Why We Make Art

Richard Hickman

Description

Does art have any use or real purpose in today’s society? Why do governments around the world spend millions on art education? Rejecting the vogue for social and cultural accounts of the nature of art-making, this book is largely psychological in its approach to discussing art-making and its place in education.

The ‘we’ in the title is intentionally polemical, with the author claiming a universal, i.e. pan-cultural basis for ‘art’-making activities - or rather activities which can be described as ‘creating aesthetic significance’. Developmental issues in art education are examined, together with the nature of learning in art, with reference to concept acquisition.

Section two of the four sections which comprise the book, focuses upon some ‘mini case-studies’, detailing conversations with people talking about their art-making, together with some autobiographical reflections. Section three then considers the issues in art and learning which can be gleaned from various respondents’ accounts of their making activities; these include the nature of the artistic personality and the role of art in self-identity and self-esteem. Other topics touched upon include imagination, expression and creativity. The concluding section examines the notion of creating aesthetic significance as a fundamental human urge, drawing upon work done in evolutionary psychology.

Whilst questioning whether schools as they are currently conceived are the best places for teaching and learning anything, an art curriculum based upon the acquisition of ‘threshold skills’, such as drawing, together with a gradual introduction to the appreciation of visual form is advocated. Declaring that schools of the early twenty-first century will soon be seen as as dated as the Victorian workhouse, the successful art room, with a learner-centred rather than discipline-centred philosophy is put forward as a model for schools and schooling.

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• General officer
• Television
• General
• ART
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 09 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841504407
• Langue: English

