Art Education in Brazil: Reality Today and Future Expectations

Author(s): Ana Mae Barbosa

Source: Visual Arts Research, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1990), pp. 79-88
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715734
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Art Education inBrazil: Reality Today and Future Expectations
Ana Mae Barbosa
University of S?o Paulo, Brazil
Art has been a compulsory subject In
primary and secondary schools (1? and
2? grau) inBrazil for 17 years. This was
not at the instigationof Brazilian art ed
ucators but as an ideological creation of
North American educators who, under an
official agreement (Acordo MEC-USAID),
reformulated Brazilian education, estab
lishing in 1971 the objectives and the
curriculum configurated in federal law
number 5692, Diretrizes e Bases de ed
ucaq?o.
This law established technically ori
ented education that began to profes
sionalize the child in the seventh grade.
After secondary school, the student was
considered to be a fullyprofessional art
ist. Itwas a way of preparing workers
cheaply for the multinational companies
that gained strong economic power in
the country under themilitarydictatorship
(1964 to 1983).
In the curriculum established in 1971,
art was apparently the only subject that
could show some openness toward the
humanities and creative work because
even philosophy and historywere elimi
nated from the curriculum. At that time
we did not have art education courses
at universities, only courses to prepare
teachers of drawing, chiefly drafting.
Outside the universities, a very lively
movement (Movimento Escolinhas de
Arte), intended to improve self-expres
sion through the teaching of art, had been
going on in Brazil since 1948. In 1971
the Movimento Escolinhas was wide
spread, with 32 Escolinhas, most of them
private, giving art courses for children
and adolescents and art education
courses for teachers and artists.
The federal law that made art com
pulsory in schools, however, could not
assimilate as art teachers the artists that
had been prepared by the Escolinhas,
VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH ? 1990 by the Board of Trustees
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because a university degree was re
quired to teach from the 5th grade on.
The federal government decided to
create a new universitycourse to prepare
teachers for the compulsory teaching of
art called forby the new law.The courses
inart education at the universities were
created in 1973, creating a basic curric
ulum that should be followed by thewhole
country.
The curriculum was intended to pre
pare an art teacher in two years to be
able to teach music, drama, visual arts,
drawing, dance, and drafting, all at the
same time, from the 1st to the 8th grade
and, in some cases, in high school.
it is an epistemological absurdity to try
to transform, in two years, a young stu
dent (the average age of a student en
tering university in Brazil is 18) into a
teacher of so many art subjects. We have
78 undergraduate programs in art edu
cation at colleges and universities inBra
zil granting diplomas to art teachers. Most
of them are two-year courses.
In the state of S?o Paulo alone we
have 39 such courses. Only a few uni
versities, chiefly the public ones, like the
University of S?o Paulo, refuse to give
the two-year course and opt for a four
year course made possible by the reg
ulations of the Federal Ministry of Edu
cation. They do follow, however, the es
tabished minimal curriculum,which is not
adequate inpreparing teachers to define
their objectives and establish their
methodology.
From March to July 1983, I had the
opportunity to interview2,500 art teach
ers of the schools of S?o Paulo.1 All of
them mentioned the development of
creativity as the firstobjective of their
teaching. For those who stressed visual
arts, the concept of creativitywas spon
taneity,self-liberation,and originality.They
of the University of Illinois
79
practiced drawing in their teaching. For
those who taught chiefly choral singing,
creativity was defined as self-liberation
and organization.
The identification of creativity with
spontaneity is not surprising because it
is a commonsense understanding of
creativity. The art teachers had not had
the opportunity to study theories of crea
tivityor similar subjects at the universities
because these are not disciplines re
quired by the minimal curriculum.
In universities that extend the curric
ulum beyond the minimum, Idid not find
(I examined 11 curriculum studies) any
subject connected with the study of crea
tivity,except at the University of S?o
Paulo where a course entitled 'Theory
of Creativity" was taught from 1977 to
1979 to artmajors inthe fields of cinema,
music, plastic arts, and theater.
The current identificationof creativity
with self-liberation can be explained as
the art teachers' response to the social
and political situation of the country. In
1983 we were being freed from 19 years
of military dictatorship that repressed in
dividual expression through censorship.
It is not uncommon that after repressive
political regimes the anxiety of self-lib
eration dominates the arts, art education,
and the concepts connected with them.
