Reading Reflection #4

     This week, Eisner talked about Learning in Art and Freedman discussed the Interpretation of Visual Culture.  Once again, there were many, many ideas to think about.  So I’ll pick out a few that were interesting to me.

     Eisner talked about situated learning and the importance of learning to work as a community, which is important in real life.  He also talked about the importance of sequential learning and technical skills.  Students bring these varied talents together, cognitively, emotionally and imaginatively when they make art.  Eisner says, “that the ways in which children express themselves in the visual arts depend upon the cognitive abilities they have acquired and that the cognitive abilities they have acquired are related to both their biologically conferred and their learned abilities as these human features interact with the situation in which they work.” (p. 107).  I appreciate the idea of a nature +nurture reaction to situations.  Eisner says, “Children’s development in art can be seen as an expanding collection of increasingly refined and diversified repertoires that widen their visual options.” (p. 114).  I think one of my jobs as a teacher and an art teacher will be to help students develop their repertoires.  In Dr. Mehr’s class last week, I saw ¾ view portraits that her 2^nd graders made in class, then saw the same students in the MUMAA gallery, observing and discussing a wall of ¾ view portraits that afternoon, (among other things, there was a lot to see, and a poem to be read, and drawings to make).  The kids had a great time and were very attentive and thoughtful during the museum portion of the trip.  That was definitely an expansion and refinement experience. For 2^nd graders!  Yeah! 

I think these “diversified repertoires” apply in any aspect of life.  You learn about things through your personal frame of reference, your cultural frame of reference and through the lens of the things you have learned already.  This leads me right to Freedman, who wrote an extremely Freedman-like sentence, “Understanding is as much about who you are as about what you know; it is as much ontological as epistemological.” (p. 91).  I was cruising along through this sentence, saying “Oh yeah, I think so too,” then I said, ”Where is the dictionary.  Dang.”  So…the nature of being and the study of knowledge.  Oh well, I agree with her anyway.  When she talked about “suggestiveness” I thought of all of the connections people have in the construction of their knowledge, and how important personal and group knowledge is to understanding.  This made me think about VTS, where the students have no planned prior knowledge of the particular piece, but use what the piece “suggests” to each of them to piece together meaning for the whole group.  It’s so wonderful to watch or be a part of, when everyone is using their own frame of reference to create an understanding for everyone together.

Freedman’s talk about post-WWII mass media was interesting.  It made me think of James Michener novels, which were all over my house growing up.  Big, epic stories, tortured artists and Charlton Heston.  I had never thought of the connections between the war, the economy, politics, advertising, and the entertainment industry with the arts.  But now I can see how it’s all part of the same thing, and fodder for visual culture.  It all depends on how someone takes it in, what frame of reference they see it through, and how they recontextualize it in a new situation.