Nine Reasons for the Continuing Use of an Aesthetic Discourse in Art Education

National Art Education Association

Nine Reasons for the Continuing Use of an Aesthetic Discourse in Art EducationAuthor(s): Paul DuncumSource: Art Education, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Mar., 2007), pp. 46-51Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27696205 .

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Kevin Tavin has boldly gone where few would dare?to

challenge the usefulness of one

of the most cherished ideas in

art education, that of aesthetics. I believe that three of his arguments are completely sound: What is often offered as an entirely unproblematic idea is deeply implicated

in historical repression, art educa tions contemporary use of aesthetic

discourse is utterly confused, and the discourse is often reduced to mere

formalism. The confusion we expe

rience is partly the inheritance of its original formulations by Kant, Schiller and many others. A deeply conflicted concept, aesthetics was

originally proposed as much as a

radically progressive social force as a

deeply conservative, even reactionary one (Eagleton, 1990). It was used as

much to oppose industrialization, materialism and middle class compla

cency as it was intended to quell dissent and oppose democratic impulses. Some of

Tavins five current uses of aesthetics in art

education echo, however faintly, the general social nature of the early aesthetic agendas.

Many art educators see aesthetics as a moral or

ethical issue as much as a description of percep tual and felt experience; they equate, or closely

associate, aesthetics with goodness. I completely agree with Tavin that in conversing about aesthetics,

we should do so self-consciously.

easonsforthe

of an Aesthetic Discourse

ON / MARCH 2007



^^^??^^^?^^B^^^ Isee aesthetics in morally neutral terms, as amoral,

?^^^^^^^^^^^H^H" as neither inherently commendable nor damnable.

;? P What makes the aesthetic a moral issue are the

lllliill^-;, ;-^fflHHH|HHp A purposes to which it is put, the ideas, values, and

In this article, my purpose is not so much

to argue for the socially progressive nature

of modernist aesthetics, though this agenda remains largely unfulfilled, but to argue for a

different kind of discourse about aesthetics.

I see aesthetics in morally neutral terms, as

amoral, as neither inherently commendable

nor damnable. What makes the aesthetic a

moral issue are the purposes to which it is put, the ideas, values, and beliefs it is employed to offer. Tavin argues that aesthetic discourse

should primarily give way to the language of

representation, seeing this alternative as pref erable to the baggage that aesthetics carries.

By contrast, I argue that the language of

representation, though an important correc

tive to a solely sensory and elevated view of

cultural sites, is not in itself adequate. I offer

nine reasons I believe aesthetic discourse is

important, even critical. The proposal is based

on a significant revision of the term aesthetics.

Tavin argues that attempts at revision have so

far failed to stem the confusion in art educa

tion, and again he is right, but my attempt at

revision at least has the virtue of not being

idiosyncratic; rather, it is based on what I

take to be today the ordinary language use of

aesthetics. This use is also the first of the five

senses Tavin lists as employed within contem

porary art education.

My first argument, then,?upon which

most others are based?is that the word

aesthetics is widely employed outside our

field, and there it appears to suffer little if

anything from the historical baggage of

modernism. As Raymond Williams (1976) wrote over 30 years ago, beyond the special ized areas of art and literature?and we should

add art education?nowadays the term is used

to refer to "questions of visual appearance and

effect" (p. 28), the discernable visual charac

teristics of particular cultural sites and their

effects upon us. Many examples are offered

below of this entirely materialistic, cultural

site-specific use o? aesthetics.

