In the article “New School Art Styles: The Project of Art Education”, Olivia Gude discusses
art education and the directions it can take now and in the future. In the article, “Rescuing Art from ‘Visual
Culture Studies’”, Michele Kamhi decries the state of “art” today and seems to
want to return to a more academic and traditional time in art appreciation and
art making. She would basically ignore
the last 100 years of evolution in the art world and ask art students and art
teachers to ignore it too.
I like Ms. Gude’s approach sooo much more. Her articles always make me feel optimistic
and excited about becoming an art teacher. With students and their great ideas, the
possibilities are endless. We just have
to help them with curriculum that engages and encourages exploration and
projects “designed to open out into unexpected possibilities, not narrowed into
pre-determined channels,” (p. 10). Ms. Gude also asks teachers to look at their
classroom “art projects” and ask some possibly difficult questions including:
“Are there other ways of teaching this content that provide more compelling
learning experiences that are faster, more fun, and more likely to create
knowledge and skills that transfer to other contexts?” (p. 13)
I think many long time teachers might be afraid to look at
their curriculum this way. It would be
so easy to become defensive about curriculum that has served you well for so
long. Ms. Gude’s advice that “strength
of character means NOT using your considerable creativity to come up with
defenses for your past choices”, (p. 13), resonated with me. It is important to keep evolving and moving
forward, because your students will be.
Ms. Khami, on the other hand, thinks that sculpture and painting are the only truly worthwhile art forms. This attitude seems incredibly controlling and dismissive of vast areas of human creativity. She dismisses photography, contemporary and postmodern art as having “nothing essential in common with the traditional visual arts and therefore should not be classified or studied with them as "art." “ Wow! I mean, Wow! It just seems so high handed, stifling and controlling. Wow!
Ms. Kamhi also takes aim at the “decoding” or
“deconstructing” of images when studying visual culture. She claims that “the main emotions inspired
by the Visual Culture approach are all on the side of anger, resentment, and
moral outrage, leaving little place for such feelings as love, pride,
compassion, admiration, tenderness, courage, grief, hope, honor, reverence, or
joy.” I think there is more than one way
to look at any piece of art. I found
Terry Barrett’s article about deconstructing the meaning behind pop culture
images fascinating, but not threatening.
It gives us one more way to look at the images around us. The world is changing faster all the
time. We need to change too, to
understand our surroundings.
That leads to the strangest thing about Ms. Kamhi’s
argument, for me. In her list of
“Exemplary Art Images” there are very few images made after 1900. I think that by dismissing the last 100 years
of art, Ms. Kamhi is also dismissing the value of the art students of yesterday,
today and tomorrow. Again, Wow! All of that inquiry and evolution just put
down as “not art”, or even as “bogus or failed art”.
I found the article “What Do Pictures Really Want?” by W.J.T. Mitchell to be
very interesting. For the most part, he
is interested in what we see in images and what the images need from us. He discusses decoding and analyzing images
and decides,
exposed, demystified, or to enthrall
their beholders. They may not even want to be
granted
subjectivity or personhood by well-meaning commentators who think that
humanness is the greatest compliment they could pay to pictures...What pictures want
in the last instance, then, is simply to be asked what they want, with the understanding
that the answer may well be, nothing at all." (p. 82).
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