some basic considerations about "basic art"

National Art Education Association

Some Basic Considerations about "Basic Art"Author(s): Judith M. BurtonSource: Art Education, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Jul., 1991), pp. 34-41Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193282 .

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Some Basic Considerations About "Basic Art"

Judith M. Burton

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Girl, age 5. "My Mommy in bed with her best necklace." "...need to construct objects and Images representing the self's relationship to the surrounding world."

I want to begin by making some general arguments. I want to suggest that the creation of an end product is not the primary reason for an art lesson, although a product is usually the result. Similarly, I want to suggest that the acquisition of techniques (or tricks-of-the-trade) is also not the primary reason for an art lesson; although such acquisitions are often the

result. What then lies beyond product and process in the creation of art? The question is worth asking because by looking into the "beyond" we will find much that is fundamental to the "here and now." Let me venture into this '"beyond" by suggesting that both product and process are participants in the construction of visual images which serve to connect inner subjective experiences with outer objective experiences of human living. Furthermore, let me add that the fashioning of such connections engages and integrates the work of the senses, the intellect, the imagination, aesthetic judgement; and also relies upon a nuanced responsivity to an artistic medium.

The Issue of Content Lest you think that I diminish "art" in all this, let me say up front that what makes visual images unique is their capacity to integrate within one whole a variety of modes of knowing and responding. What makes visual images compelling is that, if they have done their work well, they open doors to never before comprehended visions of our shared human living. If my arguments are well founded, they place a heavy burden on education. For the creation of artistic products and the acquisition of technical processes belong to a larger human enterprise; namely that of reflecting on the nature of our self-world relationships, of shaping them in a medium and, thus, endowing life with what we might call an "aesthetic presence."

All of this brings me to the first of my specific concerns today, that is to raise question about artistic content and its locus in human experience. At the risk of flying in the face of contemporary winds which tend to see the actual creation of art by children as either inconsequential, or simple messy

34 Art Education/July 1991



therapy for the hands, I would like to argue that artistic content, in its fundamental sense, is more truly engaged within the practice of art than it is in the contempla- tion of art. Not, let me hasten to say, that the acts of making and contemplating can be thus easily divorced; for as I will argue later, the one sets the scene for engaging with the other. Now, what is the nature of this content that is more than the end product it is shaped within?

My starting point, is taken from the earlier writings of Viktor Lowenfeld, who argued, and I paraphrase, that we do not paint and draw objects in our world, but we paint and draw our relationships with them. The idea that visual images represent and engage in the construction of self-other relationships is not particularly new and has been the topic of much discussion in the writings of philosophers, psychologists, and even artists themselves. Artists often speak of such relationships in terms of "ideas about things", ideas which lurk beyond appearance. For instance, deKooning said:

... painting isn't just the visual thing that reaches your retina - it is what lies behind it and in it.

David Hockney expressed a similar concern:

... when you paint your parents you paint an idea of them as well ... and the problem always is, is that part of the reality?

And from the sculptor Anthony Caro:

... The depth of human content is what raises art to its most profound level ... human content resides in and finds expression within the language of the medium.

Artists such as deKooning, Hockney, and Caro remind us that artistic content is not so much an ideologically identifiable phenomena, but is rather found in the expression of ideas about living and relating ideas which incorporate over time relatively constant human elements. This, of course, is why art has a history!

Practically speaking, how might we envision a product as exemplifying ideas

about human content or aspects of human relationships? It was, perhaps, Donald Winnicott in Great Britain who attempted to show how the inner and outer worlds of human experience come to form mutually interdependent bonds, and who argued for the significance of this for symbol-making and for the culture. Central to his work, Winnicott coined the term "transitional object." By this, he meant those bits of blanket, cloth, furry toys and such like with which an infant first plays and from which she cannot be parted. The transitional object comes to act as a first "primitive" symbol, for it represents salient qualities of the self-mother (caretaker) relationship such as warmth, comfort, softness, and familiar smell - so necessary to maintain- ing the infant's emotional integrity.