Extrait

Why We Make Art
and why it is taught
Cover: Untitled Acrylic on Board 30 60 cm. Gareth Watkins, 1999.
Gareth was Artist in Residence at Homerton College Cambridge during 1999;
he took his own life in the following year.
Why We Make Art
and why it is taught
by Richard Hickman
First published in the UK in 2010 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2010 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2010 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Rebecca Vaughan-Williams Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-84150-378-3 / EISBN 978-1-84150-440-7
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Preface to second edition
Foreword
Antony Gormley
Section One: Art and Art Education
Art
Art in education
The place of knowing and understanding art
Developmental issues in art education
Learning in art
Concepts and art learning
Aims, rationales and desirable outcomes
Concluding remarks for Section One
Notes and references for Section One
Section Two: Conversations and reflections - some mini case-studies
Introduction
Some autobiographical reflections
People talking about their art making
Concluding remarks for Section Two
Notes and references for Section Two
Section Three: Issues in art and learning
Introduction
The artistic personality
Creating aesthetic significance
Notes on imagination and expression
Identity
A few words on creativity
Art and schooling
Concluding remarks for Section Three
Notes and references for Section Three
Section Four: Concluding chapter
Introduction
Art as a fundamental human urge
Concept learning re-visited
The art curriculum
On drawing
The appreciation of visual form
Assessing school art
The art room as a model for schools and schooling
Concluding remarks
Notes and references for Section Four
References
Appendix I: Coding system for determining levels of understanding in art
Appendix II: General Educational Aims and the Role of Art in Education
Appendix III: Barrett s worthwhile outcomes...
Appendix IV: Prompt Questions
Appendix V: Questionnaire on aims for art design in education
Subject Index and Name Index
T ABLES AND I LLUSTRATIONS
List of Tables
Table 1. Stages in Artistic Development
Table 2. A developmental model for art learning
List of Illustrations
Untitled by Gareth Watkins
Figure 1a. Celebration by Miki
Figure 1b. Market Stalls by Mami
Figure 2a. A Prehistoric Scene by RD Hickman, age 11
Figure 2b. Pteranodon by RD Hickman, age 11
Figure 2c. (My Shirt is Alive With) Several Clambering Doggies of Inappropriate Hue by RD Hickman, age 43
Figure 3a. Fierce dragons
Figure 3b. Chipper Had a Dog
Figure 4. Kudu Batik , by Joseph *
Figure 5. Stephen Duncalf: Desk with Lamp
Figure 6. Alex Butler: Around the Heights (still from video)
Figure 7. Anthony Green: The 40th Wedding Anniversary
Figure 8. John Laven: Rust
Figure 9. Libby Tribe: Slate
Figure 10. John Fardell: Desert Island Teacher
Figure 11. Unkown: Graffiti
Figure 12. Paolo Ucello: St. George and the Dragon
Figure 13. Alexi Hickman: Meaningful Scribbles (aged 2)
Figure 14a. Alexi Hickman: Grater
Figure 14b. Alexi Hickman: Toys
Figure 14c. Alexi Hickman: Unibond
* As with other young respondents, I have used a pseudonym here.
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to put on record my gratitude to the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education and Homerton College for giving me time and space.
Many people have given practical, emotional and intellectual help with this book. I want to highlight the following people without whom the book could not have been written: Firstly, my wife Anastasia for her constant support also to Dr Anne Sinkinson for her helpful and perceptive observations on the initial draft and to Dr. Ros McLellan for her extremely efficient and thorough analysis of questionnaires.
I would also like to thank my PGCE students, who, year on year continue to amaze me with their commitment to, and enthusiasm for, art in education.
Of course, to all the people I interviewed, especially those who later took the trouble to e-mail or write to me with their thoughts on art making, I am greatly indebted.
R.H.
W HY W E M AKE A RT AND WHY IT IS TAUGHT
Preface to second edition
In the first edition of this book, the preface began with the following questions: Are artists born or made? What is the driving force behind producing art-works? Are schools facilitating or denying artistic development? What kind of art curriculum in our schools could cater for the developing needs of young people? What is the value in learning about art? Is assessment of young people s performance in art a help or a hindrance? These questions are still relevant and remain central to the issues that are examined here. Interviews with artists, school pupils, students and others who create things we might call art have helped provide an insight into the artistic process and the motivating force behind it.
The biggest and perhaps the most controversial of the above questions is the first and it is this one that has been re-visited in this edition. I chose to use the word we in the title to indicate that I really do mean we as humans, and not as a blinkered, parochial or chauvinistic term; an alternative title that I considered briefly was why art is made but I prefer the all-inclusive term, acknowledging that many will wince at the assumption that art can be used pan-culturally. I am hoping that my arguments, though based on, in some cases, fairly limited evidence can be seen to have wider relevance. As Steven Pinker has noted [ 1 ] it has become taboo to even consider the possibility that human beings are born with certain aptitudes. When I was a young art teacher, the standard response to parents, colleagues and others who dared to suggest that a desire to draw and paint might be inherited, was that that sort of thinking ended up with the holocaust. This book is not about individual talent or artistic giftedness , it is concerned with the notion that the desire to create is a fundamental human urge which often unfolds naturally, but can be stunted or developed by cultural influences, including schooling.
Section One gives a brief general overview of the nature of art and its relationship to education. For the purposes of this book I use a fairly broad brush in the first section, in order to sketch in some background information; I hope that I will be forgiven for relying-perhaps too heavily-on examining the UK s (specifically the English) system and its curriculum, but it is one with which I am most familiar and can provide a useful model for examination.
I have chosen to focus on aspects of artistic development as this is a theme which is fundamental to the issues which I am exploring. The core issues discussed in this book are derived from some introspection and contemplation upon my own practice and this has helped inform focused conversations with a number of people from differing backgrounds. The educational and other settings where I have worked and studied have enabled me to interact with other individuals who have been involved in art making. This has given me many opportunities to talk about art in a personal and meaningful way. I have had the opportunity to meet with and talk to a range of different people about their art making activities; the outcomes from these meetings are presented and discussed in Section Two . I have therefore chosen not to focus upon social and cultural issues; instead I have taken a broadly psychological perspective, informed by individual people s accounts as well as drawing upon autobiographical and textual information.
Section Three explores some of the issues which arise from the testimonies given in Section Two . These include a consideration of the nature and purpose of imagination and the role of expression in art making as it relates to personal fulfilment; I make connections between this and themes of self-identity and self-esteem. Psychological issues are discussed, including the nature of creativity and its association with art. A major focus of this section is on schools and schooling. I present a view of schools as institutions which are antipathetic to creativity in general and art making in particular.
Some of the issues highlighted in Section Three are considered and some suggestions for an educational approach based on developmental psychology, with the art room as a model for schools and schooling are put forward. I advocate the desirability of giving school students more of a voice and I also devote some space to the perennially problematic issue of assessing art. The final section, Section Four , considers the notion of creating aesthetic significance as a fundamental human urge; the second edition develops further this notion, drawing upon recent work in evolutionary psychology.
I have attempted to draw together quite a few diverse ideas, culminating in reflections and observations in the final section. Some of these ideas are relatively difficult to handle, while others are lighter and easier to read; this is reflected in the different sections. Although there is a development of an argument hidden in there somewhere, each section ought to make sense on its own. To help the flow of the writing, I use the term art throughout the book as a kind of shorthand. I hope that readers will be able to determine from the context whether this refers to art and design (the preferred current term in the UK) or the arts , or ind