The Disconnect between Theory and Practice in a Visual Culture Approach to Art

Education
Author(s): Rebekka Herrmann
Source: Art Education , Nov., 2005, Vol. 58, No. 6, The Return of Visual Culture (Why
Not?) (Nov., 2005), pp. 41-46
Published by: National Art Education Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27696111

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VISU AbLkka3U?t^NU R E

The Di si connec
Between Theory
and Practice
in a
Visual Culture
Approach
to Art Education
I ith the growing arguments for and against Visual Culture Art
Education, many art educators have asked for clear-cut lesson plans
and projects as a description of what a visual culture approach to art
education should really look like in public school art classrooms.
This request causes a problem in that the handed down from an expert; knowledge
very goals of Visual Culture Art is seen as available to all (Freedman,
Education, its relevance to the lives of 2003). In visual culture studies, images
students through popular visual culture, are examined with understanding and
and its relationship to postmodernism intelligent action as the goal rather than
and contemporary art practice, make aesthetic appreciation (Anderson &
lock-step instructions for classroom Milbrandt, 2005). Visual Culture Art
activity incongruent with the rationale Education draws from this goal and sees
for this undertaking. art as a means of communication and
Art education becomes more relevant bases art education on both visual and
to student learning when boundaries are verbal critique.
questioned and traditions are investi One of our goals as art educators is to
gated. Including visual culture studies in engage students in learning, both in and
art education can involve embracing through art. Some art educators argue
postmodern concepts and challenging that Visual Culture Art Education can
modernist ideals. It can also involve offer a means of engagement. However,
instruction in which knowledge is shared some of the suggestions for Visual
among all participants rather than Culture Art Education classroom

NOVEMBER 2005 / ART EDUCATION 41

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 practice that have been offered in the
literature so far are inconsistent with the
theories of visual culture. Many of these
proposed activities, some of which will be
discussed in this article, consist of step
by-step lessons leading to predetermined
projects. Even if the lessons originate
from visual culture theory, they often
result in lessons that go back to modernist
ideas and formalist principles of design.
One of the shortcomings of these
proposed programs, as Barnard (1998)
explains, is caused by the false logic that
results from using formalistic theories in
order to discuss and understand visual
culture and postmodernism. Formalist
theory demands that the object be viewed instead become teacher-directed activi
without relation to its time, context, or
purpose. Barnard (1998) explains that a
piece of popular visual culture cannot be
understood solely on the way it looks. You communication of ideas. In these cases,
cannot explain why it looks as it does by while new ideas are being discussed, the
explaining how it looks. Visual culture
theory demands that the artwork be
considered in relation to the viewer and to
the social context (Anderson & Milbrandt,
2005).
Visual Culture theory is not
unrelated to artmaking, in fact there
are many similarities between visual
culture studies and contemporary
artmaking. Visual Culture Art Education
accepts a broad range of practices as art,
and encourages students to engage in the
deconstruction of many of the same
topics and popular culture sites
addressed by contemporary artists. In
contemporary art this deconstruction and
critique takes a visual form in artmaking.
However, what is often lacking in sugges
tions for implementation of Visual Culture
curricula is a continuation of the practice
of contemporary artists as the students
engage in the process of artmaking. The
ideas and processes of investigation and
communication drive artmaking in
contemporary art practice. Investigation
and communication should also be the
motivation for art education classrooms.
The argument for employing Visual
Culture Art Education, while relevant
both to students and to art learning, is
meaningless if the theoretical basis is lost student.
in application.
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The Disconnect Between Theory
and Suggested Implementation
Ideas for implementing art education
curricula that are more relevant to
popular visual culture, contemporary art
practice, postmodern theory, and the
social and cultural issues of students have
been discussed by art education theorists
(Duncum, 2003b; Tavin & Anderson, 2003;
Ballangee-Morris & Stuhr, 2001;
Anderson, 1997; Gaudelius, 1997; Wolcott
& Gough-Dijulio, 1997; Efland, Freedman
& Stuhr, 1996). However, many of these
ideas for implementation fall short of
becoming relevant to the students' lives
and to contemporary art practices and
ties focused more on modernist ideas of
elements and principles or so called "self
expression" than on investigation and
suggestions for practice fall back on
tradition.
For example, in one proposed assign
ment, elementary students in an art
workshop look at and discuss photo
graphs of clothing by Mary Kelly
(Gaudelius, 1997). They discussed other
clothing and the meanings that could be
decoded from them and then, for a studio
activity, the students used images of
clothing photocopied by the teacher along
with markers, and faces from magazine
images to make collages of clothed people
in a narrative (Gaudelius, 1997). This
lesson went from a discussion of contem
porary work that included the decoding
of meaning to a very narrow, teacher
directed artmaking activity. While the
students deconstructed and decoded
messages in clothing through discussion,
they were not actively responding to this
experience through artmaking. Students
could have responded visually by
designing their own clothing and
describing the meaning it might contain,
or by altering clothing to change the
intended or implied meaning it would
have. Confining the students' choices to
photocopied images of clothing chosen
by the teacher limits the choices of the
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Allowing students to make choices
does not prevent them from learning
technical, material, and compositional
skills; these skills become a means rather
than an end. Art of the past and contem
porary art should be discussed in such a
way that ideas are questioned and ways of
communicating are considered and
borrowed, or discarded, rather than in a
way that encourages the reproduction of
projects that borrow a style without
calling into question its content or
context. In Visual Culture Art Education
the teacher initiates the experience of
discussion and investigation but should
not mandate the student's visual or verbal
response to it (Anderson & Milbrandt,
2005).
Ballengee-Morris and Stuhr (2001)
describe an example in which elementary
students looked at and wrote a reaction to
a magazine image of a child holding a gun
and then discussed their reactions as a
class. The class was then divided into
small groups and instructed to plan an
image that could be used as an ad against
violent behavior by children. The students
were instructed to use the magazine
image as an example. The magazine image
being discussed was popular visual
culture and the students discussed the
historical precedent for violent images
and their own ideas about the image.
However, at least as reported in their
article, only one image was focused on,
and the morality of the image was deter
mined for the students by the teachers.
Students were told that the image
portrayed violent behavior in children as a
moral problem. The students did not
explore ways of responding to the image
they looked at, nor the ideas it provoked,
so much as they used the image as an
example of how to complete their own
artmaking assignment. Unfortunately,
these attempts to develop curricula
consistent with Visual Culture Art
Education and postmodern theory, when
implemented, remain unrelated and irrel
evant for students because the students
are not involved in an investigation of
meaning, contemplation of ideas, and
criticism. Students are told how they
should react to the images and what form
their visual response should take. The