Research by Heloisa Ferraz e Idmia
Siqueira,2 begun in 1983 and continued
in 1984 and 1985, analyzing question
naires answered by 150 art teachers
about the sources they use in teaching,
found that textbooks are the source for
82.8% of them. This seems a contradic
tion because the current textbooks for
art education have been modernized only
to the extent that the appearance of the
textbooks used for teaching drafting has
been updated from the version used in
the forties and fifties.There is no preoc
?
cupation in developing self-liberation
the objective that the art teachers of the
firstresearch study gave as the top prior
ityof their teaching.
The lack of correspondence between
objectives and real practice in the class
80 Ana Mae Barbosa
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room is shown by considering those two
research projects together.Objectives are
merely words written in the programs or
statements but they have not been put
intopractice.
In the visual arts, drafting still domi
nates in classroom teaching along with
laissez faire, commonplace themes, col
oring sheets, variation of techniques and
observation drawing; the same methods,
procedures, and ideology found by re
search carried out on programs of art
teaching in 1971 and 1973.3
The educational system does not re
quire grades inart because art education
is conceived as an activity, not as a
discipline according to the education law.
Some schools require grades inorder to
put art on the same level of importance
with other subjects; in those cases, the
teacher lets the children grade them
selves or grades them by evaluating good
behavior and dedication to artwork.
Art appreciation and history of art are
not taught. The only images in the class
room are the bad images of the text
books, the images of coloring sheets and,
in the better cases, the images produced
by the children. Even the textbooks are
seldom given to the children because
theydon't have money to buy books. The
teacher has a copy and follows the ex
ercises proposed by the textbooks with
the children. This is the case for 74.5%
of the teachers interviewed by Heloisa
Ferraz and Idm?a Siqueira.4 Visits to ex
hibitions and museums are rare and, in
general, poorly prepared.
Bus trips are more significant for the
children than the appreciation of art
works. The most frequent source of im
ages for the children is TV, the bad pat
terns of color drawing, and billboards
around the town (outdoors). The majority
of children inpublic schools do not have
magazines at home. Access to TV is
more frequent because if they do not
have TV at home, they have access to
some kind of community TV.
Even inexpensive private schools re
productions of art are not used in art
classes. They teach art without offering
the possibility of seeing art. It is like
teaching reading without having books
in the classroom. InS?o Paulo, only two
schools regularly use reproductions in
art classes. The first is a school for the
elite and uses reproductions in a con
ventional history of art course for high
school students. The second is a private
school preferred by intellectuals for their
children, incorporating visual grammar,
history, and studio art.5
While 17 years of compulsory art
teaching did not improve the aesthetic
quality of art education in schools, the
problem of low quality affects not only
art education. The current situation of
education ingeneral inBrazil isdramatic.
More than 50% of the children drop out
in the first year of school (seven year
olds, before literacy is achieved). And
later, professionalization in high school
has been a failure. Companies do not
employ the students when they leave
high school because theirpreparation for
work is insufficient.
The eighties was the decade of criti
cism of the education imposed by the
military dictatorship and a search for
solutions, but these solutions have not
yet been implemented in the country be
cause the first preoccupation after the
restoration of democracy in 1983 was
the campaign for a new constitution to
free the country from the authoritarian
regime.
Five times the new republican consti
tutionof 1988 mentions art as connected
with the protection of artworks, freedom
of expression, and national identity. In
the section on education, article 206,
paragraph II,the constitution states: "The
teaching will take place under the follow
?
... II freedom to learn,
ing principles
to teach, to research and to disseminate
thinking,art and knowledge." This is an
achievement of the art educators, who
pressed and persuaded some of the dep
uties incharge of drawing up the guide
lines of the new constitution. Art edu
cators inBrazil are politically very active.
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The politization of the art educators
began in 1980 during Art Teaching Week
(September 15-19) at the University of
S?o Paulo, which gathered together 2,700
art educators from the whole country. It
was a meeting that emphasized political
aspects of art through self-structured de
bates insmall groups around pre-estab
lished problems like immobilization and
isolation of art teachers, educational pol
icyfor the arts and art education, cultural
action of the art educator in Brazilian
society, education of art educators, etc.
From these discussions emerged the ne
cessity of pursuing creative work to open
a dialogue with local politicians and to
regionalize art education to reflect the
cultural diversity of the country. Until that
moment we had only one art education
association, SOBREART, which was con
sidered a national organization, affiliated
with INSEA but operating chiefly in Rio
de Janeiro and dominated since its cre
ation in 1970 by a person connected with
the military dictatorship.