Endowed with such important qualities, over time and increasingly often the transitional object is used independently of the mother to symbolize her in her ab- sence, to quell uncertainty, fear, and doubt. According to Winnicott, the transitional object assumes its symbolic powers at the very moment the infant experiences separation from the mother or primary caretaker. The sensed parting of a self- other once symbiotically fused and certain, prompts a strong need in the infant to reconstruct the relationship at a new and more differentiated level of complexity. It is, thus, through the agency of these highly unlikely "transitional objects" that infants fashion new networks of ideas and responses to self and other; in doing so they acquire control over and fresh insights into their developing worlds.

For very young children, transitional objects are "found" things endowed with living symbolic powers. While in development, the importance of such "found" objects diminishes to memory; the need to construct objects and images representing the self's relationship to the surrounding world survives intact. A quick glance at what children choose to paint, draw, and sculpt, for instance, is illuminating, for we encounter a clear pattern of events revealing the dynamics and growth of self-world connections. For example, we see in the early visual images of children attempts to differentiate between, and intertwine, ideas about fantasy and reality in which defini- tions are fluid and ego-centric. In early

Art Education/July 1991 35



childhood we encounter works which focus specifically on significant others (family and friends), revealing the need to maintain a sense of an emotionally stable environ- ment at the center of rapidly expanding world views. Later works of childhood focus specifically on the depiction of groups and events which span divergent interests, time, and space. Here we find children relating to their worlds as industrious and curious participants, as critical elements necessary to their growing conceptions of a dynamic whole. In early adolescence, images reflect questions and concerns about identity, alienation, realism, truth, and morality. Self-other relationships undergo radical restructuring involving much conflict, anxiety, and confusion, all of which find expression in adolescent art works. Later, if development has been understood and supported, youngsters create products which connect present to past to future, products which explore new and untried visions of self and world. In these images, the self becomes explorer, voyager, adventurer, concerned citizen, and, of course, artist!

Beyond the years of schooling we see our culture is entirely made up of products representing centuries of human effort to shape and express personal meaning. Indeed, the prime virtue of all great art is that it stands as an independent entity in the world, yet makes visible compelling visions of our shared reality. Thus, visual art, which has its very origins in our shared biological histories of infancy, ties individu- als to culture across time and space. This connectedness is not so much a by- product of factual knowledge about art, about skill and style, as it results from the fundamental human capacity to transform a concrete material into a symbol of self- understanding.

Material Transformation The point I am making with all of this is that children's products are more than nice objects to display in the school library, more than expressions of passing emotional states, more than inferior mirrors of adult conventional practices. Put directly, children's art in all its forms embodies profound sensibilities about the connections which bind self to world. Such content is hardly found in, or delivered by, dry factual presentation of the works of mature

artists; nor, let it be said, is it supported by acquiring conventional technical formulas, which as Robert Henri pointed out:

... learned without a purpose is a formula which when used knocks the life out of any idea to which it is applied.

If our definition of "life in art" has its roots in this sense of "connectedness," then how we support the shaping of content through practice becomes a crucial factor in the education we provide.

I said just now that content is formed from the fundamental human capacity to "act" on static materials and transform them into active elements expressive of ideas, feelings, and responses. Let me push this idea a bit further. We know that the origins of image-making occur out of young children's sensory-motor responses to materials. We know too that as young people grow and develop, they acquire new and more complex understandings of the qualities and properties of the materials they use. Indeed, research is beginning to show that as youngsters' thoughts and feelings become more complex over time, this exerts a "pull" on the emergence of new concepts of line, form, color, and relationships of composition. Moreover, and most importantly, while the ability to conceive and organize materials becomes more adroit and nuanced with age, new abilities and skills do not part company with former understandings. Rather, new responses to materials are layered, conjoining with earlier organizations; thus extending the range, depth, and flexibility of youngsters' image-making possibilities.