Williams (1977) makes clear that visual

characteristics and effects are not confined

to the solely life-enhancing as Modernists

proposed, but apply to all visual characteris

tics and effects. Beyond its specialized uses,

aesthetics is used here in the original Greek

sense of aesthesis, which meant sense data

in general. As many have noted (e.g. Kupfer, 1983; Leddy, 2005; Welsch, 1997), this use has

the great benefit of allowing us to consider the

wide range of sensory experiences actually offered by particular cultural sites and not to

be constricted to either the entirely pleasurable or the morally commendable. For example,

Williams (1977) writes that "the dulling, the

lulling, the chiming, and overbearing" are

also aesthetic experiences (p. 156), and Postrel

(2003) lists the "ugly, disturbing, even horri

fying" as aesthetic (p. 6). Thus aesthetics is

neither good nor bad, though the purposes it

is used to serve can be either; whether sensory

experience is commendable or damnable is a

matter of intention and context.

I spent only 2 hours searching Amazon

Books to find over 60 uses of aesthetics that

appeared to confirm to this site-specific, mate

rialist definition. To Tavin's examples?the first of his list of five uses?let me add the

following: the aesthetics of parking (Smith,

1988), the aesthetics oiBuffy the Vampire Killer

(Pateman, 2006), and the aesthetics of casino

culture (Brown, 2005). Many references are

made to the aesthetics of consumerism (e.g. Postrel 2003) and the aesthetics of the everyday

(e.g. Leddy, 2005), but also?and these are only

examples?to the aesthetics of information

(Munster, 2006), self-taught art (Weld, 2001),

organization (Linstead & Hopfl, 2000), politics

(Corner & Pels, 2003), power (Duncan, 1993), and household domestic items (Hebey, 2003).

Continuing Use

in Art Education BY PAUL DUNCUM

MARCH 2007 / ART EDUCATION 47



Without the very deliberate ...~~~~~~~~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . ..00 .. .. .....

aesthetic manipulation that now

characterizes even low cost,

low status goods, the capitalist

cycle of production, distribution and consumption would quickly come unstuck.

comics (Carrier, 2000), animation (Furniss,

1998), and stage lighting (Palmer, 1985). Aesthetics is often used to refer to purely good visual appearances and effects; plastic surgeons

(e.g. Kuechel, 2004), dentists (e.g. Schmidseder,

2000) and hair stylists (e.g. Byrd & Tharps, 2001 ) use aesthetics often. Many other uses have

negative association, such as an aesthetics of

poverty and homelessness (Gagnier, 2000), of

anorexia (Heywood, 1996), of loss (Moorjani, 1992), of masochism (Studlar, 1988), and of evil

(Hughes, 1968). Others, such as the aesthetics

of trash (Cartwell, Kaye, Whelehen, 8c Hunter,

1997), the aesthetics of decadence (Constable, Denisoff & Potolsky, 1999), and the aesthetics

of kitsch (Henry, 1979) appear deliberately pluralistic. None of these uses appear to draw

upon the modernist assumptions of univer

salism, disinterestedness or transcendental

qualities. They are entirely site-specific, context

bound, and material.

My second argument is that among the

numerous uses of aesthetics mentioned above

many involve the most important aspects of

contemporary life, especially the economy,

politics, and consumerism. Since late capi talism is founded on the need to stimulate

consumer demand (Brown, 2003), and where

the price and quality of goods and services

are approximately equal, it is aesthetic styling,

packaging, and marketing that make the

difference between commercial success and

failure (Postrel, 2003). Without the very delib

erate aesthetic manipulation that now char

acterizes even low cost, low status goods, the

capitalist cycle of production, distribution and

consumption would quickly come unstuck. It

is the "aestheticizatioh of production and

consumption" and, generally, "aestheticized

imagery" that now sustains the economy

(Brown, 2003, p. 212). Even Target stores offer

product lines that are aestheticized to compete

against other similar priced products (Postrel,

2003). This means that everyday life has

become aestheticized in ways that are quite

unprecedented, involving areas of life not

even previously considered aesthetic (Welsch,

1997). Politics, too, now relies more than ever

upon aesthetic manipulation, resulting in a

style-conscious rather than substance driven

politics (Corner & Pels, 2003).

