Art Education

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The Importance of Student Artistic Production to

Teaching Visual Culture

Kerry Freedman

To cite this article: Kerry Freedman (2003) The Importance of Student Artistic Production to
Teaching Visual Culture, Art Education, 56:2, 38-43

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2003.11653491

Published online: 22 Dec 2015.

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 The Importance of '"
SmDENT ARl1S

to Teaching Visual
Culture ncreasing attention is being given to the idea of

BY KERRY FREEDMAN
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I teachingvisual culturein art education. Teaching
visual cultureisnot a matter of uncritical acceptance
of the wide ranging changes in the visual world; it is
a process of broadening the professional field to come to
grips with these changes and providing leadership to develop
insight into their meanings (Freedman, 2000). Art educators are
embracing these changes, even as we critique them, because they
reveal that art is a part ofstudents' everyday lives and that art
education is vital in the contemporary world.
Although teaching visual culture can be started with small
steps, and some teachers already include the forms and
processes ofvisuaJ culture in their practice, the idea involves a
significant change in philosophy for the professional field.
Teaching visual culture involves a transformation of curriculum
content, shifts in methods of teaching, and a reconsideration of
the assignment and assessment ofstudent work, including a
reexamination ofthe purposes and processes ofstudent artistic
production. I am unaware of any art educator who has ever
argued that teaching visual culture means giving up our focus on
student art. However, I have written this article because I have .
heard the question raised among members of the professional
field about whether teaching visual culture means a loss of
attention to production. In answer to the question, artistic
production is a foundation of this new direction ofthe field. How
better can students develop a deep understanding ofthe power of
visual culture?

