-
Explore new strategies for makingmeaning in art projects,
breai(ingfree from traditional molds, andemploying a variety of
aestheticstrategies.
Though the field of art education increasinglyadvocates for the
importance of having clearcriteria for judging the quality of a
student's artslearning, we have notyet been as thorough and
rigorous
with ourselves in articulating the necessary qualities
of the basic building block of visual arts curriculum—
the art project. Perhaps the assumption that visual arts
education will be project-based (unfortunately often
translated in actual practice as product-based) has
been so dominant and unquestioned, the field has not
adequately theorized the structures, uses, varieties, and
sequencing of these projects as an educational form.
New School Art Styles:
"" Projectof ArtEducation
OLIViA GUDE
In 1976, Arthur Efland published "TheSchool Art Style: a
Functional Analysis," inwhich he pointed out that there were
distinctstyles of art made in schools that were unlikeart made in
other settings. He argued thatthese school art styles did not
actually createpossibilities for free expression for youth,but
instead served the symbolic purpose ofrepresenting to others that
there were oppor-tunities for creativity and free play in
other-wise regimented school systems. Looking atthe actual work
produced based on a givenproject, Efland noted the lack of
meaningfulvariation in the "art" that was created andfamously
concluded, "The selfsame creativeactivities may not be as free as
they [initially]looked" (p. 41).
Drawing on characteristics identifiedby Brent Wilson, Efland
described schoolart as "game-like, conventional, ritualistic,and
rule-governed." He also observed that"the school art style does not
seem to bea pedagogical tool for teaching childrenabout art in the
world beyond the school,though this is its manifest function"
(1976,pp. 38-39). Efland's conclusions that manyof the art
activities in schools do not actuallysupport creative
self-expression and thatthey are not effective in teaching
studentsabout methods of artmaking outside ofschool contexts,
echoes in the literature of arteducation over the ensuing decades.
Almost40 years later there is lingering uneasiness
among thoughtful scholars and teachersas they continue to
observe and analyzethe everyday practices of art educationand as
they question whether art projectsmade in schools can provide
opportuni-ties for students to truly explore personallymeaningful
subjects while supporting clearlearning objectives about art
content.
Many art educators and art educationhistorians have grappled
with questions ofthe appropriate philosophy, content, theory,scope,
and sequence of visual arts educa-tion (Efland, 1990; Eisner &
Day, 2004;Stankiewicz, 2001). What's striking is thatwhether the
dominant or proposed paradigmis Discipline-Based Art Education,
creativityenhancement, visual culture, or anotherformulation, the
range of projects that areactually taught in most schools has
remainedstrikingly similar for several decades.' WhenI scan the
suggested projects in popularproject-sharing art education
magazines andwebsites, I see that many of the projects areeerily
similar to those I saw in magazines as ayoung teacher in the 1970s,
despite the manydramatic changes in the styles, materials,
andmethods of making meaning in contempo-rary art practices
(Foster, 1983; Gude, 2004;Harrison & Wood, 1992; Riemschneider
&Grosenick, 1999; Wallis, 1984). The fact thatsuggested
projects in such magazines are nowroutinely paired with a national
art standardseems to have done little to encourage careful
analysis by authors or editors of whether theinstructions or
resulting projects are actuallyin sync with the stated
standard.^
We cannot envision and manifest newstyles of art education
without examiningand reconsidering art education curriculumas it is
currently taught. We must be willingto let go of some of the old
familiarprojects (and their myriad variations)in order to make room
for other sorts ofprojects and other kinds of art experiences.
