Studies in Art Education

A Journal of Issues and Research

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The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic: A Discourse

on Visual Culture

Arthur D. Efland

To cite this article: Arthur D. Efland (2004) The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic: A Discourse on
Visual Culture, Studies in Art Education, 45:3, 234-251, DOI: 10.1080/00393541.2004.11651770

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Copyright 2004 by the Studiesin Art Education
National Art Education Association A Journalof Issuesand Research
2004, 45(.3),2.H-251

The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic:

A Discourse on Visual Culture

Arthur D. Efland
The Ohio State University

Correspondence A middle ground between two rival visions of art education is explored. One
regarding this article side views rhe major purpose for education in the arts to be the aesthetic experi-
shouldbe addressed ences they offer, while a rival position identifies the mission of art education to
to the author at the be the exploration and analysis of visual culture, to help students discern social
Departmentof Art contextual influences affecting their lives, with primary attention given to
Education, The Ohio popular culture. The middle position emphasizes the discursive practices found
State University, in the fine arts communiry and in the criticism of popular culture. The proce-
340 Hopkins Hall, dures and criteria they use for the critical understanding and judgment of
128 N. Oval Mall, artworks should include the discussion of aesthetic elements as well as discussion
Columbus,OH
of the social context represented in such works. The study of these discourses is
43210-1363. E-mail:
to contribute to the freedom of cultural life.
efland. l@osu.edu
In 2002, the Journal ofAesthetic Education offered a volume "In Pursuit
of Excellence: Essays in Honor of Ralph Smith" (P. A. Dhillon, [Ed.]). As
the founding editor of this journal, Ralph Smith established and main-
tained a high standard of scholarly excellence and this issue in his honor is
aptly titled. Smith's writing on aesthetic education has made him a major
contributor to the conversation about the aims and purposes of the arts in
education. Of particular value, this issue offered the perspectives of a
number of reputable scholars on Smith's position on aesthetic experience
as the point and purpose for the arts and thus a major purpose for arts
education, Smith has long favored the study of exemplary works of art as
the principal source of aesthetic experience. Exemplars of fine art have
always figured prominently in his discussions of curriculum as seen in his
Excellence in Art Education: Ideas and Initiatives (Smith, 1986/87), He had
taken this stance early in his career and has sometimes been chastised for
what has been termed an "elitist" position. Often these characterizations
were made with needless vituperation. Smith is not one likely to relinquish
the canon of masterpieces and the grand narratives of art history that
enshrine them as the principal substance of instruction in the arts.
In the past I have found Smith's view of aesthetic experience as an
educational purpose problematic (Efland, 1992; 2002, p. 169), but I do
find merit in his view that the curriculum should feature exemplars of fine
art as educational content. My view differs from his in not taking the
purpose of teaching about major works of art to be centered in the
aesthetic experiences they provide. In other words, the aesthetic character
of such works, though having value, is not a sufficient reason for setting
these apart from the rest of human experience. As educators we need to

234 Studiesin Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

ask, what are the educational benefits to be gleaned from the objects or
occasions that provide them? Are there social, personal, or moral purposes
that are served by enabling students to become involved in such experi-
ences? And, what might these be?
New answers to these questions are presently making their appearance
with many centered around the proposal to transform art education into a
form of cultural study, or more precisely visual culture (Duncum, 2002;
Freedman & Stuhr, 2001). The reasons supporting the visual culture
proposal were made clear by Freedman and Stuhr:
We live in an increasingly image-saturated world where television
news may control a person's knowledge of current events, where
students spend more time in front of a screen than in front of a
teacher, and where new-born babies are shown Disney videos to
activate still developing neurons. Advertising photography, bodily
fluids, and Star Wars paraphernalia are all exhibited in art museums.
Anyone who travels, watches rock videos, sits on a piece of furniture,
enters a building, surfs a web, or does a number of other things is
experiencing the visual arts. (Freedman & Stuhr 2001, p. 4)
The term visual culture refers to an all-encompassing category of
cultural production that includes the traditional fine arts, as well as
various forms of popular culture. It includes the folk traditions of
artmaking, the crafts, photography, commercial illustration, the various
entertainment media including cinema and television, and their electronic
extensions via the computer and the Internet.! These newer technologies 1The definition is
have greatly extended the power and influence of commercial forms of based on writings by
Freedman and Stuhr
cultural communications, and there is a growing recognition that in the
(200 I) and Duncum
lives of today's youth they play the principal role in shaping knowledge (2002),
and beliefs once occupied by religion, the school, the community, and the
family. This is why the study of visual culture is educationally important.
It also explains why attention limited to traditional masterpieces is likely
to be insufficient in the coming decades if instruction is primarily
directed to their formal and stylistic aspects apart from their social and
cultural meanings.
Freedman and Stuhr make the point that the categoty of visual culture
includes the fine arts-what has been traditionally called "serious,"
"high," or "fine" art. In fact, no definition of visual culture would be
complete if it excluded or minimized the practices of the professional
arrworld, and yet when one looks at the illustrations provided by previous
issues of this journal and recent issues of Art Education, one is struck by
the absence of attention to the aesthetic considerations of the works in
question. Questions regarding how the form of the object functions to
produce meaning, or how well it does its work are rarely encountered.
What concerns me is that in dropping aesthetic inquiry from the
curriculum something of educational value is lost.

