National Art Education Association

The Importance of Student Artistic Production to Teaching Visual Culture Author(s): Kerry Freedman Reviewed work(s): Source: Art Education, Vol. 56, No. 2, Why Not Visual Culture? (Mar., 2003), pp. 38-43 Published by: National Art Education Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194020 . Accessed: 05/09/2012 16:39
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The

of Importance \

to

Visual Teaching
I

Culture
BY KERRY FREEDMAN

ncreasing attention is being given to the idea of teaching visual culture in art education. Teaching visual culture is not a matter of uncritical acceptance

of the wide ranging changes in the visual world; it is a process of broadening the professional field to come to grips with these changes and providingleadershipto develop insight into their meanings (Freedman,2000). Art educators are embracingthese changes, even as we critiquethem, because they reveal that art is a part of students' everydaylives and that art education is vital in the contemporaryworld. Althoughteaching visual culture can be started with small steps, and some teachers alreadyinclude the forms and processes of visual culture in their practice, the idea involves a significantchange in philosophy for the professional field. Teachingvisual cultureinvolves a transformationof curriculum content, shifts in methods of teaching, and a reconsiderationof the assignment and assessment of student work, includinga reexaminationof the purposes and processes of student artistic production.I am unaware of any art educator who has ever arguedthat teaching visual culture means givingup our focus on student art. However,I have written this article because I have heardthe question raised among members of the professional field about whether teaching visual culturemeans a loss of attention to production.In answer to the question, artistic productionis a foundation of this new direction of the field. How better can students develop a deep understandingof the power of visual culture?

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From an anthropologicalstandpoint, the power of art to suggest ideas, and culture is a way of living.Visualculture the wonder of the creative process can be understood as the objects and throughwhich ideas could be formed and represented. For me, and many of those created and processes, including In the past, type of media, level of used by students, that particularly my colleagues and students, makingart technical skill, and aesthetic sophistihas always been a form of social action, function throughvisualized form to cation have played a large part in as well as a form of personal expresaffect our lives. For example, a heap determinations of whether an object of garbagearrangedby an artist in a sion. Fromthe perspective of teaching was considered a work of art. museum may be considered a work of visual culture, artisticproduction is However, such qualitativedifferences fine art, and garbageon the street, while both a social statement and a personal between visual forms have become not considered art, may be thought of as journey. less discrete. The range of images and an importantvisual reflection of human Students have much more access to objects that have aesthetic sophisticaintention. It can also be a source of imageryand designed objects now than tion are now understood to include inspirationfor student visual inquiry. in the past, and their creative practices, fine art, popular films, tribal masks, In his claim visual that from clothing choices to the production teaching toys, architecture,television programs, is of their own videos, have a bigger culture the merely analysis political body art, advertisements, environmental design, manga, and so on. The term of imagery,Eisner (2001) misrepresents impact on generalvisual culturethan "visualculture"actually refers to visual this shift in the field. In fact, the shift is a before. Student art is increasingly broad and reasonable response to the understood as a form of inquiryand as cultures; it is multicultural,multirealities of life. The field contemporary living within complex social environmodal, intercultural,and interdiscipliis now being shaped by a generationof ments that shape its creators as they is Visual culture social, political, nary.

Defining Visual Culture: Student Art as Partof the CulturalField

Froman anthropological standpoint, culture is a way of living. Visual culture can be understood as the objects and processes, including those created and used by students, that particularlyfunction through visualized form to affect our lives. Forexample, a heap of garbage arranged by an artist in a museum may be considered a work of fine art, and garbage on the street, while not considered art, may be thought of as an important visual reflection of human intention. It can also be a source of inspirationfor student visual inquiry.
and economic, as well as personal, and involves the connections between and among various contemporaryand historical forms. Now, fine art is recycled in ads, and the design work of the Star Warsfilms is exhibited in art museums. Teachingvisual culture involves various types of postmodern bordercrossing, from the crossing of conceptual borders to borders of medium and form. It challenges modernistic notions of knowledge that veil underlying assumptions, includingassumptions concerning fine art as being isolated from the rest of visual culture. The blurringof distinctions between forms of visual culture illustrates the importance of broadeningeducational ideas about that which is made, seen, and judged in the context of an increasingly complex variety of social interactions and institutions. teachers and students who use the wide range of visual culture as their primary source of informationabout the world and view it as a vital means of interconnecting with other makers and viewers. In part,this is illustratedby growing sub-culturesof students who research and create their own costumes for longaction role plays, take part in advertising focus groups, make their own rock videos, respond on-line to their favoritetelevision shows, and develop their own web sites to display and critiquetheir art and the work of other students on global scale. I, personally, did not become an art educator for the reason that Eisner claims manyprofessionals join our field-to feel "wetclay coursing between their fingers"(p. 8)and I believe that his claim trivializes the reasons many people of my generation and younger have gone into the arts. I became an art educator because, as a young person, I became interested in the importance of art to humanlife, shape their environments.Teaching visual culture gives attention to these complexities of student artistic production. It is the power and pervasiveness of visual culturethat necessitates an art education that is socially reconstructive, based on actions intended to improvethe lives of individualsand social groups, which promotes democratic debate about issues and conflicts and helps students to take responsibilityfor their own learning (Freedman, 1994).Teachingvisual cultureinvolves open instructionin which knowledge is conceived of as free and, althoughexpertise is valued, the privilege of knowing is availableto all. From this perspective, artistic production is valued, in part, because it has the power to influence, and anyone, includingstudents, can work to initiate social and personal change throughthe visual culturethey produce.