Sometimes it is suggested that school artrooms don't need
projects at all, that studentsshould be given the freedom to pursue
theirown creative agendas (Douglas & Jaquith,2009). While this
is the ideal end point ofquality art curriculum, most students
todaycould not initially make good use of this sortof freedom
without a great deal of individualsupport. When students are not
introducedto a wide range of meaning making strategies(and
encouraged to analyze and re-purposestrategies they absorb from
popular culture),they tend to fall back on hackneyed,
kitschyimage-tnaking techniques. Because of logis-tical constraints
of availability of materials,space, and time as well as the number
ofstudents in an average class, it is not realisticto assume that
most art classes in schoolsettings can (at least initially)
functionas open studios in which each studentre-invents his or her
own methodologies ofmaking—discovering artistic precedents,
ART EDUCATION / January 2013
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VALUE: Contemporary uses andpractices of a medium,
overcurriculum that merely recapitulatesthe history of the
medium
Sociai Situations project. Rapidly changingtechnologies as well
as contemporarycommercial and fine art practices haveshifted the
ways in which photography ispracticed and utilized. Eschewing the
moretraditional strategy in which photographymirrors the world as
it is, many contemporaryphotographers (such as Cindy Sherman,
LomaSimpson and Charlie White) utilize carefullychosen costumes and
sets. Portyñg/if directedby Yetzinia Diaz. For the sequence of
projectsthat led to this work, see the Spiral WorkshopNAEA
e-Portfolio, Liminality: AlternativePractices group.
I
materials, and methods on a need-to-knowbasis, supported by
teacher input whenneeded.
Thus, art projects are appropriatebuilding blocks for visual art
curriculumbecause good art projects encode complexaesthetic
strategies, giving students toolsto investigate and make meaning.
Goodart projects are not old school art-stylerecipes to achieve a
good-looking product.Quality art projects are also not mere
exer-cises in which students manipulate formaccording to
teacher-prescribed parameterswithout any intrinsic purpose.
Good art projects are not assignmentsto illustrate or symbolize
a theme, even animportant theme, in students' lives. In anarticle
also inspired by Efland's "SchoolArt Style," Tom Anderson and
MelodyMilbrandt list three strategic goals forcurriculum that
authentically engagesstudents: "1) the use of
discipline-centeredinquiry, 2) the construction of knowledge(rather
than its passive acceptance), and 3)teaching and learning that make
connec-tions beyond school" (1998, p. 14). Notethat
discipline-based inquiry is first on thelist, recognizing that
there is no contradic-tion between teaching
discipline-basedknowledge and skills and making workthat explores
meaningful connections instudents' lives. Indeed, choosing
applicablecontemporary means of artmaking (often
emerging out of traditional methodologies)is a prerequisite of
making meaningful artthat investigates contemporary life.
Art made in schools will inevitablybe some form of "school art,"
defined byEfland as "a form of art that is producedin the school by
children under theguidance and influence of a teacher"(1976, p.
37). However, the influence ofteachers can support as well as
stifle indi-vidual creativity and meaningful explo-ration of
content. "School art" does notinevitably signify educational art
activitiesthat are inauthentic and rule-bound. Newschool art styles
can be developed that skill-fully and creatively utilize available
mate-rials, tools, technologies, critical theoriesand contexts to
introduce students to awide-range of developmentally
appropriateaesthetic practices—means of artmakingbased in
particular methodologies of expe-riencing, producing, making
meaning, andinterpreting (Gude, 2008). With such aneducation,
students can now (and then lateras adults) utilize various
aesthetic sensibili-ties and practices to frame and
re-frameexperience, to develop "their own uniqueidioms of
investigating and making," and togenerate patterns of perception
that enablethem to see the world with fresh insight(Gude, 2009, p.
10).
Propositions About What to Valueand What to Avoid in Choosing
andConstructing Curriculum
The possibilities for 21st-century art educa-tion cannot yet be
fully known, envisioned, orarticulated because the field is in the
processof being re-imagined and revitalized. Thisis the
contemporary research and develop-ment project ofthe field of art
education beingconducted by thousands of practitioners-art
teachers, professors, community artists,teaching artists, and
museum educators—incollaboration with their students and
othercommunity participants. New models, methods,objectives,
contexts, and projects will be gener-ated from a wide variety of
cultural positions.'