Studies in Art Education 235

 Arthur D. Efland

As long as aesthetic experience was recognized as the principal benefit

or value, art educators could justify the study of the fine arts on the
grounds that it prepared individuals to have such encounters. The quality
of the art in question could be appraised in terms of the frequency or
intensity of the experience had by viewers prepared for such encounters.
Art that is less fine would be correspondingly less aesthetic, giving rise to
a hierarchy based on aesthetic criteria. This leads to the question: Do
aesthetic considerations have a place in a visual culture curriculum that is
likely to include more than works of fine art? An affirmative answer leads
to a second question, namely, why do aesthetic considerations seem to be
absent in visual cultural studies?
Because all fields of human endeavor have their moments of greatness,
works of fine and popular art are presumed to have them as well. The
quality of the aesthetic experiences they offer the viewer is reckoned as
part of the overall designation of achievement. Other fields, like the
sciences, earmark achievement with awards such as the Nobel Prize for
important contributions to knowledge, while the literary, visual and
performing arts accord recognition through the formation of literary or
artistic canons. But for a number of contemporary art educators, such
efforts to give primacy to canonical moments of high artistic achievement
raise the specter of elitist imposition and ideological manipulation.
Proponents of visual culture might answer the second of the two ques-
tions by saying that the study of the social context revealed through
studies in visual culture is more important.
My own view is that the aesthetic is deeply intertwined with the issues
and concerns raised by the proponents of visual culture. The current
interest in visual culture was preceded by a movement called "cultural
studies" that began to appear in the 1970s and '80s. It attempted to look
at the whole gamut of literary cultural production rather than limit the
focus to canonical works. George Levine (1994), worried about these
transformations then taking place in literary studies, and cited numerous
trends documenting the fact that those scholarly critics were abandoning
the study of the form and structure of poems or novels to emphasize the
surrounding context reflected in the work. Levine's project was to
"reclaim the aesthetic" by identifying a continuing role it might play
within cultural studies. He described it in the following way:
I am trying to imagine the aesthetic as a mode engaged richly and
complexly with moral and political issues, but a mode that operates
differently from others and contributes in distinctive ways to the
possibilities of human fulfillment and connection.... I am
concerned now to join in efforts to rescue it from its potential
disappearance into culture and politics; I want to do this, however,
not by assigning it some transcendental and universal value; not by
denying the importance of cultural studies or the uses as evidence to

236 Studies in Art Education

 The EntwinedNature of the Aesthetic

which literature is regularly put; not, of course, by denying that

literature and the aesthetic are historically bound to ideology...
[but] by rethinking the idea of the "aesthetic" and the possibility of
"value" within the terms and assumptions characteristic of the best
contemporaty criticism and theory, (1994, p. 3)
Like Levine, my purpose is an attempt to stake out a middle position
between advocates for aesthetic experience and those basing a curriculum
on visual culture.
Aesthetic Experience
When I ask persons- whose careers are in the arts, how they discovered 2These questions and
their vocation, they often cite a particular incident or encounter they had answers are personal
anecdotes and are not
while looking at a painting, sculpture, or a scene in nature-a moment offered as research find-
when for no evident reason, they experienced a sudden awareness of the ings. I have noted that
beautiful or sublime. In their telling, they sometimes describe a state of many people also can
describe painful
inexplicable yet pleasurable agitation, a feeling of joy and tears welling up moments when they
in the same moment. When the first theories of art and beauty were were discouraged by
proposed in the 18th century, philosophers characterized these by the their teachers or parents
from the pursuit of
term "disinterested" since such experiences were free of practical or
careers in the arts,
mundane concerns like business or politics. Eighteenth-century "disinter-
estedness," roughly speaking, was the mother of the 20th-century concept
of aesthetic experience, that is, an experience had for its own intrinsic
satisfactions and that is not a matter of any practical, instrumental, moral,
political or social value. Fine art was thought to be the greatest source of
such experience and thus these arts stood apart from the ruder and less
sophisticated aspects of popular culture. In the early 1900s, the traditional
mission of art education was to cultivate a taste for the finer things of life,
to wean students away from vulgar and crass amusements.
During the first half of the 20th century there was a convergence of
assumptions about art in the modernist sense. The first was the idea of art
as an autonomous realm made up of special objects, the high or fine arts.
A second was aesthetic experience, the heightened feeling of satisfaction
had by viewers of art when perceptual attention was not driven by prac-
tical needs or desires, as in a state of disinterestedness, arises from many
sources such as nature. It was assumed that fine art offered it in a more
concentrated dosage or at a qualitatively higher level than that provided
by the lesser arts or by such natural occurrences as rainbows and sunsets.
The third was formalist doctrine, which explained why fine art possessed
this status, basing the rationale on particular organizations of perceptual
elements created by persons of genius. Art in formalist theory was
concerned with the purity of the aesthetic object as art, apart from histor-
ical, social, political, or economic forces.
Smith's view of aesthetic experience and the educational purposes it
serves is more complex than this network of assumptions just described.