Third, since aesthetics is now more impor tant than at any time in history, consid

ering aesthetics in this site-specific, ordinary

language sense means that art education can

contribute to the issues involved. Conversely, to delete aesthetic considerations is to margin alize art education from current mainstream

cultural-cum-social developments, to cut it

off from contemporary social life and current

frameworks of understanding.

Fourth, while some cultural studies

scholars avoid using the word aesthetics in

order to avoid its unfortunate baggage (e.g. Bennett, 1990), for many others aesthetics is

crucial. Similar to Tavin, some see aesthetics

as "nothing more than mystifying babble that

distracts us from the coercive rule of hierar

chies of taste" (Felski, 2005, p. 28). In turn,

critics of cultural studies have equated cultural

studies with "expressions of political resent

48 ART EDUCATION / MARCH 2007



ment clothed in jargon" and nothing more

than ideology critique (Felski, 2005, p. 30).

However, many scholars reject this character

ization as false to cultural studies as a whole.

For example, contributors to B?rub?'s 2005

anthology The Aesthetics in Cultural Studies

argue that a comprehensive grasp of cultural

studies shows that from the outset aesthetics

was at the very heart of its enterprise. Starting in the early 1960s, its agenda was twofold: to

expose the elitist socio-political agenda of

modernist aesthetics and to extend aesthetics

beyond elitist culture to popular culture. Far

from being anti-aesthetic, its agenda was

always, and remains, to view aesthetics as

pluralist and democratic. The examples of

studies above partially testify to its success.

Fifth, aesthetics is a necessary corrective to

the language of representation. The language of representation was developed partly in

response to what had become of philosophical aesthetics by the 1970s?and arguably much

earlier?a highly esoteric and moribund disci

pline, concerned with a very narrow range of

cultural sites and issues, but often the preverbal

baby was thrown out with the bathwater

(Regan, 1991). In employing the language of representation, typically one examines

how dominant groups and their interests are

located to maintain their position and how

marginal groups are sidelined. Class, gender, and ethnicity are the usual suspects. The

effect is to consider the ideological content of

images?an essential part of any reading?but without due regard to why people are drawn

to the sensory surfaces of images in the first

place. In considering pleasure, the approach is often limited to the attractiveness of the

ideologies themselves and fails to consider the

seductive lure of specifically sensory qualities. Williams (1977) responds below with regard

to literature, but his points apply equally to

other cultural sites:

If we are asked to believe that all

literature is ideology, in the crude sense

that its dominant intention (and our

only response) is the communication

or imposition of 'social' or political'

meanings and values, we can only, in

the end, turn away. If we are asked to

believe that all literature is aesthetic,' in the crude sense that its dominant

intention (and then our only response) is the beauty of language or form, we

may stay a little longer but will still in

the end turn away. (p. 155)

Sixth, aesthetics and ideology go hand in

hand because apart from habituation it is

through aesthetics that ideology works. It is

through sensory experience that people were

drawn to cultural experiences that tend to mask

ideologies as inevitable, as natural. Ideologies are ground in day after day and absorbed

through osmosis, but they are also presented in

highly seductive forms that make the rejection of an ideology much more difficult for being offered in pleasurable forms (e. g. Walker &

Chaplin, 1997). While rejecting the idea of the

intrinsic value of aesthetics under Modernism

(e.g. Eisner, 1972), cultural studies scholars

have been interested in aesthetics primarily because of its profound instrumental value in

helping to deliver ideology (Sterne, 2005). Just as in the past, sexism was legitimated through beautiful, erotic paintings; likewise, so MTV

(Music Television) video clips, though wonder

fully seductive, reproduce sexist attitudes.

Video games draw players in with eye-popping

graphics, yet many reproduce sexism, racism, and xenophobia.

