An Innovative Arts Program: Isolationist and Contextualist Approaches

Author(s): Jerilynn Changar

Source: The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1990), pp. 87-96
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3333109
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Journal of Aesthetic Education

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 An Innovative Arts Program: Isolationist and
Contextualist Approaches

JERILYNN CHANGAR

At a time when schools are being asked to develop more comprehensive art
education programs, school personnel and community members are look-
ing for approaches that can fit within existing program structures and ex-
pand arts content offerings for their students. Schools need to be innovative
and resourceful in order to make this happen without adding new courses.
For the past ten years, Nerinx Hall High School, a Catholic girls school in
Webster Groves, Missouri, has had an innovative arts program featuring
one full-time faculty member who teaches the arts and aesthetics in the con-
text of the school's basic curriculum which includes a traditional fine arts

program in visual arts, music, and drama. Nerinx's program may be one al-
ternative for other schools to consider when developing more comprehen-
sive approaches to arts education.
Ruth Burgett, a talented and extremely dedicated arts educator, is the
teacher and coordinator of the program and is also the head of the fine arts
department. As coordinator of the aesthetic education program, Ruth, in
collaboration with the rest of the faculty, provides students with continued
interaction with the arts throughout their high school experiences.
Ruth sees her role as providing the students with enriching experiences
that enable them to value the arts for their own intrinsic beauty and to ex-
perience the masterpieces of different periods as sources of inspiration and
culture in their lives. Another goal is to develop a deep understanding of
the art of various cultures by teaching toward appreciation and the promo-
tion of peaceful coexistence between nations and their peoples. Her knowl-
edge and appreciation of and enthusiasm for the arts are clearly displayed
in her classroom presentations.
Ruth is invited into social studies, science, religion, math, English,

Jerilynn Changar is on the adjunct faculties of Washington University and Southern Il-
linois University at Edwardsville and is an assistant professor and teaches part-time
at Fontbonne College, St. Louis. During her association with CEMREL, Inc., she
coauthored The Architect: Places for People and wrote the visual arts section of Arts for
Learning: Developmental Learning Materials.

Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 24, No. 4, Winter 1990

?1990 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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88 Jerilynn Changar

foreign language, music, and other classes to teach about arts. Ruth and the
teacher discuss the content of the course and the potential lesson. On the
basis of this discussion, Ruth gathers her resources and begins to prepare.
She introduces the lesson with an outline of the content or an overall con-

cept of the lesson and then provides the students with examples from the
arts pertaining to the key ideas, along with a description and explanation
that place the arts into an appropriate context. The arts are presented
through slides, recordings, live music, dance, dramatic presentations, ex-
cerpts from literature, and verbal descriptions. The list of presentations is
long and varied, ranging from presenting da Vinci and Michelangelo to the
world history students studying the Renaissance to relating music to acous-
tics in the physics class. Students are usually accountable for content
presented. They may prepare a follow-up presentation or find test items
pertaining to the lesson in the unit test or quarterly exam.
Ruth presents the arts through discussion, drawing students' attention
to the sensory, formal, expressive, and technical elements of art in the con-
text of the general curriculum. The heart of this article is a discussion of the
program as it relates to both an isolationist and a contextualist approach to
aesthetic education.

An Isolationist and Contextualist Approach to Aesthetic Education

John Hospers discusses two approaches to appreciating and understanding

works of art, providing a shorthand description of them as isolationist and
contextualist theories of aesthetic appreciation. The isolationist theory says
that all one needs to appreciate or understand a work of art is continued re-
exposure to the object itself. If one is exposed to a great work, each interac-
tion with it generates an expanded vision-new insights, new under-
standings, and qualities one had missed or did not expect to see during pre-
vious exposures. The less complex the work, the less exposure one may
need to come to appreciate it. Only the intrinsic qualities of the work are
necessary for appreciation and understanding. This argument, however,
may be countered by the question, If continued exposure were all that was
necessary, would not museum guards and symphony ushers be our most
aesthetically literate citizens?
The contextualist point of view directly opposes the isolationist. Contex-
tualism requires consideration of the external qualities of the aesthetic ob-
ject for appreciation and understanding. To state this position as an
extreme, contextualists believe one should always appreciate the aesthetic
object in its context. Information about the historical, social, and psychologi-
cal context of the work should always be available to enhance the apprecia-
tion of the work. Hospers's contextualist view is the approach to aesthetic

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 Innovative Arts Program 89

education most compatible with the belief systems of Ruth and the Nerinx
administration.

There are other external factors that also affect understanding and ap-
preciation of a work of art. Knowing the relationship of the work to other
works of the artist adds to understanding. Thus, the experience of a beauti-
ful object or creation may be heightened when other objects are available
for comparison. One may also attain a fuller appreciation of aesthetic ob-
jects if one has an understanding of the materials used to create them.
Knowledge of the artist's personal life can also add to understanding of the
work. While these external factors can contribute to our understanding and
appreciation, they are not essential.
Appreciation of aesthetic objects is also affected by what one brings to
the work. For example, the individual who has personally experienced the
creation of art objects will have a different appreciation from that of the per-
son who has not. Appreciation of aesthetic objects of another culture will
differ from appreciation of objects from one's own. In presenting works of
art to students, one must proceed with caution, for a problem can be
created when the external factors become more interesting than the work it-
self. We are then no longer involved in aesthetic appreciation and education
but in something else-possibly history, sociology, or psychology.
From the isolationist's point of view, the viewer comes to the work either
naive, untouched and uninformed, or prepared to ignore personal back-
ground and prior knowledge. In reality the viewer brings an array of infor-
mation to the work, and frequently the young or somewhat naive audience
member may bring preconceived notions based on misinformation which
will affect an objective appreciation of the work. A combination of both the
isolationist and contextualist approaches provides for a more comprehen-
sive approach to aesthetic education.