• ART EDUCATION I MARCH 2003

Defining Visual Culture:
Student Art as Part of the
Cultural Field
In the past, type of media, level of
technical skill, and aesthetic sophisti-
cation have played a large part in
determinations of whether an object
was considered a work of art.
However, such qualitative differences
between visual forms have become
less discrete. The range of images and
objects that have aesthetic sophistica-
tion are now understood to include
fine cui, popular films, tribal masks,
toys, architect ure, television programs,
body ali, advertisements, environmen-
tal design, manga, and so on. The term
"visual culture" actually refers to visual
CUltUH'S; it is multicultural, multi-
modal, int orcultural, and interdiscipli-
nary. Visual culture is social, political,
From an anthropological standpoint, culture is a way of living. Visual culture can be understood as the objects
and processes, including those created and used by students, that particularly function through visualized
form to affect our lives. For example, a heap of garbage arranged by an artist in a museum may be considered
a work of fine art, and garbage on the street, while not considered art, may be thought of as an important
visual reflection of human intention. It can also be a source of inspiration for student visual inquiry.
and economic, as well as personal, and
involves the connections between and
among various contemporary and
historical forms. Now, fine art is
recycled in ads, and the design work of
the Sin r Wa rs films is exhibited in art
museums,
Teaching visual culture involves
various types of postmodem border-
crossing, from tilt' crossing of concep-
tual borders to borders of medium and
form. It challenges modernistic notions
of knowledge that veil underlying
assumptions, including assumptions
concerning fine art as being isolated
from the rest of visual culture. The
blurring of distinctions bet ween forms
ofvisual culture illustrates the impor-
tance of broadening educational ideas
about that which is made, seen, and
judged in the context of an increasingly
complex variety of social interactions
and institutions.
From an anthropological standpoint,
culture is a way of living. Visual culture
can be understood as the objects and
processes, including those created and
used by students, that particularly
function through visualized form to
affect our lives. For example, a heap
of garbage arranged by an artist in a
museum may be considered a work of
fine art, and garbage on the street, while
not considered art, may be thought of as
an important visual reflection of human
intention. It can also be a source of
inspiration for student visual inquiry.
In his claim that teaching visual
culture is merely the political analysis
of imagery, Eisner (2001) misrepresents
this shift in the field. In fact, the shift is a
broad and reasonable response to the
realities of contemporary life. The field
is now being shaped by a generation of
teachers and students who USE' the wide
range of visual culture as their primary
source of information about the world
and view it as a vital means of intercon-
necting with other makers and viewers.
In part, this is illustrated by growing
sub-cultures of students who research
and create their own costumes for long-
action role plays, take part in adver-
tising focus groups, make their own
rock videos, respond on-line to their
favorite television shows, and develop
their own WE'b sites to display and
critique their art and the work of other
students on global scale. I, personally,
did not become an art educator for the
rE'c1S0n that Eisner claims many profes-
sionals join our field-to feel "wet clay
coursing between their fingers" (p. 8)-
and I believe that his claim trivializes
the reasons many people of my genera-
tion and younger have gone into the
aliso I became an art educator because,
as a young person, I became interested
in the importance of art to human life,
the power of art to suggest ideas, and
the wonder of the creative process
through which ideas could be formed
and represented. For me, and many of
my colleagues and students, making art
has always been a form of social action,
as well as a form of personal expres-
sion. From the perspective of teaching
visual culture, artistic production is
both a social statement and a personal
journey,
Students have much more access to
imagery and designed objects now than
in the past, and their creative practices,
from clothing choices to the production
of their own videos, have a bigger
impact on general visual culture than
before. Student art is increasingly
understood as a form of inquiry and as
living within complex social environ-
ments that shape its creators as they
shape their environments. Teaching
visual culture gives attention to these
complexities of student artistic
production.
It is the power and pervasiveness of
visual culture that necessitates an art
education that is socially reconstruc-
tive, based on actions intended to
improve the lives of individuals and
social groups, which promotes
democratic debate about issues and
conflicts and helps students to take
responsibility for their own learning
(Freedman, 1994). Teaching visual
culture involves open instruction in
which knowledge is conceived of as
free and, although expertise is valued,
the privilege of knowing is available to
all. From this perspective, artistic
production is valued, in part, because it
has the power to influence, and anyone,
including students, can work to initiate
social and personal change through the
visual culture they produce.
MARCH 2003/ ART EDUCATION ..
 Rethinking Student
Artistic Production
Education in and through artistic
production is needed to support, and
sometimes challenge, the increasingly
sophisticated contemporary, cultural
environment. In this environment,
education can provide a way of enrich-
ing students' lives by helping them to