InMarch 1982 the AESP (Art Educa
tor's Association of S?o Paulo) was cre
ated as the firstregional association and
itwas followed by ANARTE (Northeast
Association of Art Education) comprising
8 states of the Brazilian Northeast, AGA
(ArtEducation Association of Rio Grande
do Sul), APAEP (Association of Profes
sionals inArt Education of Parana), etc.
We have 14 state associations that, in
August 1988, created a national federa
tion to be housed for the next two years
inBrasilia, D.F. The presidency will move
fromstate to state. SOBREART, under a
new presidency, belongs to the national
federation as well.
These associations are very strong ad
vocates for better conditions for art
teachers. They negotiate with the Sec
retariates of Education and Culture, the
Ministry of Culture, legislators, and po
litical leaders. The firstpreoccupation of
the associations has been the politici
zation of art educators, preparing them
to avoid government manipulation, as
happened in 1979 in S?o Paulo. The
Art Education inBrazil 81
governor (appointed by the military gov
ernment, not elected) stated that, during
thewhole second semester, the art teach
ers should prepare their students to sing
some songs inorder to participate in a
30,000 voice choir at the governor's
Christmas party. For those teachers who
trained their students, he would increase
their salaries five points on the scale (a
master's degree was worth ten points
for salary improvement!). At that timewe
did not have ways to fightagainst this
misuse of art education but the situation
is differentsince the creation of the state
associations for art education. The as
sociations have been very successful in
the political preparation of art teachers
but few of them have had enough time
to develop programs of research (except
for the AESP, S?o Paulo) and of concep
tual improvement for art educators.
As a result, in 1988 we had a gap
between the political participation of the
art educators, who are very lively and
conscious in this respect, and their ac
ademic participation, which isweak and
superficial. Some universities, preoccu
pied with the poor preparation of the art
teachers, began from 1983 onwards to
organize specialization courses for uni
versity art professors. The courses are
short and intensive (sometimes with 10
hour classes a day) and are in general
conducted by teachers and artists from
other states.
The idea of self-expression and the
prejudice against using reproductions for
teaching art to children is dominant in
those courses. The firstattempt to ana
lyze images in art education took place
during Art Teaching Week at the Univer
sity of S?o Paulo in 1980, throughwork
shops on TV image. Most of the partic
ipants considered that heresy.
The experience proves that,with few
exceptions likethe specialization courses
at the University of Paraiba in 1984, at
Curitiba in 1986, and at UDESC in Flo
rian?polis in 1987, in general the short
specialization courses are not enough to
give university professors the basic
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knowledge they need to prepare art
teachers for secondary schools. In gen
eral, those courses function as a source
for a diploma, which counts for better
salaries or for improving the status of
the university professors.
The University of S?o Paulo has or
ganized, since 1983, a one-year special
ization program in art education that
comprises four graduate courses also
offered for the master's and the doctoral
programs inarts, and a one-year seminar
on art education foundations. The pro
gram received students fromall over the
country who then began to get good
positions in federal universities inother
states.
InBrazil we still do not have master's
or doctoral programs inart education. At
the University of S?o Paulo we have the
only master's and doctoral program in
arts in the country.This program ismade
up of eight fields of research. After 1982,
art education was accepted as one of
those fields of research. Art educators
from the United States and England have
been invited to teach graduate courses
inart education. The only opportunity for
an art teacher inBrazil to have a master's
or doctor's diploma inart education is to
be admitted to the University of S?o
Paulo Arts Program, which has only 13
vacancies in art education. As a result,
inBrazil we have only one person with
a doctoral degree in art education in
visual arts (EdD, Boston University), two
in drama education (PhD, France and
PhD, University of S?o Paulo) and one
inmusical education (PhD, Canada).
The refresher courses or in-service
training financed by the government for
art teachers in primary and secondary
public schools began to take place only
after the military dictatorship had ended.
The pioneer program was the Festival de
Campos do Jord?o in S?o Paulo in
1983? the firstone to connect art ap
preciation analyses of image and history
of art with studio courses.6 We had 400
art teachers living together for 15 days
in a winter vacation town, Campos do
Jord?o. They could make a choice of 4
among 25 practical courses and 7 the
oretical ones.