Studies in Art Education 237

 Arthur D. Efland

Michael Parsons (2002) offers an account of Smith's position to demon-

strate its complexity and conceptual subtlety but also to emphasize how
his own position differs from it. Essentially they differ in their views of
cognition and experience-between "having knowledge about art"
(Parsons) versus "personally experiencing its presence and power," (Smith,
cited in Parsons, 2002, p. 26). Parsons's definition of cognition involves
more than merely having knowledge. It includes the processes through
which the meanings of objects or events are constructed in the learner's
mind. Smith says:
... terminology is less important than the recognition of a difference
between having knowledge about art and personally experiencing its
presence and power. No one has marked this distinction better than
Frank Sibley. It does no good, he said, simply to be told that a work
has a certain character or meaning: one has to see and feel its qualities
and import for oneself (Smith, cited in Parsons, 2002, p. 26).
Where I have taken issue with Smith in the past (Eiland, 1992; Eiland
2002, pp. 169-170) is that I am not convinced that aesthetic experience is
the sole purpose of the arts and art education. Too many works of art
were made for reasons other than producing aesthetic experiences, though
some works of art were certainly made for this purpose. The proponents
of aesthetic experience as an educational purpose would have to indicate
what knowledge, understanding and insights one gleans from such experi-
ences or show evidence of changed behavior (if one insists on empirical
evidence) toward or about art, life or about something in the world.
Smith talks of individuals having to see and feel the import of the quali-
ties of aesthetic objects. I agree, but in my view such actions are cognitive
acts through which the individual constructs meaning. Smith could well
be a cognitivist except that he tends to delimit cognition to knowledge
obtained from the perceptual qualities of artworks gleaned by direct access
to the work of art. Yet Smith recognizes that aesthetic experiences have
cognitive consequences. Parsons offers the following explanation:
Ralph finds it easy to agree that aesthetic experience in addition to
being intrinsically valuable, has cognitive dimensions, or what he
calls "consequences." For instance he quotes Goodman approvingly
that art works are best "when by stimulating inquisitive looking,
raising visual intelligence, widening perspectives, bringing out new
connections and contrasts, and marking off neglected significant
kinds, they participate in the organization and reorganization of
experience." (Parsons, 2002, p.29-30)
In Smith's view, the cognitive consequences of aesthetic experience
would count as secondary benefits, not ultimate purposes. Only the
aesthetic experience has an intrinsic purpose. My view is closer to Nelson
Goodman's (1984) who argued that works of art play what is essentially a
cognitive function in human affairs. Unlike philosophers in the episrerno-

238 Studies in Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

logical tradition inherited from Descartes and Locke, Goodman also

regarded emotions and feelings as having cognitive functions in human
life. Traditional views of cognition tended to categorize seeing and feeling
as perceptual, rather than cognitive acts. Cognition was thought to begin
only when the mind acted upon its perceptions. Gruber and Voneche's
description of Piaget's concept of action captures this earlier view:
... it is not through direct observation that cognitive structures
develop, but through the actions we carry out upon our perceptions,
not so much the actions of the body but those of the mind. (Gruber
& Voneche, 1981, p. xxi)
This is an early view of cognition because it treats perceptual activity as
a non-cognitive activity, one that posits a dualism between mind and
body in the Cartesian tradition where the cognitive aspects of thinking are
said to come from the mind, while perceptual encounters come from
bodily actions like grasping or seeing. Current views of cognition strongly
resist this dualism. (See Lakoff & Johnson, 1999.)
My point in raising the issue of cognition is to convince the reader
(and perhaps Ralph Smith) that aesthetic experiences are themselves cogni-
tive achievements! They are unlikely to occur without prior learning, as
Smith points out, and in addition, aesthetic experience often instructs.
And it is inconsequential to the learner whether the cognitive learning
that occurs is the primary, secondary, or tertiary benefit or value, or
whether it is an effect of aesthetic experience or a cause of aesthetic experi-
ence. Learning is learning!
Quandaries Confronting Visual Culture
The experiences that moved me to seek a career in art education came
from the high culture of arrworld practice and the aesthetic encounters
these sources provided. At the same time, I favor the initiative to trans-
form traditional art education into the broader field of visual culture. My
reasons have to do with contemporary issues affecting society that might
be accessed with greater immediacy through a broader sampling of the
forms of cultural production likely to be familiar to a cross section of
people from diverse social and cultural backgrounds and educational
levels. Like Parsons, I base my support on my understanding of cogni-
tion-with issues of meaning. Parsons explains that meaning has to do
with connections. "An artwork has meaning if it can be connected with
something else, with other artworks, ideas, events, what in general can be
3 In particular the
called context" (Parsons, 2002, p. 30). All works of art are part of a modernist avanr-garde
broader context known as culture, in particular, the visual aspects of that often characterized
culture. The visual culture orientation shows promise for reconnecting themselves as living in
self-imposed isolation
the arts within the cultural mainstream after a century of relative isola- from bourgeois culture
tion. 3 But visual culture has some vexing problems of its own. in order to criticize it.