Some art educators
are reluctant to
allow students to
develop their own
ideas; in the
highly regimented
school culture,
it is difficult to
give up control and
predictability.
students are not being led to question
their currently held beliefs about art and
society; they are not learning, but simply
regurgitating the information presented to
them. By limiting information to teacher
determined, prescribed knowledge, the
student loses the desire to apply this
information, and, "above all, loses the
ability to extract meaning from his future
experiences as they occur" (Dewey, 1998
p. 50).
Some researchers have raised a
serious concern regarding curricula
based on critical inquiry and deconstruc
tion (Brown, 2003; Efland, Freedman, &
Stuhr, 1996). This concern involves the
possibility that through the questioning
and criticism of culture the teacher is not
actually encouraging a free exploration
of ideas but rather propagating cultural
elitism and, even if subtly, mandating
morals (Brown, 2003; Efland, Freedman,
& Stuhr, 1996). This is another reason that
lessons should encourage student investi
gation, exploration, and discovery of the
many contexts and ideas presented in
contemporary art and popular culture
rather than mandate ideas to be explored
and the manner in which to address them.
Questioning and exploration should be
encouraged rather than the adherence to
a particular idea or moral stand.
Wilson-McKay and Monteverde (2002)
suggest art lessons that begin with
looking at the context or setting and
subtext of the image. The subtext is what
the image references, borrows from, or
implies. The context and subtext of the
artwork are viewed in relation to the
context of the school through web
making. Teachers and students make
webs through linking ideas and images
from both the artwork and the school
context. They write down an idea or draw
or copy an image, and then draw lines
between these ideas and images. A web
emerges as the lines begin to overlap and
intersect as connections are observed to
exist between many of the ideas and
images that share conceptual or visual
attributes. While this is a valid way of
looking at art in keeping with postmodern
theory, the artmaking activities that
Wilson-McKay and Monteverde suggest
are entirely teacher directed and without
research or inquiry on the part of the
student. In one lesson, they suggest that
students look at 17th-century vanitas,
still-life paintings that portray objects
symbolic of the passage of time, and
photographs by Nan Goldin of objects and
settings. The students discuss the context
and subtexts of these works. In an
attempt to add relevance for the students,
each student is asked to bring in three
objects from home that are symbolic of
time passing, construct a vanita, and then
make a photograph of it. This entirely
teacher-directed lesson limits the possi
bility for idea exploration and idea
creation for the students. Students'
personal objects are included in the piece,
but the meaning belongs to someone else.
Some art educators are reluctant to
allow students to develop their own ideas;
in the highly regimented school culture,
it is difficult to give up control and
predictability. However, this assignment
would have been much more relevant for
the students if they were allowed, after
the investigation of these vanitas and
photographs, to research ideas on
communicating the passage of time, as
was the goal of the lesson, and develop
their own manner of engaging with this
concept through photography.
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In another example of disconnect
between theories and suggested practice,
Efland, Freedman, and Stuhr (1996)
advocate a postmodern approach to art
education that includes a perspective of
"multiple, complex, and nonlinear
meanings" (p. 115). Several lessons are
described as examples of effective
inclusion of postmodern ideas into the art
education curriculum. The first of these is
entitled Transforming Amish Quilts by
Computer. This lesson includes the study
and appropriation of Amish quilt-designs
for use in a computer graphic series and in
traditionally fabricated quilt pieces. While
appropriation is part of the postmodern
denial of the importance of linear
progress toward something continually
new and better, the appropriated material
should have some meaning for the artist
working with it. Teacher assigned appro
priation of a particular site denies the
investigation on the part of the student
that would allow for the occurrence of
meaning and learning. The student is
again forced to fit meaning into a teacher
determined product. Students are
instructed to use the color palette from an
Amish quilt to make an image that shows
how ideas are appropriated from
mainstream culture. Students are not only
told what to express, they are instructed
how to construct this expression. This is a
very narrowly defined way in which to
communicate ideas. While technically the
work produced through this lesson may
share similarities to postmodern art
practice, the actual process has little to do
with student learning or postmodern
ideas. Students are told what connections
to make between art and ideas and how to
show these connections.
