In this seminar we discussed a wide variety of topics in aesthetics. We began with historical works by philosophers who attempted to define art, beauty, genius, and taste, from Plato on through Aquinas and Kant up to Arthur Danto in the modern period. During this survey we considered how the different philosophers' approaches to art might help us analyze some contemporary controversial and challenging examples like Damien Hirst's shark in a tank of formaldehyde or Andres Serrano's notorious Piss Christ.
In our seminar we were especially concerned with the role of art in society. To examine this we looked at how art played a role in different historical periods. We also studied examples of cross-cultural art and discussed differences between so-called “high art” or fine art and popular or “mass art.” We read material on the evolution of the museum and on public funding of the arts. At the conclusion of the seminar we considered likely future developments in the arts related to developments in technology, producing new genres like anime, graphic novels, and Internet art.
Participants in the seminar brought a wide variety of background expertise and interests, enriching the course greatly as they pursued their own research. The group included art and music teachers, and also teachers of language arts, foreign languages, and even physics. The teachers came from a wide range of schools ranging from elementary through high school. Each person was able to bring some of their new theoretical knowledge to bear on the teaching of their own discipline in a unique way.
First, focusing on the teaching of visual arts at an advanced level, are the research units of Debbie Pesha Green and Susan Wingfield. Both are high school art teachers who aim to prepare their students with increased knowledge of recent art history and how the contemporary art world works. Green's unit, titled Artist 101: Know Your Place in Society and How to Get There, confronts students with various questions such as, How does society value art? How does the artist survive in today's economy? In her detailed schedule she combines theoretical studies with practical assignments on topics like grant writing, applying to college, and organizing an exhibit. Wingfield's unit, What is 20th Century Art History, and Why Does it Matter?, raises and attempts to lead students into answering very fundamental questions, such as Who decides what counts as art? Who funds it and why?
Two other participants in the seminar were music teachers, Jan Harasim and Mariesse Oualline Samuels. Along with high school art teacher Marian J. Robinson, they sought to foster interdisciplinary awareness of the role of artists in a particular time period by looking at interactions among types of arts including music , popular cultural forms, and visual arts. Harasim's unit, The Value of Arts Education: How Do We Measure Success in American Society?, asks very broad questions about whether recent changes in statewide educational goals have neglected the arts. She also cites important research on the healthy influence art and music education can have on learning in other core areas. To complement her theoretical study, Harasim includes three units teaching students about art and music of rural Appalachia, Native America, and the contemporary Hip Hop world. Robinson's unit on The Harlem Renaissance begins by providing key historical background for this important period, leading students to understand the impact of WWI and black migration flow to the northern U.S. Robinson reveals the interactions in this fertile time period among the creative visual arts, literature, poetry and classical jazz, focusing on such major artists as Romare Bearden and James Baldwin as well as Houston's own John Biggers. In Samuels' unit, The Fine Art of Impressionism: Monet, Debussy and Multiple Intelligences, she focuses on developing the child's visual, kinesthetic, and spatial intelligence. Samuels includes independent outings to the Houston Arboretum with an art project designed to encourage students to explore their own impressionist creations in the sort of direct contact with nature that these artists sought.
More contemporary approaches that are also interdisciplinary include the units by Monica Jackson, Patti-Brown Milstead, and, Mikey Keating. Jackson's unit, Hip-Hop Influence on Art and Society, takes up this enormously popular and influential genre in a way that is neither dismissive nor uncritical. She urges students to question some of hip-hop's influence, say, in the problematic messages often present in its lyrics, while appreciating its more creative side, as an expression of minority problems with a great influence on fashion and other urban art forms such as graffiti. Milstead turns to another very popular contemporary teen genre, the graphic novel, including the anime book, in her unit, Art with Literature: The Graphic Novel as an Expression of Society. She draws on work by some philosophers who have treated the comic as a serious art form, using works that themselves have very significant social dimensions, by Art Spiegleman, Marjane Satrapi and Fuyumi Soryo. And finally, Keating uses the increasingly popular group study format of the book club. She will ask students to form their own study groups or clubs, reading recent much-applauded young people's novels to study the nature of art and the museum. Her unit, titled What's the Big Idea? Exploring Art, Artists, and Society in Book Clubs , will encourage students to improve their literacy skills while they learn about varied artists like Vermeer and da Vinci.
Some teachers are using art as the lens through which to focus their students' own scrutiny of other cultures. This includes the unit by high school music teacher April Sloan-Hubert. Egypt in Antiquity: Music and Mythological Deities. Besides enabling students to learn about this fascinating ancient society and its views on beauty, art, and immortality, Sloan-Hubert also will provide a wonderful entrée into that always-popular Verdi opera Aida. Several other teachers in the field of foreign language instruction will make use of visual resources, including painting and film, to help students get a better understanding of countries in Africa, Europe, and Latin America. In her unit Art and Society as a Resource for Foreign Language Teachers, Maria del Carmen Alabarce Calatayud offers explicit, detailed guided study of sample paintings or objects from several centuries as expression of societal values. Marco Antonio Campos's unit Renascent Africa: Teaching French-African Art, Literature and Society introduces students to poetry and history in the French Negritude movement in African colonies, using some parallels with the American Civil Rights movement to help motivate them. And Israel Iván Corona offers an exciting array of recent popular foreign movies for students to use in developing both cultural awareness and critical analytical skills, in his unit Film: A Pedagogy for Culture .
Finally, there are two units that span the whole spectrum from the earliest elementary school student through to the sophisticated high school physics student. Joe Hannon's unit Art and Society: Bringing Expression into the Classroom to Tell a Story and the Connection through Life Experience to Produce a Work of Art helps early elementary school students use art to develop their own story-telling skills and life awareness. And Kelvin C. Kibler's Seeing Art Through the Eye of a Physicist will get science students excited about ways in which their knowledge offers interdisciplinary insights. While teaching students how to answer such basic questions in physics as, How does light behave? Or how do reflections work?, Kibler will use some famous works by the impressionist painter Monet as his key examples. Students will see that sometimes artists' trained and sensitive eyes can also teach things to scientists about how to study physical reality.
The detailed varied approaches of all these fine area teachers should provide a wonderful array of scholarly yet fun resources to the students of our community. I am sure they will also prove valuable for teachers and students in other communities who will find these curriculum units available through their publication on the World Wide Web.