The courses on art appreciation were
based on the decoding of the aesthetic
environment, the music of popular local
composers, a laser art project in town,
local sculptors and painters, dance
groups, etc. The courses on the reading
of images were connected with the de
coding of TV images and the reading of
fixedart images, chieflywith the paintings
and sculptures from the collection of the
governor's winter palace. This is the sec
ond best Brazilian modern art collection
and ithad been closed to the public until
that time. The reading of press images
took place in the xerography art course.
We had art critics in residence trying
to help student teachers analyze their
own artwork and place it in a historical
and social context as well as to see the
professional artwork presented at night,
chosen among the best events of the
year intheater,orchestra concerts, dance,
popular music, cinema, multimedia shows,
and a painting exhibition. Six months
later,40% of the student teachers who
took part in this program presented, in
a large meeting, the results of the im
provement of their teaching of students
and theireffort to spread the information
and the educational process they expe
rienced among other colleagues in infor
mal courses.
The Secretariate of Education of S?o
Paulo continued the program of prepar
ing their art teachers throughwinter and
summer courses offered by the Univer
sity of S?o Paulo, which had continued
to stress the idea of teaching image
through image.
Those courses at the University of S?o
Paulo are based on a concept of art
education as an epistemology of art or
art education as an intermediarybetween
art and the public. The idea is that in
formed art education can prepare human
beings who are able to develop sensibility
and creativity through the understanding
of art during theirwhole life.Another idea
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that supports the same courses is that
all professional activities involved with
image (TV, publishing houses, advertis
ing, textiles, etc.) and with the manmade
environment (architecture, fashion, fur
niture, etc.) are better developed by peo
ple who have some knowledge of art.
Those two ideas formed the organ
ization of the art courses at USP for
primary and secondary school teachers
of the Secretariat of Education of S?o
Paulo, including not only painting, sculp
ture, and drawing, but also design, TV,
and video. Several in-service courses
were organized inother states. The pro
gram to prepare teachers for the CIEPs,
was created by the government of Rio
de Janeiro in 1983-86 to revitalize edu
cation, using chiefly art education. The
conception of art was expressionistic,
stressing self-expression that reflects the
aesthetic experience of the child. The
government changed and theCIEPs proj
ect stopped. Even the buildings are being
used by the population for other pur
poses.
Another program for revitalizing edu
cation that gives great importance to art
is the program for literacy (firstand sec
ond grades) of GEMPA, a nongovern
mental group financed through projects
by UNESCO, the Ford Foundation, and
others inRio Grande do Sul. Based on
the pedagogy of Emilia Ferrero (Mexico),
they use art for concept formation, ca
tharsis, and the development of motor
ability. The preparation of art teachers
for teaching firstgrade is a priority of
this very successful program that is in
fluencing the whole country. Another in
teresting program that should be men
tioned is the art education project founded
by "Fazendo Artes" of FUNARTE, a fed
eral foundation forarts of theMinistry of
Culture. Those projects stressed com
munity art for children, adolescents, and
art teachers. One of the best took place
in Canelinha, Rio Grande do Sul, and
systematically explored images of art
works of the catalogue of the S?o Paulo
Biannual Art Exhibition.
ArtEducation inBrazil 83
 The Bienal de S?o Paulo, itselfcreated
in 1987 with funds fromVITAE Founda
tion, is a program for the preparation of
art teachers and their students in art
appreciation and culminated in ateliers
foryoungsters inthe XIX Bienal. A follow
up with the art teachers is taking place.
A very small percentage of secondary
school and university teachers agree with
the necessity to teach art through art,
image through image. The article by Viv
ent Lanier, "Returning Art to Art Educa
tion,"7 was translated into Portuguese
and published in the magazine Ar'te in
1984. Ithad a great impact on the better
educated art teachers along with the book
The Socialization of Art8 by Nestor Can
clini, an Argentinian writer who lives in
Mexico. However, the art teachers still
do not know how to introduce images or
how to set the limitson students' self
expression. Most of them,who fora long
time practiced the drawing of objects
from nature with their students at the
university,are shocked with the introduc
tion of images in their classrooms and
with children observing adult artwork.
The prejudice against using images is
widespread and strongest in the elemen
tary school.
Since 1983, despite some effortsmade
by the state government to develop the
knowledge of the art teachers, we still
have more than 50% of the teachers in
elementary schools (1st to 4th grade)
who have only a 4th grade education.