Studies in Art Education 239

 Arthur D. Efland

Attributes of Visual Culture

There are various positions held by the proponents of visual culture
but, in my opinion, they tend to share a common slate of values that
include many of the following features:
• a rejection of formalist aesthetics;
• a shift from the interpretation and judgment of artworks to questions
about the social systems in which they are contained;
• a resistance to the idea of artistic value, or to the possibility of high
culture;
• an emphasis on interdisciplinary studies e.g., seeing visual cultural study
as an adjunct to anthropology or sociology in order to study the social
system, its problematic aspects or its inequities;
• the view that all things are political and hence the function of visual
4This list of items is culture and its study is a form of political education.s
patterned after one With qualification, I can accept many of these points, certainly the first
prepared by George
Levine ro describe the
of them, but I find the tendency to deny the existence of artistic value
common features of (point 3) to be a blind spot. If art in the heightened sense is acknowl-
cultural studies within edged at all, it is grudgingly. It is often mis-equared with upper-class
the literary arts. See
G. Levine (Ed.J.
domination and dismissed in a gesture of egalitarian sentiment. The genres
Aesthetics and Ideology. of the popular culture are favored as objects of inquiry because they are
1994. p. 2. Visual experienced by the larger mass of people, influencing their understanding
culture extends cultural
of the world, their values and actions. Its proponents tend to select art
studies approaches to
the visual arts. objects for study based on the social or political themes that come into
play through discussion of such works, that is, by the life issues felt to be
important by teachers or students, which may have little to do with the
quality of the art undergoing study. Though individuals become conscious
of such works through the perception of their aesthetic qualities, they are
rarely singled out for educational attention.
Social issues are important, but if attention to these matters preempts
attention to aesthetic features, we lessen the prospect that our students
will have opportunities to become acquainted with both the fine arts and
those of the popular culture. This not only involves the creation of
artworks but their appraisal by critics who select works for presentation,
attention, discussion, and judgment. It includes the discursive practices
within this community by which contemporary artworks are linked to
past works and which offer reasons why such works merit the viewer's
attention.
The problem of criteria in visual culture. As long as aesthetic value
counted for something, the selection of content was not likely to become
an issue. In the past one deferred to the fine arts community made up of
artists, critics, museum curators art dealers, auction houses, journalists
and private collectors who through their various deliberations come to
regard some art more highly than others. A similar community exists for

240 Studies in Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

works in the popular genres. In both communities there is nothing

approaching consensus, but one can look at what is being said about such
works and decide for oneself. If one reads as I did in the New York Times,
that Andy Warhol is the most important American artist of the latter half
of the 20th century, I don't necessarily have to believe this to be true, but
if I also find many references to his work in books, hear people discussing
his work on TV, read critical essays about his Brillo boxes by Arthur
Danto and others, and see for myself that his work is represented in major
collections, it becomes a pretty safe bet that his works might warrant
educational attention.
The leveling tendency in visual culture. How does one resolve the
dissonance between the desire to retain and represent the category of the
aesthetic in instruction while, simultaneously supporting the study of
visual culture in its effort to democratize and diversify art education by
expanding the number of genres receiving educational attention? In
particular, how does one deal with the leveling tendency within visual
culture-the argument that there is no pre-established hierarchy that
accords privileged standing to certain objects, such as those comprising
the canon, that in a visual culture curriculum all shall be accorded equal
representation as cultural practices and, that to do otherwise is to impose
the ideology and aesthetic of an elitist taste, such as the view that some
objects transcend others. For example, Paul Duncum, whose writing I
discuss shortly, resists what he regards as the collective judgments of
artworld expertise.
On first look the disinclination to impose elitist values sounds democ-
ratic and egalitarian, though such a policy would have the practical effect
of minimizing opportunities to encounter forms of art that are not likely
to be found in the average student's daily experience. If teachers of visual
culture fear imposing the values of this "self-appointed" elite that
Duncum calls an "institutional arrworld" one is tempted to ask whose
values would get promoted by default? If teachers do nothing, the answer
is likely to be the values of a commodified popular culture, a culture that
is imposed on students as consumers, on the assumption that what the
market provides embodies their culture and that it is popular because it
reflects their interests, values and concerns. Proponents of visual culture
help students become conscious of how the culture industry produces
knowledge about the world, distributes and regulates information, helps
construct identity, and promotes consumption in visual culture (Tavin &
Anderson, 2003, p. 33).
Popular culture in the United States and most industrial countries "is a
largely commercial form of culture, produced for profit, and disseminated
in the form of commodities" (Kellner, 1995, p. 16). Cultural production
is thus an industry that produces artifacts that will be popular and sell,
and that will attract large audiences. To be popular, these artifacts must

Studies in Art Education 241

 Arthur D. Efland

enliven and enthuse mass audiences without offending. s Aesthetic consid-

Sane of rhe srraregies erations are the stock and trade of these industries. Nevertheless, within
rhar gives popular visual culture there is a tendency to turn away from the aesthetic, which is
cuIlure irs mass appeal
seen in rwo ways. One is seen in the neglect of the aesthetic considera-
is that it attacks or
offends those holding tions that enables one to perceive the work, while the other is a disavowal
Onto established values. of the fine arts within visual culture. This appears both in theoretical
Since the I 960s. writings and in examples of recommended practices promoted by many
popular culture began
adopring rhe kind of writers favoring visual culture.
aesthetic shock tactics To demonstrate, I cite Paul Duncurn's characterization of "mainstream
of the early 201h-
art education" as compared with his view of visual culture. I assume that
century avant-garde.
by "mainstream art education" he means a curriculum modeled after
61'm puzzled by the
term "inclusive," since
Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) that was widely discussed in the
Duncurn's complaint is 1980s and 1990s, or the studio teaching practices that antedated D BAE.
about rhe tendency of Both would tend to emphasize aesthetic considerations, especially DBAE.
the professional fine
I agree with much in his article-in particular, his views on the connections
arts community to
seek auronomy and berween ideology and aesthetics, but I have difficulty accepting his view
exclusivity. of conventional art education. He writes:
? Noel Carroll in his Mainstream art education begins with the assumption that art is
book BeyondAesthetics inherently valuable, whereas VCAE [visual culture art education]
(200 I) suggesls that the
artworld should be assumes that visual representations are sites of ideological struggle
characterized as a that can be as deplorable as they can be praiseworthy. The starting
cultural practice. point is not the prescribed inclusive6 canon of the institutionalized
arrworld, but students' own cultural experience. A major goal is
empowerment in relation to the pressures and processes of contem-
porary image-makers, mostly those who work on behalf of corporate
capitalism, not the cherishing of artistic traditions and the valuing
of artistic experimentation. The basic orientation is to understand,
not to celebrate. (Duncum 2002, p. 8)
Empowerment and understanding are laudable goals, but I find
Duncurn's characterization of mainstream art education as a pedagogy
which imposes a canon of masterpieces prescribed by the institutionalized
arrworld to be misleading on many counts. First, there never was nor is
there now a consensus among professional art educators concerning the
issues to be dealt with or works of art to be included in the curriculum.
Second, the arrworld is not an institution as such, but a cultural practice
made up of a multiplicity of discourses? among which are the fine arts but
which also includes other genres as well. Third, these cultural practices do
not necessarily reach a recognized consensus. Indeed, quite the opposite is
the case. For every formalist like Clement Greenberg who would insist
upon maintaining the purity of the fine arts and who would condemn the
practices of the popular culture, there are opposing voices. Fourth, the
onset of postmodern views in the fine arts community has all but elimi-
nated notions of hierarchy based on aesthetic values. What does remain is