I want to argue that, all things being equal, if the growth of children's responses to materials keeps pace with their expanding view of self and world, then materials can be used to stretch out to the world, used to integrate inner sensibilities with the outer experiences that occasioned them. The rich and layered repertoire of responses to materials that children have acquired can then be called upon to integrate the many and varied aspects of experience which characterize the richness of their living. An important aspect of this expanding repertoire, one that must be kept alive in learning is the sensory dimension to children's responses to materials. For it is the sensory dimension that first




gives life and meaning to visual images. Indeed, we are beginning to understand more clearly it is through this sensory dimension of experience that as adults we continue to endow the static elements of art with life, vigor, and energy.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. At the age of adolescence, youngsters raise powerful questions about the representation of the third dimension and show interest in illusionism. In response to this, many youngsters are taught the tricks of the trade - one or two point perspective. In interviews with very many young people in late adolescence and early adulthood I hear time and again: "They taught me perspective at school and for a while it was good; but I soon gave up art!"

Now young adolescents have good reasons for being interested in the representation of the third dimension. Their physical selves are changing rather rapidly, thus throwing into confusion their erstwhile settled and secure sense of self-in-space. As they grow and acquire new bodies, new and expanded limits and protuberances, they begin to experience self and space in very new and different ways. Thus physical development not only raises new questions about self-in-space for young people, it also precipitates the need to explore the

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Above: Boy, age 13. Drawing of a friend. "Adolescent images reflect questions and concerns about identify and truth." Below: Girl, age 9. Skating before an audience."...children relating to their worlds as industrious and curious participants."

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Above: Boy, age 14. Self-portrait. "Youngsters of this age...begin to know that 'not all is what it seems' and much exists beyond the confines of concrete appearance." Below: Girl, age 12. "My favorite pet." "Children's art embodies profound sensibilities about the connections which bind self to world."

limits and dynamics of space in ways often reminiscent of the sensory-motor behavior of infancy. On the other hand, youngsters of this age are beginning to conceive of their spatial worlds in new, intellectually abstract and multi-dimensional ways. They begin to know that "not all is what it seems" and realize that much exists beyond the confines of concrete appearance.

Such self-world experiences as these are not easily or comfortably represented through the direct acquisition of formal, static rules of perspective. In the first instance, it is crucial to recognize that young people introduce the third dimension into their paintings and drawings in a piecemealfashion, part by part; and how this will occur is entirely dependent on context, or on what is of particular salience in the idea or object being represented. Indeed, it is not until quite late in adolescence, it would seem, that young people develop a coordinated repertoire of spatial depiction they can apply to almost any object or idea of interest to them. Second, the representation of the third dimension calls upon two rather different spatial

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ideas, that of vantage point-orientation to viewer, and that of volume-mass and roundness. It would seem that both spatial ideas follow rather different developmental paths, sometimes in conflict, and they coalesce into a larger and more abstract conception of spatial representation only late in development. Finally, and most crucial, the ability to represent the third dimension in painting and drawing has everything to do with the possibility of calling upon a set of flexible and nuanced understandings about such concepts as direction, depth, and movement in line and color. For only if youngsters can construct correspondences between the dynamic and sensory qualities of their experiences of space and of lines and colors, can more complex roots be established to their representational repertoires. It is from a new sensory base of understandings that graphic concepts, first fashioned relative to the flat two-dimensional surface, are progressively transformed into more abstract ideas about the dynamics of lines and colors. Static graphic elements are understood to move in-and-out, by implica- tion inviting eye and mind to joumey into the enclosed spaces within the picture plane. What is important about this developmental transition in abilities to conceive representational space, is that in education it should be fully understood and nurtured such that the life and dynamism by which human presence has historically communi- cated itself through the act of representation, is truly preserved.

Yes, of course, we can provide youngsters with graphic formulas which allow them to trace the contours of appearance. Such formulas, however, do not encourage youngsters to CONCEIVE space representationally, nor use materials in the service of connecting inner ideas and feelings about self-in-space with actual perceptions of being in-space. Given a cursory glance, formulas look good and give the appearance of competence; their value is short-lived, however, for they are inflexible and certainly have the effect of, in Henri's words, "knocking the life" out of ideas.