critique and advance the idea"
connected to visual culture and its
meanings. The results of the NAE?
1.9.97 Arts Report Card: Eighth Grade
Findiruis From the National
Assessment of Educational Progress
(Persky, Sandene, & Askew, 1998) in
the visual arts indicate that education
has not well attended to promoting
learning that will help students make
meaning. In this study, students tended
to have a basic knowledge of form and
media, but they found processes of
connecting meaning to form particu-
larly challenging. The results of this
study raise the issue of the ways in
which we assign and assess student
artistic production.
As a result, a reconsideration of
student artistic production in ternlS of
teaching visual culture challenges past
assumptions of practice, such as an
emphasis on the development oftradi-
tional formal and technical skills. At
least three important conditions of
artmaking in education should be
embedded in this reconsideration: a)
the role of production in the formation
of student identities; b) the importance
of the simultaneous development of
idea" and skills in student learning; and
c) the ways in which student art acts as
cultural critique.
Artistic Production as
Identity Formation
Educational researchers Kincheloe
and Steinberg (1993) argue that a new
model of thinking is necessary for
education, given scientific understand-
ings about the influence of social
conditions on thought. They suggest
that researchers interested in chil-
dren's development should focus on
social conditions surrounding the
construction of knowledge in order to
• ART EDUCATION I MARCH 2003
better understand the complex ways in
which learning occurs. Professionals in
fields ranging from philosophy to
cognitive science now argue that the
increasingly pervasive crossing of
social and cultural borders extends
and enriches general knowledge (e.g.
Prawat, 1989; Shusterman, 1992; Solso,
1997; Walkerdine, 1988).
This border crossing is seen in
student artistic production. Students
use artistic practices as cultural and
personal responses to experience,
including in their search for identity.
Students now have multiple and
overlapping identities (for example,
ethnic, socioeconomic, and sexual
identities) and live within complex
social environments that make artistic
inquiry particularly helpful a" part of
their self exploration and expression.
Many students begin to explore the
concept of self through postmodern
juxtapositions and connections in their
spontaneous art and should be enabled
to advance their investigations of these
issues in school.
The creation of self is based on the
individual being invested with certain
characteristics through symbolic repre-
sentation (Lacan, 1977). The effects of
imagery influence students' self-
concepts as they appropriate character-
istics of visual representations. They
adopt these representations as a
description of self and use them in their
own art. People can be manipulated
through images they see that are often
antithetical to their natures
(Baudrillard, 198~3), and students' visual
inquiry may help to respond to these
influences in a constructive way.
Students can engage in role play, tell
stories, and make visual statements
through processes that range from
painting self-portraits to developing
web sites. The construction of student
identities provides a new foundation for
the educational importance of artistic
production (Freedman, 2002).
From this cognitive perspective,
artistic production is dependent upon
complex interactions between making
and viewing that are rarely made overt
in school. The process of making
meaning is creative and involves the
development of interpretive, as well as
formal and technical, concepts and
skills. From installations to interactive
computer games, visual culture also
crosses over traditional boundaries of
making and viewing in literal ways as
viewers become audiences who partici-
pate in the completion of works of art.
Through various types of kinesthetic
and interpretive response, from inter-
acting with machines in a computer-
assisted art exhibition to buying as a
result of an ad, viewers now part icipate
in the successful creation of works of
alt by acting within parameters sot by
artists.
Like all forms of culture, visual
culture is both a condition of social life
and a creation of individual minds.
Students construct their own
knowledge based on a variety of infor-
mation sources, including the visual
arts they experience inside and outside
of school. Unfortunately, the range of
prior knowledge, which is a rich source
of imagery, is often thought best left at
the art classroom door. In visual culture
classrooms, this knowledge is drawn
upon to make student artistic produc-
tion meaningful to students' daily lives.
Part of the process of production in
the context of teaching visual culture is
giving attention to alternative instruc-
tional strategies. A focus on individual,
creative self-expression in a classroom
may actually limit the capabilities of
some students who work better in a
collaborative environment.
Professional postmodern artists often
work as pairs or in groups, and many
contemporary visual culture forms
(such as the production of films and
amusement park design) demand
teamwork In such cases, students can
each do the part of the project that is
their technical strength. Collaboration
takes many forms involving production,
from group work on a project to recoin-
mendations made by peers during
group critiques.
Making Connections and
Developing Ideas
From the perspective of visual
culture, students are taught processes
of idea development to enrich their
work Because the foundation of the
curriculum shift is people's experi-
ences with visual culture, student
assignments should demonstrate
different types of learning than just
formal and technical skills.