My current contribution to this unfinishedproject of reimagining
visual arts educationis based on identifying a number of
familiar,commonly taught projects and exercises. I thenask if there
are other frameworks and valuingsystems through which these
projects can bereconsidered and then redesigned to broadenand
deepen the potential for students to havemeaningful experiences and
to make meaningfulart. This then supports students in
developingmore wide-ranging and nuanced understandingsofthe world,
conducting investigations throughgaining and utilizing relevant
disciplinaryknowledge and skills—rooted in the past andincluding
the latest contemporary developmentswithin various relevant
disciplinary practices."*
January 2013/ART EDUCATION 7
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VALUE: Engaging in authenticartistic processes over
makingfacsimiles
Consider this familiar line exercise—thestudents are instructed
to fill in grids with avariety of "expressive lines." The results
arepredictable: jagged = tense, wavy = soothing,bold and dark =
angry. What are the studentsactually experiencing and learning?
Bydefinition, for something to be expressive, onemust be trying to
express something or befree to use the creative medium to figure
outwhat one wants to express. Thus, "expressiveline" exercises
misrepresent the tradition ofexpressionist artmaking and do not
teach asophisticated understanding of meaning asa fusion of
personal sensibility and aestheticmethodology. Even with such a
familiar,seemingly simple exercise it is wise to ask ifthe project
re-creates the actual experiencesand processes of the artmaking on
whichit is modeled. There is nothing wrong withutilizing a short
exercise in which studentsmake as many different kinds of lines
asthey can; it is deeply problematic to instructstudents to match
each line to a corre-sponding emotion, thus teaching them thatthere
is a simple one-to-one (not culturallyand contextually determined)
correspon-dence between form and meaning, betweensymbol and the
emotion conveyed.
Imagine an Impressionist-style painting ofa picturesque (or
sublime) landscape paintedby a diligent student. Through
discussion,one learns that the assignment was to paint ascene based
on photographs from calendars
or National Geographic magazines. Thestudent asserts that this
is an original workbecause he has "made it his own" by shiftingsome
colors and by combining two calendarphotographs into one image. The
questionhere is not one of accusing the student ofplagiarism or of
questioning the artisticvalidity oí appropriation as a strategy
ofcontemporary making. However, the projectwas described in the
lesson plan and to thestudents as being about Impressionism;the
teacher showed students the works ofimportant Impressionist artists
and discussedtheir beliefs and methods such as "capturingthe play
of light" and "painting at actual sites,rather than in an art
studio," but these arenot the methods utilized by the students;no
actual "play of light" was observed orrecorded.
This painting project could be moreaptly compared to the
Photorealist paint-ings of Richard Estes and Audrey Flack inthe
1960s/1970s or the work of contem-porary artists such as Marlene
Dumas andLuc Tuymans—all artists whose paintings,based on
photographic sources, challengeviewers to consider the subjective,
shifting,and accrued meanings of images as they arecirculated
through various cultural settings.If such paintings were discussed
withstudents, other uses of appropriated, juxta-posed, fragmented,
and re-contextualizedphotographic images would be suggestedand the
potential content and contemporaryrelevance of constructing an
artwork out of"borrowed images" would be deepened andexpanded.
The goal for an art teacher shouldalways be to reflect as
closely as possiblethe actual methodologies used by artists
inmaking work (Carroll, 2007; Madoff, 2009;Stewart & Walker,
2005; Sullivan, 2010).'Thus, if a teacher does want to introducean
Impressionism project, he or she shouldarrange for some en plein
air painting sessionsand guide students in observing the actualplay
of shifting colored light on forms. If thestructure of a project
seems to lead inevi-tably to making a facsimile, not
mirroringactual artistic, cultural, or spiritual practice,as is
often the case in projects adapted fromother cultures (for example,
African masks,Kachina dolls, or totem poles), the project isnot
actually teaching students sound disci-plinary methodologies of
real artmaking andis thus actively mis-teaching the
meanings,intentions, and processes of the originalartists.