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better understandthe complex ways in which learning occurs. Professionals in fields rangingfrom philosophy to Education in and through artistic cognitive science now argue that the production is needed to support, and pervasive crossing of increasingly sometimes challenge, the increasingly social and culturalborders extends sophisticated contemporary,cultural and enriches general knowledge (e.g. environment.In this environment, education can provide a way of enrich- Prawat, 1989;Shusterman, 1992;Solso, 1997;Walkerdine,1988). ing students' lives by helping them to This border crossing is seen in critique and advance the ideas student artisticproduction. Students connected to visual culture and its use artisticpractices as culturaland meanings. The results of the NAEP 1997 Arts Report Card:Eighth Grade personal responses to experience, includingin their search for identity. Findings From the National Students now have multiple and Assessment of Educational Progress identities (for example, in overlapping & Askew, Sandene, 1998) (Persky, ethnic, socioeconomic, and sexual the visual arts indicate that education identities) and live within complex has not well attended to promoting social environmentsthat make artistic make will students that help learning particularlyhelpful as part of tended inquiry In students this study, meaning. to have a basic knowledge of form and their self exploration and expression. Manystudents begin to explore the media, but they found processes of concept of self throughpostmodern connecting meaning to form particuand connections in their of this juxtapositions The results larly challenging. art and should be enabled in spontaneous the issue of raise the ways study to advance their investigations of these which we assign and assess student issues in school. artistic production. The creation of self is based on the As a result, a reconsiderationof individualbeing invested with certain student artisticproductionin terms of characteristicsthroughsymbolic repreteaching visual culture challenges past sentation (Lacan,1977).The effects of assumptions of practice, such as an imageryinfluence students' selfemphasis on the development of tradiAt concepts as they appropriatecharacterskills. and technical formal tional istics of visual representations.They least three importantconditions of adopt these representationsas a artmakingin education should be description of self and use them in their embedded in this reconsideration:a) own art. People can be manipulated the role of productionin the formation through images they see that are often the of student identities;b) importance antitheticalto their natures of the simultaneous development of ideas and skills in student learning;and (Baudrillard,1983),and students'visual inquirymay help to respond to these c) the ways in which student art acts as influences in a constructive way. culturalcritique. Students can engage in role play,tell Artistic Production as and make visual statements stories, Identity Formation processes that range from through Educationalresearchers Kincheloe paintingself-portraitsto developing and Steinberg (1993) argue that a new web sites. The construction of student model of thinking is necessary for identities provides a new foundationfor education, given scientific understand- the educational importanceof artistic ings about the influence of social production (Freedman,2002). conditions on thought. They suggest Fromthis cognitive perspective, that researchers interested in chilartisticproductionis dependent upon dren's development should focus on complex interactionsbetween making social conditions surroundingthe and viewing that are rarelymade overt construction of knowledge in order to

RethinkingStudent ArtisticProduction

in school. The process of making meaningis creative and involves the development of interpretive,as well as formaland technical, concepts and skills. From installationsto interactive computer games, visual culture also crosses over traditionalboundariesof makingand viewing in literalways as viewers become audiences who participate in the completion of works of art. Throughvarious types of kinesthetic and interpretiveresponse, from interacting with machines in a computerassisted art exhibition to buyingas a result of an ad, viewers now participate in the successful creation of works of art by acting within parametersset by artists. Likeall forms of culture,visual culture is both a condition of social life and a creation of individualminds. Students construct their own knowledge based on a variety of information sources, includingthe visual arts they experience inside and outside the range of of school. Unfortunately, is which a rich source priorknowledge, of imagery,is often thought best left at the art classroom door. In visual culture classrooms, this knowledge is drawn upon to make student artisticproduction meaningfulto students' daily lives. Partof the process of productionin the context of teaching visual culture is giving attention to alternativeinstructional strategies.A focus on individual, creative self-expression in a classroom may actuallylimit the capabilities of some students who work better in a collaborativeenvironment. Professional postmodern artists often work as pairs or in groups, and many contemporaryvisual cultureforms (such as the production of films and amusementpark design) demand teamwork.In such cases, students can each do the part of the project that is their technical strength. Collaboration takes many forms involvingproduction, from groupwork on a project to recommendations made by peers during group critiques.