Exceptional artistic production by
students can be highly naturalistic or
may have little to do with highly devel-
oped representational skills.
It may involve the use of computer
graphics, video and filmmaking, found
object constructions and installations,
collages, montages, and other uses of
recycled images. Students can express
ideas and address important issues by
appropriating a part of the school
building for an installation or by taking
part in performance art. Through such
broad experiences with visual «ulture,
students can learn a great deal, includ-
ing cultural and personal reasons for
the production of art. Art should be
the expression of makers' ideas,
whether the makers are students or
professionals, working individually or
collaboratrvely, and as a result be as
open-ended as possible, given time and
other institutional constraints. This
means that students should be allowed
to make as many of their own choices
as can be enabled, from choosing
materials in early elementary school to
choosing their own research topics on
which to base high school projects.
Assignments should result in each
student's work looking different from
the others. At the same time, students
may comment on visual culture issues
by recycling imagery and objects.
In the International Baccalaureate
(ID) high school program, viewing is
understood as inherent to artistic
production, and production is based on
research inquiry about a topic of the
student's choice. This program includes
an important course called Tncoru (d'
K/IO/pledgc that provides students with
a background in the development of
ideas. The work IE students do in an
supports this learning through
individual investigations oftheir own
interests. The students make a long-
term process portfolio that involves
research and idea development as they
learn visual forms of expression.
Formal and technical training is not
ignored in the curriculum; rather, they
are infused and applied based the needs
of the students as they do their research,
develop their ideas, and learn to
visualize ways to express those ideas.
Today, students have a lot of experience with design qualities
and information picked up from viewing all of the images they
see, but they do not have the analytical skills needed to critically
reflect on this experience.
Courses and assignments should
start with the development of student
ideas and lead to decisions about how
best to express those ideas. Many
curriculums in the United States start
with formal and technical skills and are
intended to lead to ideas. For example,
junior high/middle school art and Art I
classes in high school often focus on
formal and technical training, and
students are not expected to develop
their own ideas until later classes. The
argument for this model is understand-
able-r-the pervading belief is that
students cannot express their ideas
until they have learned formal and
technical skills. The problem with this
argument is that most students will not
be professional artists and will never
get to the advanced high school art
courses in which ideas are focused
upon. Junior high or middle school art
and Art I will be the last formal art
education for many of those students,
and they will leave high school thinking
that art is just a matter of talent or
formal and technical training. But, art is
not just about form-it is about the
form of idea".
All of us who have been teachers
have been frustrated at one time or
another when students come to us
without formal and technical skills.
However, the more difficult situation is
that in which students lack the skills
and concepts needed for the visual
MARCH 2003/ ART EDUCATION ..
 development of ideas. HlP argument
that basic formal and technical skills
must come first before students can
express their ideas leads many teachers
to teach these skills as separate from
their applications. Teachers often feel
compelled to spend a substantial
amount of time having students do the
same activities (such a" making a color
wheel or doing a gray scale) at the
elementary, middle, and high school
levels. 'Basic skills' are often taught, but
rarely rehearsed in a fashion that
increases complexity and deepens
understanding. As a result, learning
remains at the same level, disconnected
from knowledge that goes beyond
formal and technical training, and is
often forgotten because it is not
One of the reasons that students may leave school having missed the
important message that meaning and form are integrally connected in
the visual arts is that most curriculum focuses their learning through a
media-based structure. Rather than allowing student investigations of
art to be dependent only on a framework of courses titled, for example,
drawing, painting, or ceramics, students can develop their own visual
statements in thematic courses with interdisciplinary topics, such as
themes concerning important personal and cultural issues.
connected to prior knowledge in
meaningful ways. Today, students have
a lot of experience with design qualities
and information picked up from
viewing all ofthe images they see, but
they do not have the analytical skills
needed to critically reflect on this
experience. Drawing on their experi-
ence can go a long way toward infusing
formal, technical, and idea develop-
ment in their work.
Of course, teaching visual culture is
not intended to undermine the develop-
ment of the students who intend to be
arts professionals. By opening up
lessons so that students can investigate
their own interests, the small minority
of future arts professionals can advance
their formal and technical skills while
the majority of students can still make
art. But it is important to remember that
the majority of students will become
the adults who we hope will understand
• ART EDUCATION / MARCH 2003
that art makes up most of their visual
culture and realize the need to support