In postmodern times in which manyartists work in post-studio
practices (thinkof the many methods of Gabriel Orozco orJanine
Antoni'' that often emphasize lines ofconceptual engagement and
re-purposingfamiliar forms and materials, rather thancreating and
discovering through manipula-tion of a habitually used medium), it
can bedifficult to invent pedagogical practices thatmirror the
aesthetic practices of contempo-rary art. This, however, is the
challenging,collective task of art educators who take seri-ously
the responsibility of inventing projectsand activities that give
students tools tounderstand and participate in contemporarycultural
conversations.
She said "He nevenrealllooks at
I giveevery
opportunity.«'
ART EDUCATION / January 2013
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VALUE: Utilizing skills, forms, and vocabulary in authentic
contextsover de-contextualized exercises and recipes
Free Form Color Investigation project. Students experiment with
variations of hue,value, and chroma while enjoying the freedom to
make an abstract painting.Theproject begins as a monochromatic
exploration, adds the use of complements and thenconcludes with a
free choice of hue to be added as an accent. Utilizing this project
inSpiral Workshop for many years, we've noted the high degree of
transfer to carefullymixing and choosing colors in other painting
projects.
left: Untitled Color Study by Faith Wilder, Spirai Workshop
2003.
right: Painting Color Investigation, Pui Ki Law, 2011. For a
complete lesson plan for thisproject, see the Oiivia Gude NAEA
e-Portfolio.
VALUE: Investigating over symbolizing
Conflicted Characters project. Conflicted Characters project.
Rather than make an anti-bullying poster with clichéd messages,
students created a "cyber classroom" populatedby their hand drawn
characters and utilized the mix of characters to tell personal
storiesinvolving unresolved conflicts in home, school and community
settings. Cyber Schoolyard bystudents of the Conflict &
Resolution: Pencils & Pixels group. She's Too Rough; He's Too
Delicateby Diane Dominguez, Spiral Workshop 2004.
Good art projectsencode complexaesthetic strategies,giving
studentstools to investigateand make meaning.
January 2013 / ART EDUCATION
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VALUE: Utilizing skills,forms, and vocabulary inauthentic
contexts overde-contextualized exercisesand recipes
Teaching art vocabulary within rule-bound projects in which
students mustdemonstrate knowledge by making worksthat display (and
will be assessed by) pre-determined formal characteristics (such
as"must be monochromatic" or "must havedark outlines") doesn't
integrate learningarts vocabulary with exploring how suchvisual
principles operate to generatemeaning in actual art and design
practices.Students may not internalize the usefulnessof what is
being studied because in mostofthese exercises nothing meaningful
isat stake. How can you determine what is a"good composition" or
the "right color" ifthe visual organization is not at the serviceof
some desired communication?
If enhancing creativity is to convinc-ingly be an important goal
of art education,projects must be designed to open out
intounexpected possibilities, not narrowedinto pre-determined
channels. It makessense to begin an art activity by
drawingstudents' attention to particular sorts ofvisual
descriptors—such as color schemesor how contrast functions in a
design—butthen the students need to be freed to utilizeor not
utilize a particular technique or formin order to experience the
key componentof artistic expression^/ree/y choosing touse form to
make meaningful gestalts.The practice of creating rubrics for
eachproject that specify what formal charac-teristics must be
displayed in a project isneither good, authentic assessment,
norgood authentic artmaking (Beattie, 1997;Dorn, Madeja, &
Sabol, 2004). Art projectsshouldn't be turned into tests.
Instead,assessment of knowledge and skills canbe conducted by
methods such as askingstudents to utilize art vocabulary to
explainchoices in their artmaking or by teacherevaluation of each
student's contributionsto group discussions in which studentswork
together to describe and interpretartworks, making use of
increasinglycomplex vocabularies.
VALUE: Engaging in authentic artistic processes overmailing
facsimiles
Expressive Rooms project: Students recall an emotionally
chargedmoment—ranging from delight to anger to uneasiness. After
writing aboutand entering into the bodily experience of this
emotion and after observinghow distorted space contributes to the
meaning of expressionist artworks,students created large chalk
pastels on dark-toned paper./Aß/g Warm Hugby Sean Castillo. Spiral
Workshop 2009. For a complete lesson plan for thisproject, see the
Olivia Gude NAEA e-Portfolio.