NOVEMBER 2005 / ART EDUCATION 43
 Another lesson suggested by Efland
et al., (1996) is entitled Message
Teachers maintain Representation. In this lesson Rene
Magritte's painting This Is Not a Pipe is
tradition by used to facilitate a discussion regarding
teaching in the way realism and representation in painting.
One of the stated goals of the lesson is for
they were taught. students to learn about the deconstruction
As the art world of an image and to gain an understanding
of the possibility of multiple readings of
continues to any artwork. However, the lesson is based
on one "right" meaning of the artwork in
question traditions, question. The students are told the
it is appropriate meaning of the work is the difference
for art educators between the actual object painted and the
representation ofthat object. To further
to question the illustrate this point, the authors suggest
that the teacher project an overhead
validity of their image of a landscape painting and then
write across it "This is not a meadow with
own continuing
traditions in cows grazing" (p. 132). They further
suggest that the teacher should explain
what the work means: "His intent was to
contemporary times. question how any kind of picture made up
of a canvas and paint can represent what
it is not" (p. 132). While it is important for
students to look at and discuss historical
art works that were influential in
changing perceptions of art, in this case
the students are not allowed to develop
their own understandings of how these
ideas might relate to their lives or art
making. The only other works suggested
as references for this lesson are a
John Constable landscape and a Roy
Lichtenstein painting. All of these works
are part of the Western canon of art
history.
It is very relevant to look at the
artmaking of other cultures, perhaps
questioning why such an emphasis has
been made on realistic representation in
Western art, especially when this
emphasis is not always seen in other
cultures. Students could then consider in
their own artmaking how important
realistic representation is to them and
then investigate the nature of materials
that they are utilizing in their artmaking.
In this lesson, however the students'
artmaking is teacher determined. The
students are directed to make a work that
is the "opposite" of Magritte's piece. They
are to make a realistic work made of what
it represents, and then write on top of it to
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describe what it is. For example, the
authors suggest that a student could make
a picture of sand using real sand and then
write across it "This is made of sand"
(p. 133). While students might find this
exercise comical, I question how much
actual learning would occur. Even though
questioning and discussion occurs, the
lesson is teacher directed and guided
toward a particular end on which the
artmaking project is based.
Breaking from Tradition
Several researchers have pointed out
that art education has been based largely
on tradition. Teachers continue to follow
traditions as to how art should be
assessed, what art is worthy of study, and
what techniques and skills are founda
tional (Anderson, 1997; Garoian, 2002;
Gude, 2000). I have observed art
education graduate students taking
seminars on visual culture and contempo
rary art and yet, even in a laboratory
school setting, they continue to design
and implement curricula focused on
design principles, techniques, or on the
replication of one artist's work. Teachers
maintain tradition by teaching in the way
they were taught. As the art world
continues to question traditions, it is
appropriate for art educators to question
the validity of their own continuing
traditions in contemporary times.
I believe that there are alternatives that
would allow art education to move away
from these traditions. Rather than being
given a meaning or technique from which
to work, students could explore the
changes in how meanings circulate in
today's world and look at the importance
of asking how meanings circulated in the
past (Rogoff, 1998). Through an examina
tion by students of their own relation
ships to an image or issue, the resulting
project is teacher originated but not
primarily teacher directed. In order to
make art education consistent with a
postmodern and therefore contemporary,
view of art, an understanding of multiple
viewpoints and the fragmentation of ideas
must be accepted and discussed in the
classroom. The popular visual culture of
students' lives shape and limit their
perceptions (Tavin & Anderson, 2003). By
encouraging students to think critically
about the visual culture of which they are
a part, and how these images and texts
relate to one another, students can gain an
understanding of how they are influenced
and how they themselves can influence.
This process is an important part of being
not only an artist, but also an aware and
active participant in society.
Suggestions for Practice That
Are Consistent with Theory
Theories of postmodernism and visual
culture can be put into practice and
remain meaningful. Duncum (2003a)
discusses several approaches to Visual
Culture Art Education by including a
perspective that addresses visual culture