Although they do not have any prepa
ration they teach all subjects, including
art. One of the reasons why elementary
school teachers are uneducated is low
salaries. A person who finished second
ary school makes more money as a sec
retary than as an elementary school
teacher. As a result, we have teachers
giving art classes that have never read
any book on art education and think that
art inschool is to give students coloring
sheets with hearts forMother's Day, sol
diers for Independence Day, and so on.
These teachers have never heard of self
expression or aesthetic education. On
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the other hand, the learned teachers are
Intoxicated by the idea of self-expres
sion. In a paper presented at the Art
Education Congress in the Southern
States inFlorianopolis inNovember 1988,
Susana Vieira da Cunha pointed out that,
according to her research inRoi Grande
do Sul, for educated art teachers art
means: intuitionor affect and, as a result
they think that "art educators don't need
to think" and "art is only to make,"
excluding the possibility of the observa
tion and understanding of art.
In 1987 I began an art education pro
gram at the Museum of Contemporary
Art combining studio work with History
of Art and the study of artworks. The
methodology used for the study of an
artwork varies; according to the back
ground of the teacher itmay be aes
thetics, semiotics, semiology, iconology,
gestalt principles, etc.
We had been very careful not to trans
form the study of an artwork intoa simple
questionnaire. This simplification is hap
pening with themethodology of theGetty
Foundation despite the complex and the
oretical framework constructed by Harry
Broudy, because the art teachers are
reducing art analysis or appreciation to
a set of questions and answers ? a mere
school exercise that reduces the study
to a mediocre level and simplifies the
condensation of the significances of an
artwork, limitingthe imagaination of the
viewer.
To understand the relationship of sig
nificance inside images we have been
helped by systematizations of Louis
Marin,9 Jean-Louis Schefer,10Oscar Mor
rina y Maria Elena Jubrias,11 Edmund
Burke Feldman, Harry Broudy, Jacob
Bronowski, Rudolf Arnheim, and others.
Our approach to art history isnot linear,
but, instead, provides a context for the
artwork in time and its circumstances.
Instead of being preoccupied inshowing
the so-called "evolution" of the art forms
through history,we intend to show that
art is not isolated from everyday life.
Despite being a product of fantasy and
 imagination, art is not separated from
economics, politics, and the cultural pat
terns thatoperate insociety. Ideas, emo
tions, and languages differ from time to
time and from place to place and there
is no isolated and uninfluenced view. We
build history fromeach artwork examined
by the children, establishing connections
and relationships with other artworks and
other manifestations of culture.
In 1987 and 1988, the funding of the
studio by some corporations made it
possible to offer the children the best art
materials available inBrazil, including a
copy machine. Those special conditions,
allied to a collection of 5,000 works of
art that includes the best of French, Ital
ian,12 and Latin American modern art,
stimulated the art educators in the mu
seum. However, some art educators vis
iting the museum were shocked at the
reinterpretations of works of artists by
children and accused us of restrictingthe
children's creative process.
I decided to carry out some research
into the reactions of art teachers to the
introductionof images inart teaching and
the art productions of children who are
influenced by images. Iorganized a lec
ture showing how artists have been bor
rowing images from other artists, either
obliterating references to its origin or
clearly as quotations like those of the
Pop artists. My lecture begins with the
analysis of Giorgine's "Venus" (Dresden
Art Gallery) taken firstby Titian for his
"Resting Venus" (Florence, Uffizi) and
later by Manet for his "Olympia" (Paris,
Louvre) that finallywas quoted by Mel
Ramos in "Manet's Olympia" (Chicago,
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Norton G.
Newmann) and Larry Rivers in "I like
Olympia inBlack Face" (Paris, M.N.A.M.
Centre National d'Art et de Culture
Georges Pompidou). The other examples
of art about art were taken chiefly from
the book by Jean Lipman and Richard
Marshall.13
My idea was to persuade the art ed
ucators of the following:
1. that ifthe artist uses images of other
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artists,why withhold the art images from
the children;
2. that ifwe expose children to art
images by preparing them to understand
those images, we are preparing them to
understand the images that surround
them in theirenvironment;
3. that the virginperception of the child
does not actually exist once it is proved
that 80% of our informal knowledge
comes through images;
4. that in art learning,mimesis in the
Greek sense of a "search for similarity"
and not as a copy? is present.