VALUE: Experiencingas much as making
Wiiat the Smell? project.Following the methodologiesof much
contemporary art,not every art project mustresult in objects.
Studentscreated bottles of smell andrecorded experiments in
howsmell can stimulate forgottenmemories. What the
Smell!?installation of the Agencyof Recollection:
AssortedPractices, Spiral Workshop2011.
ART EDUCATION /January 2013
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VALUE: Engaging mess
Bodies of Water project, studetits areoften inhibited in
spontaneously evolving anartwork based on accidents in the
makingprocess. In the Fluidity: Wet Media group,students were
shocked when the teacher'ssample depicted the common occurrenceof
discovering that one's clothing is stainedby menstrual blood.
Initial embarrassment,followed by sympathetic laugher, turned
torelief as the young women (and the guys)discussed this common
unnecessarily shame-inducing experience. Bieed Through by
SofiyaFreyman, Spiral Workshop 2010.
VALUE: Investigating oversymbolizing
Quality art education does not merelypicture what is already
seen and under-stood. Quality art generates new knowledge.Students
should not be instructed to illus-trate, symbolize, or represent
(i.e. RE-present)things (such as ideas, beliefs, emotions)that are
already fully formed, fully under-stood. Instead, quality art
projects oughtto enable students to reframe experiences,thus
supporting students in individually andcoUaboratively finding out
something newabout a subject. Such new insights cannot besummarized
in simple language, but insteadbecome vivid constellations of
experiencethat remain in the consciousness of the artistand the
viewers. Good art—and good artprojects—transform the way in which
weunderstand and process life experiences.
"Imagine being isolated in a gloomy placein which there are
confusing encounters anduncanny occurrences with not quite
under-standable implications and consequences."Students began with
this prompt in a projectof the Spiral Workshop Decompositiongroup
in which the youth artists studiedthe narrative structures and
sensibilities ofgothic art and literature in order to use theseas a
lens through which to examine experi-ences of frustration,
confusion, and anxiety
that are sometimes aspects of everyday lifein schools.' Qf
course, classic life drawingand one-point perspective wouldn't
sufficeto explore these emotionally complex tales.Understanding
that what gets left out ofimages in fixed-point perspective is
also"real," the students began the project hysmearing, crushing,
and crinkling theirpapers and then allowing these mutilatedsurfaces
to act as conduits to rememberingand developing the pitiful, stoic,
heroic,sinister, or harassed characters needed totell their school
stories. Qne surprise ofthis project was that a number of
artworksfocused on experiences in art classes!Students depicted
such "horrors" as beingcommanded to have a clearly stated
purposebefore beginning an artwork or being"forced" to make
paintings based on griddedphotographs.
VALUE: Contemporary practicesof a medium, over curriculumthat
merely recapitulates thehistory of the medium
while art projects may usefully be inspiredby other art,
including artworks of the past,artistic practices modeled in
schools mustbe open-ended, capable of making freshcontemporary
meaning. Projects hased ontechniques of realist drawing or on
formulaicmodernist elements and principles of design
are overrepresented in currentart education
curriculum,especially at the middle andhigh school levels.
Occupyingso much curricular space, suchprojects crowd out
possibilitiesof teaching a wider range ofways of making art,
aestheticmethodologies more suited toinvestigating
contemporarylife.
VALUE: Blurring theboundaries between artand life
Outside the Label project. Studentswho had never before learned
tosew immersed themselves in alteringeveryday clothes to become
"artclothes." However, as the projectcontinued, students began
wearingversions of their art clothes ineveryday life. Altered
clothes by MiaSol de Valle in Outsiders: AlternativeMedia, Spiral
Workshop 2009.
January 2013/ART EDUCATION 11
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VALUE: Telling stories about students' lives
Down through Generations project. Students utilized a
worksheetwith prompts such as "What jobs did your grandparents hold
at varioustimes in their lives?" and "Describe the food, people and
seatingarrangements at a typical (or holiday) family dinner." to
generateconversation with their families. The project is based on
narrative artstyles of great African American modernists such as
Jacob Lawrenceand Aaron Douglas. Bureau of Misdirection students in
Spiral Workshop2011 constructing images out of painted paper.
