Curriculum
TEACHING
AESTHETIC ANALYSIS - CONTENT AND METHOD
Critical judgment needs to be developed as much as craftsmanship.
Students progress
faster
and more steadily towards producing good work when they can identify the
content and
meaning
of their own artwork. Dr.
Karen Carroll, the chair of Art Education at Maryland Art
Institute,
encourages me to write about this method of teaching aesthetic analysis
because we
perceive
too many college art students struggling with the evaluation of their
own work. This
analytic
method functions as an essential part of studio instruction and asks students
to look
"inward"
at perceptual and aesthetic experiences which may help strengthen their
understanding
and should not interfere with or act as a substitute for their actual
creative work.
Learning to perceive aesthetic qualities requires more than learning
to merely "see."
Paul
Connolly (1) says that we need a suitable vocabulary in order to talk
about observable
phenomena
that reflect creative activity.
He points out that both language and sight need to be
freed
from conventional usages in order to enhance creativity.
When students can name the
qualities
that they see, then their perception inevitably improves.
Nevertheless, the labeling of
experiences
is not the source of knowledge - only a recognition of it.
Attentive awareness to
sensate
phenomena can serve as a means of access to cognition.
In order to perceive in this way,
one
probably would have to "bracket out" (Husserl) what one already
knows about the object of
perception.
Art has the potential of revealing how knowledge can be felt and
embodied symbolically in
media
before reason steps in to connect ideas to non-verbal dimensions of knowing.
After 10
years
of teaching college art students, I have discovered only a rare few who
consider how they
really
know what they see; such consideration seems to be understood intrinsically
and is not a
product
of education. Most of my
students have never been asked to separate associations,
feelings,
emotions or sensations. Usually
these intra personal experiences are mingled together
in
the hazy conception of "warm and fuzzy" or they are labeled
and conveniently subverted into
semantics
as soon as discursive thinking can operate.
Words act as symbolic referents
(Langer)/
If they do not remain anchored to experiential awareness of dimensions
of felt
knowledge
(Kuhn [2]). Artists who reflect
upon the experience of a creative life know that
their
discernment and actions can be directed by something other than reason;
many artist
experience
an inner compulsion that chooses and directs action instantaneously just
as a dancer
acts
and interacts with both music and his/her dance partner.
This so called "automatic action"
is
actually a willed mind shift and initiates something more than merely
descending into a
Freudian
subconscious mind.
This article claims a theoretical procedure that I am not always
capable of delivering;
transposing
feelings into language is no easy task, particularly if feelings are not
to be lost in
doing
so. Usually reason regulates
inquiry, and feelings are commonly subverted by reason into
ideas
as they are described by language.
Vital feeling and discursive thinking need not engage in
an
ancient battle as long as both can reach a common ground of experiential
awareness before
either
is expressed. The expressive
act of doing, and the reflective consideration of that act,
forms
an elastic memory that can unite feeling and thinking in a way - at least
in the fine arts -
that
can reveal the tacit dimensions of felt knowledge. Such a conscious union allows judgments
to
be made by feelings and sensations.
Through aesthetic analysis their full import can be
transposed
into reflective thoughts, rendering them as knowledge to the thinking
mind that
operated
language.
Educators today are trying to incorporate creativity into their
paradigm, but if the
source
of knowledge is not probed then the value of art in american education
will remain poorly
understood.
The typical education of most Americans does not appear to concern
itself with how
knowledge
becomes thoughts in language. Ideas,
having become cognizant, are generally pressed
into
service with the assumption that their source is not possible to know
or not worthy of
knowing.
Philosophers may question the source, but curricula generally do
not support such
inquiry.
A study of the fine arts provides liberal arts students with a
means of access to
creative
insights and to a knowing that underlies thinking in words.
A method of aesthetic
analysis
could help studio art students realize their own unique styles sooner
with an
understanding
of how their judgment functions outside of reasons.
This method operates in seven stages.