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Making Connections and Developing Ideas From the perspective of visual culture, students are taught processes of idea development to enrich their work. Because the foundation of the curriculumshift is people's experiences with visual culture, student assignments should demonstrate different types of learning than just formal and technical skills. Exceptional artistic production by students can be highly naturalistic or may have little to do with highly developed representational skills. It may involve the use of computer graphics, video and filmmaking,found object constructions and installations, collages, montages, and other uses of recycled images. Students can express ideas and address importantissues by appropriatinga part of the school building for an installation or by taking part in performance art. Throughsuch broad experiences with visual culture, students can learn a great deal, including cultural and personal reasons for the production of art. Art should be the expression of makers' ideas, whether the makers are students or professionals, working individuallyor collaboratively,and as a result be as open-ended as possible, given time and other institutional constraints. This means that students should be allowed to make as many of their own choices as can be enabled, from choosing materials in early elementary school to choosing their own research topics on which to base high school projects. Assignments should result in each student's work looking different from the others. At the same time, students may comment on visual culture issues by recycling imagery and objects. In the InternationalBaccalaureate (IB) high school program,viewing is understood as inherentto artistic production, and production is based on research inquiryabout a topic of the student'schoice. This programincludes an importantcourse called Theoryof Knowledgethat provides students with a backgroundin the development of ideas. The work IB students do in art

supports this learningthrough individualinvestigations of their own interests. The students make a longterm process portfolio that involves research and idea development as they learnvisual forms of expression. Formaland technical trainingis not rather,they ignored in the curriculum; are infused and appliedbased the needs of the students as they do their research, develop their ideas, and learn to visualize ways to express those ideas. Today, students have a lot of experience with design qualities and information picked up from viewing all of the images they see, but they do not have the analytical skills needed to critically reflect on this experience. Courses and assignments should start with the development of student ideas and lead to decisions about how best to express those ideas. Many curriculumsin the United States start with formal and technical skills and are intended to lead to ideas. For example, junior high/middleschool art and ArtI classes in high school often focus on formaland technical training,and students are not expected to develop their own ideas until later classes. The argumentfor this model is understandable-the pervadingbelief is that students cannot express their ideas until they have learned formaland technical skills. The problem with this argumentis that most students will not be professional artists and will never get to the advanced high school art courses in which ideas are focused upon. Juniorhigh or middle school art and ArtI will be the last formal art education for many of those students, and they will leave high school thinking that art is just a matterof talent or formal and technical training.But, art is not just about form-it is about the form of ideas. All of us who have been teachers have been frustratedat one time or another when students come to us without formaland technical skills. However,the more difficultsituation is that in which students lack the skills and concepts needed for the visual

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that art makes up most of their visual culture and realize the need to support art education in the future. Student Art as Cultural Critique Postmodern theorists have pointed particularlyto developments in technology, advanced levels of industrial capitalism, and totalizing mass media as initiatingnegative social effects of visual culture (e.g. Baudrillard,1983; Harvey,1989). However, Lyotard (1984) has argued that one of the importantvalues of art is found in the range of contemporaryvisual culture, such as advertising,that celebrates sensuality, promoting a naturalflow of desire and intensifying feeling. Student artistic production is importantto teaching visual culture not only for these reasons, but because it provides a visual form for commenting on One of the reasons that students may leave school having missed the contemporaryvisual conditions. important message that meaning and form are integrally connected in In the past, the term "art" carried the visual arts is that most curriculum focuses their learning through a with it assumptions of qualityand media-based structure. Rather than allowing student investigations of enrichment;however, the visual arts are not inherentlygood, any more than is art to be dependent only on a framework of courses titled, for example, math, science, or social studies. The drawing, painting, or ceramics, students can develop their own visual great power of the visual arts is their statements in thematic courses with interdisciplinary topics, such as abilityto have various,profound effects on our lives, but it is importantfor themes concerning important personal and cultural issues. students to understandthat this power can make art manipulative,colonizing, connected to prior knowledge in and disenfranchising.Visualculture meaningfulways. Today,students have that is considered good for one group a lot of experience with design qualities hurt others, and the complexity of may and informationpicked up from this needs to be considered relationship viewing all of the images they see, but as part of educational experience. not the skills do have analytical they Students should become aware of the needed to criticallyreflect on this of their work on others and the impact experience. Drawingon their experiin which they can influence the ways ence can go a long way toward infusing of their peers throughvisual thinking formal,technical, and idea developform. For example, student art can ment in their work. positively or negatively affect the selfOf course, teaching visual culture is image of other students. not intended to underminethe developAn importantpart of teaching visual ment of the students who intend to be cultureis to provide opportunitiesfor arts professionals. By opening up lessons so that students can investigate students to make visual statements of various kinds. Students learn from an their own interests, the small minority of future arts professionals can advance early age that texts can be used in this way, but often complete school without their formaland technical skills while coming to understandthe ways in the majorityof students can still make which visual culture can suggest art. But it is importantto rememberthat attitudes, opinions, and beliefs. Manyof the majorityof students will become the adults who we hope will understand the artisticpractices on which the most development of ideas. The argument that basic formal and technical skills must come first before students can express their ideas leads many teachers to teach these skills as separate from their applications.Teachersoften feel compelled to spend a substantial amount of time havingstudents do the same activities (such as makinga color wheel or doing a grayscale) at the elementary,middle, and high school levels. 'Basic skills' are often taught,but rarelyrehearsed in a fashion that increases complexity and deepens understanding.As a result, learning remains at the same level, disconnected from knowledge that goes beyond formaland technical training,and is often forgotten because it is not