Without Music byCandace Bey.
Are there other ways of teaching this content thatprovide more
compelling learning experiences...?
It may make sense to include Cubism in anart curriculum
considering that many oftheconcerns of artists making work
identifiedin art history texts as Cubist—simultaneity,shifting
perspectives, multiple points ofview—are relevant to today's
globalizedworld. However, sitting in a studio andpainting a still
life in a "Cubist style" is not aproductive aesthetic investigation
of simulta-neity and shifting perspectives in contempo-rary
fast-paced, media-saturated cultures.
Sound criteria for measuring the relevanceand vitality of an
aesthetic practice is to ask,"Are any significant artists now
making workin this manner?" In the case of Cubism,the answer is
clearly "No!"* Thinking aboutanother artistic practice with a long
history—expressionist painting—either abstract
orrepresentational—it is quickly apparentthat a number of
contemporary artists are
making fresh meaning through artisticpractices that have evolved
out of historicexpressionist means of making such asemphasizing
subjective experience, allowingbodily energy to be seen in
mark-makingstructures, and distorting forms and colorsfor emotional
effects (Werenskiold, 1984).Thus, though related to aesthetic
practices ofmaking that are over 100 years old, expres-sionist
methodologies are living, meaning-generating cultural forms
(Aguirre & Azimi,2011; Bayrle, 2002; Duncan & Selz,
2012;Holzwarth, 2009).
Contemporary theories of makingmeaning recognize that all
meaningmaking involves borrowing from previousmeanings (Silverman,
1983; Sturken &Cartwright, 2009). For this reason, qualityart
education curriculum must alwayssituate its projects within
relevant historical.
cultural, and aesthetic contexts in order toteach students
sophisticated contemporaryconcepts of constructing and
deconstructingmeaning. Equally important to sharing thehistory of a
medium, subject matter, ortheme with students is engaging them
inunderstanding some ofthe aesthetic andconceptual questions that
this practice iscurrently being used to investigate.
Postmodern thinking radically questionsthe notion of a single
originary foundationaltradition that must be absorbed beforemeaning
making can begin. Asserting thatstudents must recapitulate the
history of artin their studies before understanding andmaking
contemporary art is as discredit-able as believing that students
must learnoutmoded conceptions of biology or physicsbefore being
introduced to the range ofwidely accepted contemporary theories.
It's
12 ART EDUCATION /January 2013
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VALUE: Designing yourenvironment
Collaborative Mural project.When asked to do a muralfor the
entrance to the highschool fieldhouse, the artteacher and the
"Mural Team"took the unusual approach ofpicturing representatives
of allof the sports teams. The coachesof teams other than
Men'sBasketball were enthusiastic tobe honored in the
mural.Themural reshaped the physicalenvironment of the school
andalso the relationship betweenthe athletic department and theart
department. Bloom Trail HighSchool Sports mural instailationby
student artists, directed byOlivia Gude, 1989.
important to recognize that we all always"jump in" the middle of
a discourse andbegin by eclecting from the past to under-stand and
make from the perspectives oftoday.
Contribute to "New School"Art Styles
Teachers, take a fresh look at your oldfamiliar projects.
Honestly and fearlesslyanalyze the forms, functions, artistic
meth-odologies, and conceptual understandingsthat each project
teaches. When examiningprojects, it's important to be both
skep-tical of an art projects' current worth andnon-judgmental of
your own past choicesand pleasures. Perhaps this project did
meetsome of your curricular needs at one time.Now we are asking
different questions: Is thisas relevant to artmaking processes
today as itonce was? Are there other ways of teaching
this content that provide more compellinglearning experiences
that are faster, morefun, and more likely to create knowledgeand
skills that transfer to other contexts?What aesthetic values are
being promoted(and which are being left out)? What dostudents (as
well as their families and theschool community) learn about the
func-tions and value of art in contemporary life?Is the amount of
time spent on the projectproportionate to what is being learned
aboutart and culture? While conveying disci-plinary knowledge, does
the project have thepotential to be used by students to exploreand
communicate personally significantideas and themes?