It is not a form of art criticism per se.
Instead, it
focuses
upon assessment and learning as well as coordinating language with experiential
awareness.
The seven stages are: Perception of Objective Phenomena, Association,
Emotive
Response,
Projection of the Artist's Intention, Assignment of Meaning, Judgement
and Personal
Preference.
Students are asked to identify the objective phenomena of a work
of art - the observable
details.
I ask for 20 descriptive adjectives that are not personal reactions
or interpretations.
Some
students begin with a preconceived judgment or want to stop their inquiry
too soon, but
the
requirement of identifying 20 adjectives forces them to keep looking.
I try to stall their
early
closure by asking for more discriminate observation seen from different
points of view -
both
literally and figuratively. Investigative
interaction with objects can provide a healthy list
of
descriptive adjectives, but students need to be encouraged to continue
looking and probing
with
their sensations until they see what is obvious and become cognizant of
subtle
characteristics.
Many students do not readily identify what is obvious in their
own work
because
they usually start with interpretations instead of observations.
They usually do not
start
with things as simple as light, color or form because they assume that
I am asking for
esoteric
description. Once students
describe the obvious, then an instructor needs to ask
questions
that will require more discriminate perceptions. A particular color may be hot or
cool
or sour, and an object's shape may be hard, soft, organic or cubic.
Quite often by the fifth
or
sixth adjective students begin describing associations and feelings instead
of observations.
They
should postpone using such premature comments until later in the method.
After a
considerable
number of adjectives have been identified, the first stage concludes with
a list of
observations.
2.
ASSOCIATION
The second stage lists immediate associations that are triggered
by visual images and the
composite
characteristics of the list of observations.
Students may respond to each others'
associations
as much as to the descriptive adjectives.
The first thing that comes to mind should
be
written down. I encourage
unconscious connections and explain that students may be asked to
trace
their feelings back to the object of inquiry in order to understand what
intrinsic
characteristic
of the object may be causing their subjective reaction - the more subjective
the
better.
Hopefully, each stage will begin to layer upon the prior ones and
weave a fabric of
interactions
that may be informed by different mental awareness. Students will inevitably
jump
ahead to other stages, and their instructor will need to locate each response
into the
differentiated
stages. Of course keeping
these categories separated is more easily said than done.
The
process works better when characteristics are written down as they come
up. After a list
has
been made some items may need to be moved to different categories.
Awareness and
discrimination
can be sharpened by asking students to keep perceptions separate from
associations
and feeling distinct from emotion or sensation. Premature closure inhibits
creative
inquiry, and students need to be encouraged to accept grappling with uncertainties.
3.
EMOTIVE RESPONSE
The collection of adjectives and associations in the first two
stages develops more
steadily
if subtle distinctions are saved to be clarified at the end of the third
stage when
sufficient
material has been recorded. Some
of the objective descriptions in the first stages of
the analents have never been asked to separate associations, and perhaps seeing more
discriminate phenomena.
If what one believes is not bracketed out, then one's own thoughts
may alter perception
considerably.
In such cases, some reactions may be predetermined. For example, a student once
projected
her idea of what black represented - evil and foreboding - onto a lithograph
that had a
lot
of blue and black inks. Her
reaction did not correspond to the perceptions and associations of
other
students in her class. When
I asked her how does this dark print make you feel, she had
very
little to describe because she didn't really feel very much.
Her reaction was sentimental
and
maintained the idea of a feeling instead of an aesthetic feeling.
Her assumption that black
meant
evil was an association and needed to be moved to the second stage.
The perceptual
material
of the 20 adjectives did not suggest evil connotations but referred to
quiet, still,
layered
and a kind of translucency in darkness.
Asking her to reconsider what her empathic
response
might be completely failed, and I could not explicate my point with her.
Nevertheless,
others
in the class got an" AH HA" wherein intuitive insights made
a connection with camping at
night
on top of a mountain under the stars.
These students could understand the introspection
that
goes with such a scene.