The second part of the lecture was
planned to show some graphic interpre
tations of artworks by children. I was
careful to choose at least 10 examples
of interpretationsof the same work, trying
to persuade art teachers thatself-expres
sion was not repressed. In the case of
the Max Bill work, one child transformed
the abstract sculpture of the artist intoa
bird; another represented the motion of
the work, but not itsmateriality, and an
other represented only the holder of the
sculpture. Other children of the same
group chose other works and two others
refused to interpretany artwork, drawing
their usual boat and sunset. From June
to October 1988, I chose six occasions
to talk to large audiences of art educators
around the country. For three groups I
gave only the firstpart of the lecture, the
one planned to persuade them of the
necessity of introducingart images inart
classes, of studying the images with the
children, of giving historical information
and letting them interpret images, but I
did not show any interpretations of art
work by children contained inthe second
part of the lecture.
The first lecturewas given at Curitiba,
state of Parana, foruniversity art profes
sors and students of art education
courses at universities. The second lec
turewas given at Florian?polis, state of
Santa Catarina, for university art profes
sors and students of art education
courses at universities. The third lecture
was given at Brasilia, Distrito Federal, for
Art Education inBrazil 85
university art professors, students of art
education courses at universities, and,
mostly, secondary school art teachers
(more than 50%).
The lecture aroused great interest in
the audience; people asked questions but
nobody disagreed with my affirmations.
I delivered both parts of the lecture
(showing the works made by children
interpretingartworks) during three other
meetings. The firstwas at Recife, state
of Pernambuco, for university art profes
sors, students of art education courses
at the universities, and, mostly, second
ary school art teachers (more than 50%).
The second was at Florianopolis, state
of Santa Catarina, for university art pro
fessors, students of art education courses
at the university, and, mostly, secondary
school art teachers (more than 50%). The
thirdwas at Uberl?ndia, state of Minas
Gerais, for university art professors, stu
dents of art education courses at the
university, and secondary school art
teachers (8%).
Only the group at Uberl?ndia accepted
the arguments. The two other groups
had aggressive reactions. Instead of
questions they sent me written accusa
tions of being conservative, alienated, a
slave of internationalcapitalism, of push
ing back art education, etc. In Floriano
polis there was a group of university
professors who had previously accepted
the arguments in favor of images in art
classes; at the second lecture, this same
argument, using the same images con
nected with works by children based on
art images, was strongly rejected.
One invited speaker, who was almost
hysterically applauded by the public,
manifested himself against evaluation and
even comments on the artwork of the
students inclassroom and defined art as
"a loud laugh to oxygen lifewhen the
old age comes." The acclamation of lais
sez faire in art education and the emo
tionalism of art for some observers of
the stituation is connected with the ide
ology of the Escolinhas de Arte Move
ment; but in spite of the fact that the
86 Ana Mae Barbosa
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congress of Florianopolis was organized
by the Escolinha de Arte de Florianopolis,
I think the reaction against systematiza
tion ismore widespread and is not only
an echo of the Escolinhas14 ideology.
The Escolinhas movement lost power
against the power of the universities in
the 1970s, and the celula mater of the
movement, the Escolinha de Arte do Bra
zil inRio de Janeiro, lost credibility after
the wrong educational policies of the
1980s.
Perhaps the seed of the belief inspon
taneity came from a simplified interpre
tation of the practice of the Escolinhas
in the 1960s but ithas been developed
as a kind of self-protection by the art
teachers, who were poorly prepared by
the universities. Art teachers get their
diplomas but they are unable to provide
an aesthetic and artistic education that
gives historical information,understand
ing of the visual grammar, and under
standing of art making as self-expres
sion. A lotof learningwould be necessary
that the universities do not provide. The
art teachers react against what theywere
not prepared to teach. Besides, it is in
teresting to note that inthe state of Santa
Catarina (captial: Florianopolis), up to the
time of the congress, therewas no state
association of art education and that it
was created during the congress. The
association brought a kind of political
strength that gives more security,which
fosters more daring conceptualization.
Art educators in Brazil (in S?o Paulo
alone we have 18,000) are being con
frontedwith a new problem that needs
both political and conceptual strength. A
new federal law to replace the Federal
Law of 1971 is being studied. A project
has already been written that excludes
art from the curriculum of primary and
secondary schools. At this moment of
democratization there are some preju
dices against art in schools, not only
because itsteaching isweak but because
itwas a requirement of federal law edited
by the military dictatorship. This is the
hidden cause of the exclusion of art from
schools in the new organization of Bra
zilian education. The explicit reason given
by the educators is that education in
Brazil has to be directed toward the re
covery of the contents and that art edu
cation has no content. It is somewhat
similar to the back-to-basics movement
in the U.S.