Be willing to re-imagine your teaching inlight of your 5, 10, 25
or more years of lifeexperience as a participant in
unfolding,contemporary culture! Strength of char-acter means NOT
using your considerable
creativity to come up with defenses foryour past choices. In
"Beyond Us Now:Speculations Toward a Post-Art EducationWorld,"
Laurie Hicks writes, "In our postmodern world we have come to
accept thatmany concepts critical to our taken-for-granted ways of
understanding the world areno longer meaningful" (in Congdon,
Hicks,Bolin, & Blandy, 2008, p. 5). Acknowledgingthat such
shifting understandings canproduce defensiveness and resistance.
Hicksdraws upon the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso'sconception of "living
well and dying well" tosuggest how we might imagine bringing
newmanifestations of art education into being.She affirms that "We
need to understand andvalue the contributions of art educators
inthe past and in the present, because it is theircontributions
that open up the possibilityfor us to do what we must do—imagine
andenact new directions" (2008, p. 6).
VALUE: Investigating the construction of meaning
Cute Investigation activity. Students surveyed a collectionof
cute objects and then began the process of defining "cute"by
creating a continuum of most cute to least cute objects inPainting
So Cute and Creepy, Spiral Workshop 2007. Cute ValueScale classroom
chart (far left) compiled by Pui Lam Law.
January 2013/ART EDUCATION 13
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VALUE: Trying a wide range ofaesthetic practices
Blind Dérive project. After viewingthe work of artists whose
work exploreswalking including Vito Acconci, GabrielOrozco,
Yukinori Yanagi, and Richard Long,students used walking as a
methodoiogyfor reframing urban experiences. Agency ofRecollection,
Spiral Workshop 2011. Photoby Aaron Arreguin.
Art teachers can contribute to the reinvention of schoolsand
invent not only a new form of art education, butperhaps also a new
collaborative art form.
If we are to evolve art education curricularpractices that have
relevance to the lives ofstudents and their communities, we
mustimagine an art education that is groundedin the realities of
contemporary culturallife as well as in the realities of
currentschool settings. To do this, the field willhave to
relinquish the ungrounded fantasyof endless, unequivocal
originality in thework of students and teachers, the fantasythat
every work of art invents entirely newsymbolic systems. Recognizing
that qualityart and quality art education are made in thecontext of
previous artmaking practices, arteducation curriculum ought to be
structuredto carefully introduce students to concep-tual,
aesthetic, and technical methodologiesby which various artists have
generatedmeaning.
A project format is a clear and usefulstructure to introduce
students to processes,valuing systems, techniques, and
worldviewsembodied in various artistic practices. Goodart projects
are designed to mirror actualaesthetic practices in ways that
supportstudents in utilizing these practices as meansby which to
experience, investigate, andmake their own meanings.
We must create an art education that is notretro, rigid, or
reductive in its understandingof what constitutes the necessary
knowledgesof artmaking. We must create an art educa-tion that is
rigorous in its selection and trans-mission of a wide range of
aesthetic strategiesbecause in a democratic society it is
theresponsibility of teachers to enable studentsto understand,
participate in, and contributeto contemporary cultural
conversations.
We can think of school-art style projectsin the sense that
Arthur Efiand described/decried—as recipes to make things
withoutthe possibility of making meaning—orwe can foster a
conception of art projectsin schools in the sense that John
Deweyconceived of project-based learning in whichstudents are
researchers who learn by doing(1938). In that sense, each
classrooms arteducation curriculum can be conceived ofas an ongoing
collaborative art project, asan experiment in "relational
aesthetics," inwhich teachers create spaces within whichstudents
and others in the school commu-nity can interact and create new
knowledgeby using artistic methodologies to experi-ence and
interpret the world in fresh ways(Bourriaud, 1998/2009).
