (p.53), and June K. McFee (1981) sees art education as having a relationship with fifteen other fields), in reality most current conceptions of discipline- based art education smack of four narrow specialisms: art criticism,-art history, art production, and aesthetics, and within these specialisms there is even more narrow-

ness! To give two examples: "aesthetics" seems to equal "philosophical aesthetics" and "art history" seems to equal the study of "Western" monuments. It is posited here that a -

corrective is to be found by adding the disciplines and perspectives of the social sciences, particularly anthropology and sociology.

In the West interest in the sociology of the visual arts might be traced back to Vasari in 1542, and despite courses in universities and an increasing number of publications, the study of the cultural and social foundations of art still needs to win wide recognition. This is particularly the case in North American art education.

Certainly in terms of published aims and goals the increasingly visible Getty Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts appears to support the study of a certain type of art in its cultural and historical context and "the study of specific works of

58 Art Education/September 1987



art and the contexts that place them within the world of art and everyday living" (The Getty Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts, n.d.). But in practise this may not be the case. For example, in a recent NAEA Newsletter "policy watch" column Ralph Smith (1985a) states that the Getty Center's staff accepts art "in its full complexity" (p.8). How can it, when it only seems to accept one art world, the art world? However, Smith then goes on to criticise those whom he sees as being "busy reducing art's manifold of elements to its political or ideological aspects" and praises the Getty conception of discipline-based art education presumably because it has not been contaminated by such people and because he sees

the Getty conception as having an aesthetic emphasis.

However, it is unfair to be too critical of Smith. In a subsequent paper (Smith, 1985b) presented at a seminar organized by the Getty Institute, Professor Smith outlined the contributions made by several aesthetic perspectives to the growth of discipline based art education. To give Smith credit, he discussed contributions to art education made by writers in philosophical, psychological, and sociological aesthetics. Under the latter heading my own early work and that of June K. McFee was discussed and given a favorable review. But to date, possibly because they have been relying on existing curriculum materials, but also because

Art Education/September 1987 59



of a certain bias, there has been no real attempt to incorporate it, or more recent sociological work - particularly by Europeans, or the important work of several younger members of the Caucus on Social Theory in Art Education into a comprehensive working definition of discipline-based art education. By having excluded sociologists, anthropologists, and scholars in cultural studies, the Getty Center seems to imply that understanding and appreciation of art is both completely independent of anthropological and sociological concerns and that contemporary artists, art

historians, philosophically oriented aestheticians, museum curators, and directors of art galleries define those cultural artifacts which qualify as "work of art." Why do photographs in Getty Center publications only show Institute participants discussing art in gallery and museum settings or con- templating fine art repro- ductions? Surely there are other art worlds also worthy of consideration, particularly if we are to "understand art in its full complexity" (see Becker, 1982).

By suggesting in his Newsletter column that scholars in anthropology and sociology of art reduce art to political and ideological aspects, Smith (1985a) could mislead those who ought to know better. Sociologist Janet Wolff (1977, 1981, 1983) stead- fastly avoids a reductionist approach, as do many European scholars and art educators who are influenced by their work. Wolff (1977) has argued that:

a sociology of ... art... must be the result of a three fold exercise. It must comprise the understanding (i) of the works . . in their own right and on their own terms; (ii) of these works as expressions, in some sense of a world view or ideology of a social group or of a society; and (iii) of that ideology, here expressed in aesthetic form, as origiriating in social pro- cesses, class relations, and structural features of society (p. 19).

In addition I would refer Professor Smith to Elizabeth Bird's "Aesthetic neutrality and the sociology of art" in Barrett, et.al (1979). Bird looks at the

attempts made from within sociology to define a "sociology of art", and how these attempts have resolved, or tried to resolve, the question of aesthetic or critical evaluation of the work of art. Bird finds it untenable and theoretically unsound for sociologists to maintain a position of aesthetic neutrality. Bird argues that many of the random limited attempts in the 1950's and '60's to define a 'sociology of art" have survived longer in the United States than they have in Europe where it is much harder to maintain that there is a specifically sociological method. Rather sociology has become a way of looking at the world and has "infected" the neighboring arts-based disciplines. For example Bird shows that within art history there is more work being done on patronage and economic support for artists, and there are increasing attempts to analyse the ideological components of paintings. In art criticism there has been an extension from literary criticism, textual analysis, and semiology, to an analysis of the image. Cultural and film studies have also had an impact on the ways in which images are studied.

The European scholars and the art educators who are influenced by their work argue that the study of art must be unbiased and inter- disciplinary and that the dominance of any one discipline - art history, aesthetics, psychology, studio practice, sociology, anthropology, etc. is an obstacle to its development! Sociologists and anthropologists don't want to reduce anything; they simply want to add their

60 Art Education/September 1987



perspective. For example, (Bird, 1979)

states that "The facts surrounding cultural production are important. They are necessary but not sufficient (my emphasis) for an understanding of cultural forms" (p.47). It is not an either/or situation. As Walter Abel (1952) argued thirty-five years ago we need a unified field in aesthetics. I do not deny that it is true that some, but not all, work in the sociology of art has been based on three somewhat limited premises: aesthetic neutrality, the aim of formulating general "laws" about art, and the search for "facts' within the socio- economic framework of production and distribution. While such studies may have been criticised from within the established arts-based disciplines they have contributed an important perspective that is now beginning to affect those disciplines. The Getty Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts has yet to incorporate into their conception of discipline- based art education either those sociocultural disciplines or a revised conception of the nature of aesthetics, art criticism, or art history that contributes to our understanding of art "in its full complexity." D

F. Graeme Chalmers is Professor of Visual and Performing Arts in Education at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

"Surely there are other art worlds also worthy of consideration, particularly if we are to

"understand art in its full complexity'."

References Abel, W. (1952). Toward a

unified field in aesthetics. Journal

of A esthetics and Art Criticism, 10(3), 191-216.

Becker, H. (1982). Art worlds. Berkeley:University of California Press.

Bird, E. (1979). Aesthetic neutrality and the sociology of art. In M. Barrett, et.al. (Eds.). Ideology and cultural production (pp.23-48). London: Croom Helm.

Clark, G. & Zimmerman, E. (1981). Toward a discipline of art education. Phi Delta Kappan, (63)1, 82.85.

The Getty Institutefor Educators on the Visual Arts. (n.d.). Los Angeles: The Getty Center for Education in the Arts.

McFee, J.K. (1981). Defining art education in the eighties. Paper presented at NAEA Con- ference. Chicago, Ill.

Smith, R. (1985a). Policy Watch.

NAEA News, (27)5, 4 & 8. Smith, R. (1985b). The changing

image of art education: Theoretical antecedents of discipline-based art education. Working draft of a paper pre- pared for the Getty Center for Education in the Arts, Los Angeles.

University of British Columbia Reports, (1986, March) 2.

Wolff, J. & Routh, J. (Eds). (1977). The sociology of litera- ture: Theoretical approaches. Keele, Scotland: University of Keele Sociological Review Mono- graph.

Wolff, J. (1981). The socialpro- duction of art. London: Macmillan.

Wolff, J. (1983). Aesthetics and the sociology of art. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Art Education/September 1987 61



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Discipline-Based Art Education || Beyond Current Conceptions of Discipline-Based Art Education