art education in the future.
Student Art as Cultural Critique
Postmodern theorists have pointed
particularly to developments in tech-
nology, advanced levels of industrial
capitalism, and totalizing mass media
"1.,, initiating negative social effects of
visual culture (e.g. Baudrillard, 198;3;
Harvey, 1989). However, Lyotard
(1984) has argued that one of the
important values of art is found in the
range of contemporary visual culture,
such as advertising, that celebrates
sensuality, promoting a natural flow of
desire and intensifying feeling. Student
artistic production is important to
teaching visual culture not only for
these reasons, but because it provides
a visual form for commenting on
contemporary visual conditions.
In the past, the term "art" carried
with it assumptions of quality and
enrichment; however, the visual arts are
not inherently good, any mort' than is
math, science, or social studies. TIIP
great power of the visual arts is their
ability to have various, profound effects
on our lives, but it is important for
students to understand that this power
can make art manipulative, colonizing,
and disenfranchising. Visual culture
that is considered good for one group
may hurt others, and the complexity of
this relationship needs to be considered
a'i part. of educational experience.
Students should become aware of tho
impact of their work on others and the
ways in which they can influence the
thinking of their peers through visual
form. For example, student art can
positively or negatively affect the self-
image of other students.
An important part ofteaching visual
culture is to provide opportunities for
students to make visual statements of
various kinds. Students learn from an
early age that texts can be used in this
way, but often complete school without
coming to understand the ways in
which visual culture can suggest
attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, Many of
tho artistic practices on which the most
time is spent in school have little to do
with the power of art as a form of
commentary or critique. From the
perspective of teaching visual culture,
production depends on the importance
of connecting with other people
through artistic forms and practices.
Students can investigate ideas in
multiple forms by creating or appropri-
ating and recycling visual statements
about issues that are important to them,
including issues that relate to the visual
culture they see in daily life.
For example, a" a part of their
artistic production, fashion designers
try to convince people to pay to
advertise for them by putting their
brand names on the outside of their
clot hes. Fortunately, it does not stop
there. Fashion designers are free to try
to convince us to pay for their adver-
tising by wearing their names on the
outside of our clothes, but we are free
to provide an art education that will
help students to make informed choices
in their responses to visual culture. This
was illustrated by one of my students
who taught a lesson to her high school
students on the critique of ads. Each of
the students in the class responded to
the lesson by creating their own visual
statement concerning brand names, and
one of her students arrived at school the
next day wearing a t-shirt on which he
had painted a red circle with a line
through it on the brand name.
One of till' reasons that students may
leave school having missed the
important. message that meaning and
form are integrally connected in the
visual arts is that most curriculum
focuses their learning through a media-
based structure. Rather than allowing
student investigations of art to be
dependent only on a framework of
courses titled, for example, drawing,
painting, or ceramics, students can
develop their own visual statements in
thematic courses with interdisciplinary
topics, such a" themes concerning
important personal and cultural issues.
Instead of doing a series of assignments
within the same media-based format,
student artistic production can be
based on assignments in which students
are asked to conduct a series of Kincheloe. J. L. & Steinberg, S. R. (19H:3).
different media inquiries within a theme A tentative description of post-formal
thinking: The critical confrontation with
or make visual statements working in
cognitive theory. Harrord Educational
multimedia or mixed media. Similar Review, 63(:3), 2U6-:320.
activities can be done within a media- Lacan, J. (1977). Thejourfuruuimental
based structured curriculum as well, concepts ql'psycho-analysis. London:
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students what we consider to be the Lyotard, ,J. (1984). 71~e postmocLCTn condition:
most important organizing principles of A report on knrnvledge. Minneapolis:
art, as do the parameters of production University of Minnesota Press, Manchester.
Shusterman, R. (1992). Pragmatist aesthetics:
within courses,
Living beauty, rethinking art. Oxford:
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Conclusion Solso, R. (1997). Mind and brain sciences in
Student art lives within the same the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT
social conditions that enable each of Press.
us to create, have access to, and criti- Persky, Sandene, & Askew, (199S). NAEP 19.97
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From the National Assessment of
Students' artistic production provides
Educationat Proqress. Washington, DC:
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and revisit old ideas providing connec- Prawat, R. S. (lUSH). Promoting access to
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students gain knowledge of the effects
of their own creative capabilities and
of visual culture in general.
Ken7J Freedman is Professor ofArt
and Education at Northern Illinois
Unioersiiu. E-mail:
KetTyFt·eedman(d!compl1serve. com
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