through the contemporary art world. One
justification for this approach is that
many contemporary artists deal with
visual culture as it exists outside of the art
world. Another reason is that much of
contemporary, postmodern art is based
on critical inquiry, which is also the basis and Taylor and Carpenter (2002)
of Visual Culture Art Education. Duncum
(2003b) also offers a variety of lesson
ideas in which students are not only
looking at and thinking critically about
the contemporary images around them
and images from the past?from their
personal possessions to mass media?
but also use these images to inform their
own artmaking. Techniques and skills are
taught as necessary to facilitate the
achievement of the students' intentions
rather than the instructor's goal of
We must allow
students to
understand that
artmaking is not
just about the
creative use and
transformation of
materials, but
also about the
transformation,
deconstruction,
and reconfiguration
of ideas.
teaching a particular technique or skill.
This approach does not mean that every
student works with a different medium or
technique with free reign over the art
room. A lesson can be planned and
presented by the teacher, but the plan
must include the means for students to
investigate and develop ideas as well as
technical knowledge to give these ideas
visual form. This means that the art
teacher must have the knowledge and
ability to lead discussions and engage
students in meaningful investigation.
They must also have enough knowledge
of art history and contemporary art to
present meaningful examples of artists
who have dealt with similar issues in a
variety of ways. Techniques can still be
taught and mastered by the students;
however, the way students use these
techniques and materials to communicate
the ideas should be explored and
developed by the student.
Wilson-McKay and Monteverde (2002)
recommend the process of web making in
order to see connections between ideas
and problems. Intertextuality involves
learning that occurs through considering
relationships which can be done by
constructing webs through computer
based hypertexts. These hypertexts
contain conceptual links between ideas
and images shown visually through
connected boxes of information. Both the
context of the work and the subtext of
what is not being overtly said should be
examined. These webs show connections
between ideas that lead to artworks and
interdisciplinary investigation. This web
making allows for the visualization of the
multiple links between ideas. Taylor and
Carpenter (2002) suggest this practice as
a means of unit planning for art teachers,
but it would also be beneficial for
students to investigate their own links and
discuss the differences and similarities
which different students make, beginning
from a similar starting point. Students
draw from their own knowledge and
experiences to make personal connections
to artworks and ideas in a structured and
accessible way.
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Wolcott and Gough-Dijulio (1997) point
out that while looking at the artwork and
working practices of contemporary artists
can enrich students' ideas and artmaking,
the way this is approached is important.
It is not relevant for students to simply
remake or take on the production process
of an exemplary artist, even if that artist is
working with a subject that is relevant to
the students' lives. Freedman (2003)
recommends assignments and courses
that begin through idea development that
then lead to choices of techniques and
materials that best express those ideas.
Artmaking that originates from the
students' own conceptions, reactions,
histories, and investigations is more
meaningful than forcing students to fit
their ideas into the prefabricated lesson
of the teacher's conception. This more
genuine expression of the student better
reflects contemporary art practices by
being based on exploration, discovery,
and research on the part of the student.
Once students have discovered an idea
they feel is worth communicating, the
skills needed and means for doing so can
be discovered and mastered. An
important role of the art teacher is to help
students further their artmaking by facili
tating the development of the students'
own ideas (Freedman, 2003). A major role
for art educators should be to help
students acquire these skills so that they
might critically reflect on images and
experiences. We must provide opportuni
ties for investigation and research that
can result in artmaking rather than
focusing primarily on technical skill
acquisition.
NOVEMBER 2005 / ART EDUCATION 45
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the school, it is time to reevaluate and I wish to extend my gratitude to Dr. Paul
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which it originated.
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of visual culture in art education. Arts
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taking place. We must allow students to student artistic production to teaching
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46 ART EDUCATION / NOVEMBER 2005

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