4.
PROJECTION OF ARTIST'S INTENTION
Having progressed this far, sufficient objective and subjective
material should have
been
recorded. At this stage students
are asked to be investigators in order to solve a mystery
by
considering all the clues and projecting what the artist's intention had
been. Here an
imaginative
mind needs to operate instead of a sensate, intuitive or emotive one.
This stage
forestalls
judgment about quality and meaning by asking students to project what
the artist was
trying
to do. This intentional phase
helps lead or redirect students' opinions or conclusions that
may
have been reached too soon. Imagination
which is infused with perceptions, associations and
feelings
is different from fantasy projection. Through imagination we can conceive
with insight
what
might be real. On the other
hand, fantasy may be able to generate form, but as an isolated
function
of mind it lacks the transcendent qualities of imagination and therefore
may not
interpret
as well.
5.
ASSIGNMENT OF MEANING
The fifth stage assigns meaning to the art object.
"Meaning" should be derived from
recorded
data of the various stages instead of from the subject matter.
A universal agreement
about
meaning is not as important as following a common line of data throughout
the various
stages.
The interpretation of an expressionist painting could vary somewhat,
but its meaning
would
be considerably different from a cubist painting. Also meaning at this stage might have
little
in common with the story or subject matter of the art work.
Meaning probably could be
described
as a composite of the information recorded in the first four stages.
Judgment can be made, finally, about the qualitative success of
a work of art. This
analytic
method has been designed for students
who cannot immediately see why a work
succeeds.
Eventually they learn to recognize quality before they can explain
it. The visual
learning
process requires that students see and simultaneously understand why something
does
not
work. Coming to terms with
why something fails is more important, pedagogically, than
understanding
why another project succeeds. Usually
failures are either incomplete projects or
ones
that have changed criteria at mid stream.
In such cases, extraneous details usually need to
be
pruned. The whole process
of evaluation can help students learn how to determine their
priorities
and simplify their multiple interests and often conflicting efforts.
This method
requires
practice, and it certainly is not fail safe.
7
PERSONAL PREFERENCE
By developing aesthetic discernment, a student can inquire more
deeply and eventually
understand
the content of a work of art more deeply when preference can be forestalled.
Likes
and
dislikes can have their place but only as an expression of one's personal
choice. This method
of
analysis need not end in a common agreement in a class because that would
be giving
preference
too much authority. I"
Good taste" acts like a social convention that adheres group
behavior
to predetermined standards and limits self expression to the function
of decoration.
Good
taste was once considered the criteria for judgment; however, aesthetic
philosophy
abandoned
that attitude as the modern era developed.
CONCLUSION
This method attempts to replace judgments based upon personal preference.
People
usually
either like a particular work of art or they don't. If blue isn't their favorite color then
preference
tends to deny further interactions that could lead towards a fully realized
aesthetic
judgment
of a blue painting. The effectiveness
of studio instruction may be considerably
improved
if adequate attention can be given to aesthetic evaluation.
This analysis may help
strengthen
students' understanding of art as artists without turning them into aesthetic
philosophers,
and it should not interfere with or act as a substitute for their actual
creative
work.
This method tries to show how nonverbal knowledge experience through
sentient feeling
can
be semantically transposed to a thinking, reflective state of mind and
how aesthetic qualities
can
be apprehended.
(1)("Writing
to See: The Languages of Visual Thinking," Art and Academe vol. 2#2
p. 1-10)
(2)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second edition. Chicago:
the University of
Chicago Press, p 193-196
James K. Hill, Chair, Department of Art
Salisbury University
1101 Camden Ave, Salisbury, MD 21801
Telephone: 410-543-6269
410-219-5961
Footnote:
This
was a paper presented to the School of Visual Arts, fifth Annual
NATIONAL
CONFERENCE ON LIBERAL ARTS AND THE EDUCATION OF
TEACHING AESTHETIC ANALYSIS - CONTENT AND METHOD