Iwould say that the future of art ed
ucation in Brazil will be connected with
three complementary approaches. The
recognition of the importance of the study
of images in art teaching in particular
and ineducation ingeneral. The neces
sity of image literacyshould be stressed
through different theories of images and
through the relationship between image
and cognition. The Museum of Contem
porary Art at the University of S?o Paulo
and the art education experience at the
XIX Bienal of S?o Paulo are current ex
amples of this tendency.
Another approach that will influence
the future of art education in Brazil is
school programs that reinforce the artis
tic and aesthetic heritage of the students
and take their environment into consid
eration. The experience of CIEP's Rio de
Janeiro could not be evaluated because
political reasons stopped it in the very
beginning, but it is a widespread ten
dency inBrazil. If it is notwell conducted,
itcan create cultural ghettos and maintain
groups tied to the codes of their own
culture without allowing decodification of
other cultures.
There is the danger of stressing the
lack of communication between popular
and high culture, making mutual under
standing impossible. For the popular
group, it is stillmore dangerous because
theywill not have access to the erudite
code that is the dominant code in our
society.
We will see in the future the strong
influenceof themovements of community
arts in informal art education. Those
movements overcome the danger ofwith
holding higher-level informationfrom the
popular class. Community arts inBrazil
are characterized by the interchange of
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social classes instreet festivals, regional
and national commemorations, religious
feasts, etc. Institutions likeFUNARTE are
developing community arts programs of
(Projeto Fazendo Arte) on a nationwide
scale and each year the states secretar
iates of culture are more engaged in
those kinds of programs because they
promote votes in elections. Theoretical
assessment of these practices are needed
for the community arts approach so as
to avoid manipulation, which can trans
form them intomerely political campaign
programs.
Besides those three more general ap
proaches concerning the future of art
education inBrazil, therewill be another
approach centered on the orientation of
art education toward design, especially
forhigh schools. The consciousness that
the artifactwill bring more quality of life
if it has not only functional properties,
but, at the same time, appeals to the
imagination, is beginning to come into
view. This idea, togetherwith the certainty
that the producer of the artifactwill be
more efficientwith some knowledge of
art, predominates in some of the pro
grams that the University of S?o Paulo
organized for public high school art
teachers with the help of the Center for
Design of FIESP (Federation of Industry
of the State of S?o Paulo). These ten
dencies will guarantee for art education
the role of transmitter of culture and
aesthetic values in the context of a third
world country.
Notes
1. Barbosa, A. M. material.
Unpublished
2. Ferraz, M. H. T., and Siqueira, P. I.Arte
ou livro
educag?o: Vivencia, experienciag?o
did?tico? SP: Edic?es Loyola, 1987, 26-27.
3. Barbosa, A. M. Teoria e pr?tica da edu
cag?o artiistica.SP: EditoraCultrix,1975,1978,
1982, 1985, 86-87.
4. Ferraz, M. H. T., and Siqueira, op. cit,
27.
5. Colegio Santa Cruz and Colegio Equipe.
ArtEducation inBrazil 87
 6. The festival was organized by Claudia Museum of Contemporary Art. From this a

Toni, Gl?ucia Amaral, and Ana Mae Barbosa. copy was made by the Museum of Modern
7. Lanier, V. "Retornando arte ? arte-edu Art, which is reproduced in The role of disci
Ar'te n? 10. pline-based art education inAmerica's schools,
cag?o."
8. Canclini, N. G. A social izac?o da arte. published by theGetty Foundation.
SP: Cultrix, 1980. 13. Lipman, J., and Marshall, R. Art about

9. Marin, L. Estudios La lec art. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978

semiologicos:
tura de la imagem. Madrid: 14. Barbosa, A. M. Unpublished material.
Communication,
1978.
10. Schefer, J.-L. Scenographie d'un ta
bleau. Paris: Editora du Seuil, 1969.
Ana Mae Barbosa
11. Morrina, 0., and Jubrias, M. E. Habana: Museu de Arte Contempor?nea
Editorial Gente Nueva, 1982. Da Universidade de S?o Paulo
12. Unique Forms of Continuity (1913), a Postal 22031 -CED 01499
plaster by Umberto Boccioni, belongs to the S?o Paulo, Brazil

88 Ana Mae Barbosa

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