Arthur Efland concluded "The School ArtStyle" by suggesting that
perhaps focusingon changing school art was a mistake "whenwe should
have been trying to changethe school!" (p. 43). Today evolving
"newschool" art styles can place the field of arteducation in a
central position in schooltransformation because of art
educationspotential to integrate art into the coremission of truly
successful schools—stimu-lating engaged inquiry utilizing a
varietyof methods drawn from a wide range ofdisciplinary practices.
In the process ofcollaborating with our students to identifyand
investigate significant content withliving interdisciplinary
aesthetic practices,art teachers can contribute to the reinven-tion
of schools and invent not only a newform of art education, but
perhaps also anew collaborative art form.
Olivia Gude is a Professor in the School ofArt and Art History
at the University ofIllinois at Chicago. E-maih. [email protected]
ART EDUCATION / January 2013
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' In 1976, Arthur Efland, referring tothe work of Vincent
Lanier, estimatedthat the school art style had remainedlargely
static for the previous "forty-five to fifty years", bringing the
totaltime of relatively static curriculumcontent in 2012 to 75 or
80 years.
2 It is disheartening that the 1994National Visual Arts
Standard"Students select and use the qualitiesof structures and
functions of artto improve communication of theirideas" is often
cited for recipe-likeprojects in which students have virtu-ally no
opportunities to choose anddevelop meaningful content.
^ This research must to be rooted inactual practice. Too often
curriculumguides suggest projects that havenever been taught or
that haven'tbeen re-taught and re-thought inrecent years. Thus,
educators areencouraged to utilize projects thatdon't meet
contemporary criteriafor meaningful arts education.One result of
this practice is therelentless repetition of steps suchas "sketch
thumbnails" withoutconsidering whether there are othermethods (both
analog and digital)more commonly used by artists anddesigners today
to experiment withcomposition and form.
4 This includes the disciplines identi-fied as "the 4" in
Discipline-BasedArt Education as well as such fieldsas visual
culture, material culture,critical theory, and cultural
studies.
^ I use the terms artistic method-ologies, artistic practices,
aestheticmethodologies and aesthetic practicesinterchangeably to
describe theprocedures by which an artist orgroup of artists
conceive of, develop,and judge the success of artworks.These
include perceptual, experi-mental, and conceptual strategiesas well
as choices of media andtechnologies. The way in whichmedia and
technologies are utilizedis never neutral; their uses alwaysimply
worldviews—ideologies thatdetermine what is significant andwhat is
not noticed.
^ Both ofthese artists are featured inthe "Loss & Desire,"
Season 2 (2003)episode of the Art 21 (Art in the 21stCentury)
series.
'' Eor the complete sequence ofgothic-inspired projects see
theDepartment of Decomposition inthe Spiral Workshop National
ArtEducation Association
e-Portfolio,https://naea.digication.com/Spiral/Spiral_Workshop_Theme_Groups
^ In the age of the Internet, it isalways possible to find some
artist,somewhere making work in any style,but this does not mean
that this isa particularly relevant or prevalentstyle of
contemporary making. Also,in postmodern times one may findartists
who deliberately appropriateand re-contextualize a historic
artpractice in order to generate freshmeaning—teaching about such
anartist would require teaching aboutthe original artistic practice
and post-modern practices such as reclama-tion, appropriation,
reinterpretation,irony, pastiche, positionality andcontext, thus
encouraging students tomake these sorts of
contextualized,postmodern "moves" in their own artthinking and
making.
AUTHOR'S NOTESThanks to Arthur Efland for "callingthe question"
with his analysis of thefunction of school art and for gener-ously
sharing his time and insightswith me as I developed this article
overthe last few years.
Thanks to the many dedicatedand inspired teachers of the
SpiralWorkshop whose fresh ideas aboutart and art education
generated theart curriculum that is the basis of thetheoretical
positions of this article.
Thanks to Jessica Poser whoco-directed Spiral Workshop with
me2005-2008.
January 2013/ART EDUCATION 15
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