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time is spent in school have little to do with the power of art as a form of commentary or critique. From the perspective of teaching visual culture, production depends on the importance of connecting with other people through artistic forms and practices. Students can investigate ideas in multiple forms by creating or appropriating and recycling visual statements about issues that are important to them, including issues that relate to the visual culture they see in daily life. For example, as a part of their artistic production, fashion designers try to convince people to pay to advertise for them by putting their brand names on the outside of their clothes. Fortunately, it does not stop there. Fashion designers are free to try to convince us to pay for their advertising by wearing their names on the outside of our clothes, but we are free to provide an art education that will help students to make informed choices in their responses to visual culture. This was illustrated by one of my students who taught a lesson to her high school students on the critique of ads. Each of the students in the class responded to the lesson by creating their own visual statement concerning brand names, and one of her students arrived at school the next day wearing a t-shirt on which he had painted a red circle with a line through it on the brand name. One of the reasons that students may leave school having missed the important message that meaning and form are integrally connected in the visual arts is that most curriculum focuses their learning through a mediabased structure. Rather than allowing student investigations of art to be dependent only on a framework of courses titled, for example, drawing, painting, or ceramics, students can develop their own visual statements in thematic courses with interdisciplinary topics, such as themes concerning important personal and cultural issues. Instead of doing a series of assignments within the same media-based format, student artistic production can be based on assignments in which students

are asked to conduct a series of different media inquiries within a theme or make visual statements working in multimedia or mixed media. Similar activities can be done within a mediabased structured curriculum as well, but the structure of curriculum teaches students what we consider to be the most important organizing principles of art, as do the parameters of production within courses.

Conclusion
Student art lives within the same social conditions that enable each of us to create, have access to, and criticize mind-expanding ideas and objects. Students' artistic production provides them with ways to represent new ideas and revisit old ideas providing connections between their experience and the world at large. It is foundational to art education that students investigate visual culture from a productive point of view because through production students gain knowledge of the effects of their own creative capabilities and of visual culture in general. Kerry Freedman is Professor ofArt and Education at Northern Illinois University. E-mail: KerryFreedman@compuserve. com

Kincheloe, J. L. & Steinberg, S. R. (1993). A tentative description of post-formal thinking: The critical confrontation with cognitive theory. Harvard Educational Review, 63(3), 296-320. Lacan, J. (1977). Thefourfundamental concepts of psycho-analysis. London: Penguin. Lyotard, J. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Manchester. Shusterman, R. (1992). Pragmatist aesthetics: Living beauty, rethinking art. Oxford: Blackwell. Solso, R. (1997). Mind and brain sciences in the 21st century. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press. Persky, Sandene, & Askew. (1998). NAEP 1997 Arts Report Card: Eighth Grade Findings From the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Washington, DC: NAEP. Prawat, R. S. (1989). Promoting access to knowledge, strategy, and disposition in students: A research synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 59(1), 1-41. Walkerdine, V. (1988). The mastery of reason: Cognitive development and the production of rationality. London: Routledge.

REFERENCES
Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), Inc. Eisner, E. (2001). Should we create new aims for art education. Art Education, 54(5), 6-10. Freedman, K. (2002). Art education and the construction of identity. Cuadernos de Pedagogia, 312(6), 59-61. 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. Freedman, K. (1994). Interpreting gender and visual culture in art classrooms. Studies in Art Education, 35(3), 157-170. Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity: An enquiry into the origins of cultural change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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