Imagination and Engagement I am arguing that it is in the creatioh of their own works that fundamental artistic learning takes place for all young people.

For, as hands move with lines across surfaces, so journeys are taken into the depth of experiences of a kind like no other; as hands and minds move in con- cert, one informing the other, so corners of the world are uncovered and new knowledge stretches the boundaries of the old. All sorts of possibilities for understanding and reaching out become possible once children are empowered with knowledge and trust in the materials of art: crucial connections are made between ideas and actuality, between thoughts and feelings, between concepts of self and others important to the self, between a sense of personal artistry and the world of art beyond the self. The driving force behind all this connection-making is, of course, the human need and desire to make sense of the world and the self in the world. The arts are important because in the act of making we actually engage with our world of experience while at the same time we are invited to deeper reflection of that world as our ideas and responses become visual realities: as paintings and drawings emerge from our materials.

Two crucial ingredients in all this are, of course, the workings of the imagination and the aesthetic decisions that endow a work of art with its particular life and presence. In our desire to teach children all we think they should know, we sometimes forget that it is the imagination that allows us to probe the hidden and undiscovered dimensions of things, it is the imagination that allows us to enlarge our horizons and transcend limits. The imagination is one of humankind's most precious capacities since, when linked to acts of representation, it allows us to transform what is empirically impossible into a symbolic reality. However, contrary to what is often thought, imagination is not entirely the preserve of the unconscious domain of experience, for much imagining can, and does, take place at the fully conscious level. We must give the imagination a privileged place in the art studios of schools, and we need to help young people know how to play with ideas; how, in James Joyce's words, to have "two thinks at a time."

If the work of the imagination is to become part and parcel of artistic development and learning, it needs to be supported by the kind of nuanced understand-




Boy, age 17. "Aesthetic decisions are...not entirely independent of youngsters' knowledge of images and art in the culture that surrounds them. But since...aesthetic decision making is so intimately linked with the play of imagination, there will be a level...that is intensely personal."

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ings about materials that I have spoken about already. For the range and depth of children's understanding about materials will not only empower the journey into the imagination but also the journey out towards the creation of visual forms which link inner and outer experiences. More- over, as ideas take shape, their symbolic or representational forms will require decisions to be made which have little or no reference to the world outside. Such decisions, taken at the level of the work, in reference to the work alone, are what I think of as aesthetic decisions. These decisions are about the particular life, character, and appearance of the product as it assumes independent existence in the world apart from the self. Such decisions are, of course, not entirely independent of youngsters' knowledge of images and art in the culture that surrounds them. But since what I think of as aesthetic decision- making is so intimately linked with the play of the imagination, there will be a level to aesthetic decision-making that is intensely personal and determined by the array of engagements the individual youngsters have with their emerging product.

There is indeed much that resides beyond the product, that is layered within it, that is absolutely fundamental to artistic learning and its value in human experience and human history.

Testing and Accountability Given what I have intimated above, you can sense how I might be somewhat uncomfortable with much current thinking about testing and accountability in schools. That is not to say that I do not think some form of evaluation is in order in the art studios as in every other classroom; the question is, how is this to be carried out in the artistic domain?

Recently we have been told if we taught better, if we taught facts and formulas, we could test the results of our teaching and be held accountable. The pressure to raise standards, in the arts and all other subject matter disciplines, is inevitably linked to examinations and tests.

In fact we are fast moving towards the establishment of national guidelines and norms for assessing "art content knowledge" ... a visual arts version of what every literate American should know! Indeed, there is an accumulating flurry of interest in tests and testing across the land.