242 Studies in Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

the fact that people do have aesthetic experiences, and these lead them to
certain kinds of objects that they either find attractive and engaging or not.
What the artworld has to offer is not a collection of certified master-
pieces but linguistic tools for talking about art (indeed, any kind of art) in
an intelligent way. It is more accurate to characterize this practice as the
ways works are discussed to determine what has value as art, why it has
value, or why not. What students might learn from this world is how to
form their own views about art. If works in the popular culture are to be
studied with seriousness, as I believe they should be, the methods of crit-
ical engagement with works of fine art could well serve as an appropriate
80uncum's depiction
model to emulate.e
of conventional practice
Duncum also reacts to the charge made by critics of visual culture that should make us realize
it is intent upon replacing art with social studies. Here I am referring to that what differentiates
visual culture from
the concern for interdisciplinary approaches in the study of visual culture
other instructional
(point 4, my list). He writes: practices are the kinds
They suggest that the studies of issues like media ownership, audi- of questions it deals
wirh rather than the
ence reception, ideology, and social reproduction appear to replace kinds of objects that are
relishing the sensuous qualities of images. By contrast, such issues selected for study,
place aesthetic experience within its proper social contexts. Ideology
9Sociologist L. Levine
works best when it is hidden, and the aesthetics of sensory appeal described how in the
work to hide ideology so that ideology and aesthetics always go hand 19th century there was
in hand ... For good and/or ill, ideology and aesthetics are always almost no distinction
between "high" and
bedfellows and always have been. A visual culture curriculum would "low" forms of art.
study how ideology works through aesthetic means or conversely Shakespeare, opera, and
how aesthetics works to promote ideology. (Duncum, 2002, p. 10) shows of artworks were
the properry of many
Disciplinary constraints. In pointing to connections between ideology groups. By the end of
and aesthetics Duncum raises a number of issues that are important for the nineteenth century.
the future of visual culture and this topic will be emphasized further in many of these arts were,
"rescued from the
this essay. However, he is wrong in thinking that issues like media owner- marketplace, and there-
ship, audience reception, or the formation of taste publics are content fore from the mixed
areas that belong to the province of art. If one teaches these very inter- audience and from the
esting topics, one is moving from the domain of the arts into social presence of other
cultural gentes; they
science. This could be beneficial if it helps students see connections were removed from the
between the world of art and the social world reflected in artworks, but it pressures of everyday
can be detrimental if through this process, the arts lose their autonomy, as economic and social
life, and placed, signifi-
I explain later. If the sociology of art helps students understand the cantly, in concert halls,
connections between art and the social world, we may have taught some- opera houses, and
thing quite valuable, but we have not taught art!9 museums . . ." See
Levine, L. (1986),
As the study of art adopts the concerns of the sociologist or anthropol- HighbrowLowbrow:
ogist, it then becomes subject to their disciplinary constraints. Scientists The Emergence of
must describe and explain "What is?", whereas artists might deal instead Cultural Hierarchy in
with "What ifs?" The arts are domains that allow for an experience of America. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard
freedom that enables individuals to suspend reality, to imagine, invent, Universiry Press,
construct, interpret, and visualize future possibilities and alternatives. p.230.