Seventh, among those who tend to avoid

the term aesthetics, it is noteworthy that they

invariably?indeed inevitably?have recourse

to key aesthetic concepts. This applies to

pleasure (e.g., Shumway, 2005), desire (e.g.,

jagodzinski, 2004), and both of the primary aesthetic categories of the 18th century, the

sublime and the beautiful. While stripped of its transcendentalism and universalism, and rooted instead in commercial culture, the sublime, and the related idea of ecstasy (Baudrillard, 1987), has proven critical to

comprehending overwhelming, disorientating

experiences like theme parks, shopping malls,

the Internet, and 500 channel television recep tion. Mirzoeff (1999) even writes that "the

sublime is at the very heart of all visual events"

(p. 16), and he acknowledges 1984 Lyotards revision of the sublime "as a key term for post

modern criticism" (p. 16). Equally of note is

that the beautiful has recently returned with

a vengeance to help describe many contem

porary developments, including the current

fascination with both male and female bodily

display (Brand, 2000). In short, much contem

porary cultural observation draws heavily upon aesthetic concepts. In a highly aestheti

cized world, how could it be otherwise?

Eighth, acknowledging the history of phil

osophical aesthetics has the great advantage of being able to draw upon its lessons. Over

the past 250 years some of the best minds

have contributed to it. Brand (2000) notes

that among some recent scholars and artists

the traditional meanings of the beautiful and

the sublime have become mixed up so that the

truly horrific is now often referred to as beau

tiful. She argues that ignorance of traditional

aesthetic categories has led to intellectual

muddle, which invokes the clich? that those

who ignore history not only repeat it but lack

the clarity they might otherwise have to repeat it well. Because scholars who deliberately avoid discussing aesthetics invariably draw

upon long established aesthetic categories and

concerns, it is best to do so knowingly.

In employing the language of representation,

typically one examines how dominant groups

and their interests are located to maintain

their position and how marginal groups are

sidelined. Class, gender, and ethnicity are the

usual suspects.




Beyond the meal we have

made of aesthetics in art

education, it is commonly

used in a straightforward

way as a simple descriptor of

visual appearance and effect;

and among other things, visual appearances and their

effects, surely, is our business.

Ninth, some within the field of philo sophical aesthetics are now actively engaging

with contemporary realities and thus offer a

rich source to draw upon. It is no longer alto

gether the narrowly focused, inwardly looking discipline it was 30 and more years ago. For

example, Shusterman (2000) opened it up to consider all kinds of life-enhancing, plea surable bodily activities, and Welsch (1997) focused upon "globalized aestheticization"

through the media (p. 83). He was espe

cially concerned with the aesthetics of tele

vision, sports, and violence. In other words, some philosophers working within the field of aesthetics are embracing the very kind of

ordinary language definition of aesthetics that many outside the field have been using for a

long time. We would not want to cut ourselves

adrift from their insights.

Conclusion It is ironic that there should be a call to

abandon aesthetic discourse at the very time

sensory surfaces have taken center stage as

a social phenomenon. Beyond the meal we

have made of aesthetics in art education, it is

commonly used in a straightforward way as

a simple descriptor of visual appearance and

effect; and among other things, visual appear ances and their effects, surely, is our business.

We need, for example, to be able to address

the way that a style-conscious politics takes

precedence over political policy, how adver

tising and product design set out to induce an

ideology of continual consumption, and how, as some have argued (e.g. Langman, 2003), the

aestheticization of many aspects of everyday life now both undermines a politics of resis

tance and subverts a politics of possibility.

I recommend that we engage in a discourse

about aesthetics as others do to describe major

contemporary cultural-cum-social realities,

and, thereby, to help situate ourselves as

relevant to discussions about these realities.

Let us not marginalize ourselves at a time

when the opportunity exists for art education

to contribute to how increasingly the economy is now run, politics operate, and everyday life

is experienced.

Pau?;Duncum is Professor of Art Education

t?jUe?fniversity of Illinois at Urbana

Ck$$$$f!iign. E-mail: [email protected]

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Nine Reasons for the Continuing Use of an Aesthetic Discourse in Art Education