Now there ought to be as much consen- sus as possible on the general aims and objectives of art education, and all children should be provided with access to knowledge, practices, skills, and values of the culture. Indeed, a positive response to demands for accountability can only help raise the level of public understanding and support for art in education. The problem is, to insure that the forms and measure- ments adopted are appropriate to the learning we espouse, and that they help to improve provision rather than limit or distort it. It would seem, however, that testing which seeks to establish national norms, smacks more of bureaucratic convenience that it does of regard for, and sensitivity to, the process of teaching, the various needs of children and adolescents, and an understanding of the role of the visual arts in human experience.

As presently conceived, testing is to be of "output," of end products with some paper and pencil responses. However, the most easily tested outcomes are rarely those central to the leamrning process itself. It is much easier, for example, to test for artists' dates, for a particular critic's opinion, for the degree to which a work does, or does ndt, measure up to an adult exem- plar, than it is to assess the interweaving of competence, and content, and aesthetic




decision making in the construction of an imaginatively conceived painting or clay model. Unless tests are carefully con- structed, and very sophisticated, they will trivialize artistic learning by elevating facts and conventions over understanding, imagination, and artistic integration. Moreover, there is always a real danger, and a well documented one, that teachers will teach to tests in order to gain approval and maintain the legitimacy of their pro- gram. Here, time may be wasted on training youngsters to perform the tricks of "test passing" thus rubber stamping conventionalism, to the detriment of understanding, interpretation, and imagination.

The notion of bench mark, or age related, testing, has all sorts of administra- tive advantages, for it makes statistics look good and allows teachers and schools to be compared. But age related testing makes it very difficult to avoid normative procedures, norm-related criteria, and judgements based on the expectations of how 'statistically normal' children should perform. Such a comparative rating, in fact, must inevitably consign many children to the position of failure, while it fails to stretch those above the norm, a sure recipe for mediocrity. What, one might ask, happens to children who are below the norm in, for instance, art content? Are such youngsters to be counselled out, or given extra coaching?

We would also do well to remember that we are in the business of education, not training. In training it is possible to lay down absolute standards, corroborate means-end relationships directly, and judge pass or fail without difficulty. But education is more complex, changeable, and difficult to evaluate. Indeed, society needs for its very existence more than conventional academic abilities: it needs to harness and sharpen human rationality, sensibility and imagination in all their myriad modes and forms. Testing and evaluating levels of understanding and competency is, of course, not beyond the bounds of ingenuity and imagination. Education should include multiple modes of assessment including: profile reports, criterion referencing, self evaluation, portfolio assessment, as well as traditional tests and examinations. The intention of a multiple form assessment should be to

provide a full and illuminating account of the contribution of the arts to youngsters' development and which indicates in some detail their attainments. Actually, this is not so far removed from what good teachers do "on the shop floor" as they look for, and test, the concrete effects of their teaching. Thoughtful art teachers dialogue with youngsters, help them to reflect on their actions, insights, and critical responses and, in general, help to put the youngsters themselves in control of their own developing learning.

What we do not need is to return to arcane methods of testing which were deemed failures even in their own times. But, what we do need, is to consider very carefully our deeper objectives in teaching in the arts and be thoughtful in assessing whether we have accomplished them. Emphasis should be on diagnosing prob- lems and difficulties, improving learning and making opportunities. For ourselves, as teachers, we need to develop better and richer visions of where we might take children in their growth and development. We need to do more than measure accu- mulated facts, received opinion, and mechanical habits of mind. We must not demean subjectivity, imagination, and intuition, for carefully nurtured these are our strengths. Indeed, attempting to make art education accountable by submitting it to forms of testing that properly belong elsewhere may actually work against our more noble aspirations: for the results of such tests, in denying the center of the discipline, may make art education look somewhat impoverished!

We need to do so much more if we are to keep the heart, life, and spirit of our discipline alive and with it the integrity of our culture. It is a sad comment, but as Susan Sontag points out in her book Beyond Interpretation:

None of us can ever relive that innocence before all theory when art knew no need to justify itself.

Judith M. Burton is Professor and Coordinator of Programs in Art and Art Education, at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.




some basic considerations about "basic art"

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