Studies in Art Education 243

 Arthur D. Efland

Duncum would organize the curriculum around sites of ideological

struggle that reflect the issues and inrerests and areas of attenrion of major
concern to students, exploring such themes as the violence in the life of
today's teenagers or difficulties in idenrity formation in a globalized world
that erodes cultural differences, etc. Such personal issues are good places
to begin meaningful inquiry, but, I wonder what, then, the next step
becomes? If a student's horizons are limited to the aesthetically familiar,
then growth in understanding should require aesthetic experience with
the less familiar, with art that challenges one's tolerance for complexity
and ambiguity, with art that tells other stories about people and issues
that lie outside the range of everyday familiarity. I am asking for a form of
visual cultural education that enables studenrs to engage in conversations
about art, each other's art, high art and popular culture. I am asking for a
curriculum where one can assess growth in cognitive complexity.
Cognition and visual culture. Once I believed that serious works of
fine art are cognitively more complex than most works in the popular
genres, that they have deeper levels of meaning, more varied cultural
references and the like. I wanred to see more attenrion to fine art and
used the complexity argumenr to warranr my preference. I no longer hold
this view but do believe that the promoters of a visual culture orientation
have yet to demonstrate how they will organize the curriculum to
promote growth in cognitive complexity. To assume that popular culture
is simple while fine art is complex grossly oversimplifies the differences in
functions between them.
The forms of culture that are popular are those where the symbolic
codes are readily accessible through the family, community, peer group,
and where the works one sees are aesthetically familiar and whose
purposes involve pleasure, entertainment, and escape. They are arts
usually disseminated by the mass media. The fine arts, by conrrast, have
differenr purposes and are less accessible. Terms like "high art", "fine art,"
or "classical music" are arts distinguished by a self-conscious attenrion to
their own artistic language. Their claim to function as art derives from a
particular concern with the ways these materials are patterned and orga-
nized to arouse perceptual attention and thus work as objects of art
(johnson, 2002, p. 3). Terms like "fine" or "high" art also refer to
cultural practices, usually fostered within such artworld institutions as
professional art schools, conservatories of music, university departments
of the humanities such as philosophy and literature-in short, by people
who take the arts seriously. This is not a single institution, but a collec-
tion of many institutions-not only museums and professional art
schools, but rival poinrs of view about art.
Popular culture is more likely to be wedded to the presenr momenr, to
the world of everyday concerns, whereas many works of fine art originate
in other times and places and thus may require a knowledge of less

244 Studiesin Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

familiar contexts for their understanding. Unlike popular culture, the fine
arts must be sought in galleries, museums, libraries, or schools. Students
lacking acquaintance with the fine arts, especially works in the modern or
postmodern genres, will not be capable of finding meaning in these works
without educational mediation.
A visual culture curriculum that would show evidence of cognitive
development in general terms is one where knowledge continually under-
goes reconstruction as new knowledge is integrated into existing knowl-
edge. Increased cognitive competence would be seen in the number of
codes one can accommodate and in the ability to acquire new codes as
one encounters less familiar forms of art. If one purpose of education is to
maximize the cognitive potential of students, then the curriculum will
need to include multiple forms of art with varying levels of complexity.
For this reason, the view of visual culture that I support is one that
includes arts from a variety of presentation systems-including fine art and
popular culture. It should select works that vary in depth and complexity.
The justification for a curriculum based on multiple forms is also based
on the need to experience content from a variety of viewpoints and orien-
tations to develop a depth of understanding.
The arts as sources 0/ cultural trans/ormation. Noel Carroll offers
reasons why aesthetic experience and social criticism go hand in hand:
"Genuine art" he writes,
has a utopian side, inasmuch as the aesthetic experience that it
affords sustains faith in the possibility of a different social order, one
where imagination and sensibility rather than instrumental reason ...
preside. At the same time by being different from the social order
that exists, art through the agency of aesthetic experience implicitly
criticizes what is. It negates the existing social order by drawing a
revealing contrast between everyday experience ... holding out the
promise of the possibility of a utopian alternative, while also
accusing, indicting, and criticizing what we have instead. (Carroll,
2001, p. 52)
As a historian of literature, Geoffrey Harpham (1994) makes a similar
point by referring to the role that such works have played in paving the
way for liberal democracy. He then characterizes many on the political
left as seeing the aesthetic "as a language consistent with political domina-
tion" but "it also, once upon a time, provided the most powerful available
critique of bourgeois possessive individualism and appetitive egoism ... "
(Harpham 1994, p. 127). Thus, when the proponents of visual culture
turn their backs on fine art by citing its ties to social elites, they not only
forsake an important legacy once played by such arts in promoting
democratic values and constructive social change, but they undercut the
values a visual culture curriculum is supposed to promote.

Studies in Art Education 245

 Arthur D. Efland

In favoring visual culture, care has to be taken not to narrow its

scope, not to make the same error that the proponents of formalism made
a century earlier in restricting educational attention. Then the study of art
was limited to such matters as line and color whereas now it is limited to
the social context. Such narrowness flies in the face of democratic aspira-
tions in that each constrains the freedom of inquiry, the freedom to
explore various forms of cultural life. This includes one's own culture and
the cultural forms of others that teachers introduce to children to help
them learn from a wider array of content than would ordinarily be avail-
able to them, even including the cultural art forms labeled elitist.
The Issue of Ideology
Earlier I cited Duncum's view that "Ideology works best when It IS
hidden, and the aesthetics of sensory appeal work to hide ideology so that
ideology and aesthetics always go hand in hand." Understanding how
works of art do their work is inquiry into aesthetics, but is such under-
standing limited mainly to unmasking the ideologies hidden within the
work? If so, the interpretation of the work consists mainly in demon-
strating how it hides its ideological content. The interpretation of art
whether in the fine arts or in the popular culture is reduced to demystifi-
cation. Now, understanding the ideological implications of artworks is
surely relevant content, but the more interesting question, in my view is
why ideologies are (and often must remain) hidden to do their cultural
work? '
IOpaul Guyer has
Duncum does not take up this question, but I sense in his writing and
provided a new transla- the writing of other proponents of visual culture that it is guided by the
tion of the Critique belief that the public is victimized by hidden ideologies, that they are
called by him The
hidden to promote social acquiescence and thus keep the masses in their
Critique ofthe Power of
Judgment published by place, (see Theodor Adorno's The Culture Industry), and that the exposure
Cambridge University of hidden ideologies is educational work which in some ultimate sense
Press, 1996. aims to free society. While not wrong, I believe the answer is more intri-
II Guyet says that the cate. Moreover, answering that question will help provide the meeting
Critique ofJudgment ground between proponents of aesthetic experience and those supporting
"instead of being the
the social purposes of visual culture. The rest of this essay is concerned
archetypal work of
modernism has with this question.
suddenly become the
The Kantian Legacy in Aesthetics
archetypal work of
posrrnodernism," and To develop this argument more fully I look at the origin of modernist
that instead of being views of the aesthetic that took shape during the 18th century, focusing
the source of 20th- mainly on Immanuel Kant's Critique ofjudgment (cited in Guyer,
century fotmalism,
it has "become the
1996).10 This major work has lain the foundation for modern formalism
symbol of deconstruc- and the doctrine of "art for art's sake" (Guyer, p. 2) and set the stage for
tion itself," a book that the modern concept of art as a heightened realm of experience, set apart
shows how evety
from the mundane world of ordinary objects and events. In what follows
attempt to make firm
distinctions ... undercuts I present the gist of Paul Guyer's interpretation of Kant, and in particular,
itself."(p, I) his interpretation of disinterestedness. I I

246 Studiesin Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

Guyer argues that the disinterestedness of taste that lies at the core of
Kant's aesthetic theory can be characterized as "an experience of
freedom." The pleasure taken in aesthetic experience is a free satisfaction,
not imposed by obligation, practical necessity, or purpose. Kant also
argued for an essential connection between aesthetics and the interests of
morality. As modernist formalism became dominant early in the 20th
century, the Kantian linkage of the aesthetic with the moral was severed.
In asserting the autonomy of the art object, formalism also narrowed the
viewer's attention to features of perceptual form, to the idea that apprecia-
tion and judgment should take place within parameters set by the object
itself, independently of any broader cognitive or practical concerns
(Guyer, 1996, p. 1). Guyer recalls Kant's understanding of the connection:
The pleasurable yet disinterested sense of freedom from cognitive
and practical constraint-that is, the sense of unity of aesthetic
experience without its subordination to any scientific or moral
concepts and purposes-which is the heart of Kant's explanation
of our pleasure in beauty, is precisely that which allows aesthetic
experience to take on deeper moral significance as an experience
of freedom. It is primarily through the experience of freedom that
is captured by Kant's conceptions of the disinterestedness and
purposelessness of aesthetic response that enables aesthetic
experience to take on the deep moral import that Kant assigns to it.
(Guyer, 1996, pp. 3-4)
The pleasure taken in aesthetic experience is a conceptual freedom,
that is, a freedom from logical necessity that binds us to specific decisions,
actions, or conclusions. Kant argued that this pleasure sets our faculties of
imagination and understanding into a harmonious and free play. 12 At the 12Kant divided the
mind into faculties.
same time this play feels as if it satisfies our objective goal in cognition-
The faculty of under-
that of finding unity in our intuitions, without actually producing that standing contained the
unity. The harmony of imagination and understanding induced by a concepts we use in
beautiful object is pleasurable precisely because it seems like the satisfac- thinking. whereas the
faculty of imagination
tion of our fundamental cognitive aim for unity (Guyer, 1996, p. 10). contained the images
Kant illustrated his view with the positive example of a beautiful derived from the senses.
object, but there is no reason why judgments of taste only occur with
beautiful objects. Judgments of taste can result from experience with ugly
objects as well, which correspondingly would induce displeasure and
result in a sense of cognitive disharmony or disunity.
For Guyer, it is only by preserving this freedom from direct constraint
by concepts that aesthetic experience can serve the purpose of giving us a
palpable experience of freedom which is its deepest service to the needs of
morality. Kant "looked to aesthetics to solve what he had come to recog-
nize as crucial problems for morality; how the rational ideal of individual
autonomy that underlies morality-that is, the ideal of self-governance by
the free choice of individuals to act in accordance with the universal law

Studies in Art Education 247

 Arthur D. Efland

of pure reason" can be made evident to ourselves through such things as

works of an. While the moral is separate from the aesthetic, the category
of the aesthetic can present moral issues evident in cognition in forms
accessible to the senses.
Links between the aesthetic, the social and the moral. Kant also
suggested that moral perfection requires the development of feelings
compatible with those intentions that are dictated by practical reason
alone. The structure of moral action needs forms of representation that
can be grasped by the senses, and works of art are particularly well suited
to provide these. Although moral judgments are rationally produced, we
also need images that can come from works of art (Guyer, 1996, pp. 30-
31). They can be beautiful, ugly, or somewhere in between. Unlike
rational judgments, images help to create a consensus of feeling and moral
action leading to the sense of community of individuals who act in
freedom, uncoerced by politics.
Intertwining the Aesthetic with Culture
The l Sth-cenrury concept of disinterestedness provided the foundation
for 20th-century formalism, and was mistakenly understood to mean
without any interest in the content of the world. It favored art free of
pictorial representations, an abstract sensory aesthetic unsullied by desire
or purpose. However, disinterestedness in Kantian theory had a purpose
-to provide an experience of freedom that could serve broader social
purposes if, and only if, the arts were autonomous, that is, if in human
cognition a space is provided for imagination and understanding to
explore freely social or moral ideas without immediate social or political
repercussions. In other words, the autonomy of art does not exist for the
sake of its own purity but for the freedom of the cultural life it enables-a
cultural practice where new ideas, new social issues can be raised,
expressed, experienced and discussed. To embrace these concerns thus
becomes a purpose for art and art education. Modernist formalism gave
due consideration only to the objective half of the theory, to the percep-
tual organization of art. In its disavowal of content as being significant in
the study of art, it attempted to free art from its social matrix. What we
need now is a post-formal aesthetic, one that restores content to art while
maintaining sufficient autonomy to give play to the imagination.
Toward a Post-formal Aesthetic
Duncum assumed that traditional art education was ideologically
neutral, that canonical works have their being in an exalted and safe
realm, free of controversy, and that the central educational purpose was
appreciation, and further, that judgments of art within this realm were
widely shared by arrworld experts. By contrast, his visual culture proposal
is grounded in a particular notion of ideological struggle, not unlike the
view of class struggle put forth by Marx in the 19th century. In his
portrayal, the field of art education is locked in a forced-choice contest

248 Studies in Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

between the more adventurous realm of visual culture (the view he

supports) and a prosaic view of art education dominated by the study of
certified classics.
However, there is a middle position that draws together the kind of
interpretive criticism practiced within visual culture, where objects are
seen and understood in terms of their context, and the practice of
aesthetic criticism, where one looks at the perceptual aspects of the object
to see how its work gets done. As Carroll suggests these contrasting views
"are generally mutually informative and often complementary" (Carroll,
2001, p. 43). We do not have to choose one or the other. Moreover, there
are compelling reasons to include both.
Degrees offreedom. The argument just made applies equally to the fine
arts and the popular culture, Both are undergoing rapid change, which is
one of the principal reasons why the visual culture proposal is so impor-
tant. Yet the arts comprising popular culture are in many respects less free
than fine art, in that they must please a mass audience.O The culture 13See Mittroff,l. &
industry has to make its investors money and the technologies which have Bennis, W. (1993).
The Unreality Industry:
the power to reach mass audiences are not only expensive but are often The Deliberate
subject to a disapproving press and public outcries for censorship. By Manufacturing of
contrast, the institutions of the arrworld, such as the museum of art or the Falsehood and What it is
Doing to our Lives.
symphony orchestra, are frequently characterized as nonprofit sectors of
the economy.t-i Being less constrained by the profit motive, they have a 14paul Larson's book
greater degree of expressive freedom, though they too are subject to sanc- American Canvas: An
Arts Legacyfor our
tion by politicians when public money is used to subsidize controversial Communities (1997)
art. The freedom of cultural life inevitably entails ideological struggle, and reports on the status of
the struggle is not limited to any particular discourse. It takes different arts organizations in the
non-profit sector, the
forms in the fine arts from those in the popular culture and for this sector of the arts where
reason, to understand the complexity of issues affecting society one public funding is
should have experience with both. provided to enable
these arts to survive
Why Aesthetics Hides Ideology since they are not likely
Formalist doctrine (see Bell, 1914) insisted that art objects be perceived to draw large audiences.
apart from their cultural, social, historical or economic ties, but why did
20th-century modernist culture adopt this aesthetic based upon disinter-
estedness especially, when so many avant-garde artists were frequently
among those deeply committed to political and social transformations?
For example, Geoffrey Harpham (l994) observed that in the past, many
literary works played an important role in paving the way for liberal
democracy (p. 127). Similarly, Derek Attridge (l994) says, that "the
aesthetic can act powerfully to hold the political and the ethical up for
scrutiny by means of its power of suspension, momentarily dissociating
them from their usual pressing context, performing the ethical decision
and the political gesture. The aesthetic is not outside of politics ... far from
serving the cause of the ideological status quo, [it] has had historically
revolutionary connections" (p. 248).

Studies in Art Education 249

 Arthur D. Efland

Whether they were conscious of this or not, avant-garde artists required

an aesthetic of disinterestedness to provide a symbolic veil to cover those
clearly engaged in social commentary and criticism in and through their
art. And when social criticism occuts in art, it is merely a construction of
the imagination that one need not take seriously. Moreover, formalist
practice diverts attention to the form and away from the content. By itself
social criticism would otherwise be subject to rejection but if it is "only
art," it permits audience members to receive ideas that may over time
bring about social change.
If so we answer the question of why the arts need to be an autonomous
realm in human social experience, namely that they foster an experience
of freedom that can serve broader social purposes only if they are
autonomous, that is, only if human cognition is free to provide a space
where imagination and understanding can entertain and rehearse social
and moral ideas without immediate social or political repercussions. The
autonomy of art does not exist for the sake of its own purity but for the
freedom of the cultural life it makes possible. This argument applies both
to arts in the popular culture and the genres of fine arts.
The Educational Purpose
The purpose of art education in Ralph Smith's view is "the develop-
ment of a disposition to appreciate the excellence of art" (1987, p. 17)
with such excellence located in the aesthetic experience made possible
through great works of art. I recognize and value aesthetic experience
though for me this is a deeply felt aspect of cognition. I also recognize the
reality of struggle in the social world, as Duncum argues, but the purpose
of art education in my view differs both from Smith and Duncum.
Our educational purpose should be to expand opportunities to enhance
the freedom of cultural life, that is, the freedom to explore multiple forms
of visual culture to enable students to understand social and cultural
influences affecting their lives. What is legitimate to undertake in discus-
sions of visual culture will be more extensive in the future, neither limited
to fine art as the principal source of aesthetic experience as in the past nor
solely dedicated to the examination of social concerns through the exami-
nation and study of the popular culture. Visual culture will require
balanced attention both to the aesthetic features of the objects undergoing
study as well as a deepened knowledge of their context.

250 Studies in Art Education

 The Entwined Nature of the Aesthetic

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