A Contextualist Approach to Aesthetic Education

The Nerinx point of view is that appreciation of art in the social,
psychological, and historical context of the other school subjects can only
enhance the students' knowledge, appreciation, and understanding of the
art forms and that similarly their knowledge of the art forms enriches their
appreciation and understanding of the subject matter in the other classes.
The goal shared by Ruth and the administration was to create an informed
audience by using a contextualist approach to aesthetic education which
would both enhance the students' appreciation of the arts through their
sharpened senses and deepen their perception of the works and the context
in which they were created.
Historical and Cultural Context. The administration's goals for Ruth's les-
sons were to help eliminate some of the fragmentation of the high school

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90 Jerilynn Changar

curriculum, to provide an enriching experience within the different subject

areas, and to develop the girls' appreciation for and valuing of the arts. This
category of historical and cultural context receives the most attention in
Ruth's lessons.

The majority of her presentations take place within social studies, lan-
guage arts, and foreign language classes. Ruth's goal is to provide the stu-
dents with many opportunities to experience the arts and to gain
knowledge about the arts. Her lessons in the social studies classes are most-
ly presented in the context of the contribution of the arts to society during a
particular historical period or as an examination of the role of the arts in a
particular culture. In world history courses, for example, Ruth's lessons
were about the arts of the period currently being studied focusing on the
value of the arts as a part of history and the particular artist's contribution
to the culture.

Ruth creates an image of the social and cultural environment from which
the artist's work was produced to give the girls a sense of how the arts re-
lated to a particular time in history. Why did a particular piece of music or
visual art appear in its present form? Why is contemporary art so different?
How does it relate to contemporary life? What is the relationship between a
particular piece of literature and the period it belongs to? What are the
universal elements of the piece, and which elements are a direct reflection
of the period? These are some of the central questions in Ruth's historical
and cultural presentations.
Ruth introduces students to art as enrichment, to art and living as being
inseparable and mutually sustaining, to art as having served life as an em-
bellishment, to art as being pleasing to the eye (or ear), and to art's place in
history. Ruth's lessons sometimes emphasize one of these concepts more
than another, and some lessons include them all.
The students are encouraged to view the arts of other cultures or periods
in history through the eyes of the people of that time or that culture. The
implication is that we cannot always judge works of art by Western or con-
temporary aesthetic criteria, that we have to try to understand and see the
works as they were created within another culture with a different set of
criteria. For example, she encourages the students to listen to the music of
Shakespeare's time with seventeenth-century ears. Ruth stresses the need to
be open to other cultures in order to experience their art with under-
standing and respect. Her lessons use the arts of other cultures to promote
aesthetic appreciation and cultural understanding.
Many non-Western cultures do not create art strictly for pleasure, and
functional art objects representative of these cultures are mistakenly viewed
as separate objects. Ruth illustrates this concept in her lesson on African art
for an anthropology class. She reminds students of the essential role the arts
play in ceremonies and rituals and explains the meaning and use of the ob-

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 Innovative Arts Program 91

jects in the context of African cultures. She draws the students' attention to
the aesthetic elements of the object as determined by the culture that
created it, as in the case of the elongated proportions and geometric forms
of a Senufo sculpture.
Over the years the Nerinx program has expanded, allowing for repeated
exposure to works of art. The students are introduced to the arts through
art history, a cultural perspective, and an exploration of the relationship be-
tween art and life in a historical context. The teachers developed a better
understanding so that they knew what to expect, and Ruth's resources and
knowledge grew. During some course units Ruth is invited in on more than
one occasion and presents a series of lessons.
Technical Information. Knowing certain facts about the art medium can be
helpful in understanding and appreciating the work of art. Knowing the
difference between a photograph and a painting is essential for the ap-
preciation of either. Knowledge about the construction of a piece of ar-
chitecture, the technique required to produce an etching, or the limitations
or virtues of specific musical instruments may affect the appreciation of the
work. Similarly, knowledge of the physical qualities of media or instru-
ments may help the audience listen with greater intensity to the sounds or
look with greater sensitivity at how the forms, shapes, or colors are
presented.
This contextual category includes information about the training re-
quired for specific art forms, about the workings of specific musical instru-
ments, and about the technique and materials of the artist. While at Nerinx,
students are introduced to how the materials, tools, and techniques of pro-
duction influence the aesthetic forms. Rarely did one lesson focus primarily
on this contextual category. The information was usually presented in a
larger context and woven into the fiber of the lessons, as in a lesson that
focused on the training and techniques a mime uses in the preparation, ex-
ecution, and creation of illusions.
Again, we ask the question, How does this contextual information con-
tribute to the appreciation of the work of art or the entire art form? For ex-
ample, many viewers looked upon the abstract expressionist paintings of
the fifties as nonsensical, simplistic messages-until they tried their hand at
creating a similar illusion. They suddenly realized that creating that feeling
of movement and excitement while keeping the fresh quality and spon-
taneity was quite difficult and required a great deal of skill. The opposite
reaction occurs when students view an Andrew Wyeth or Michelangelo.
Up to this time in the girls' education their arts experiences were limited,
and it was Ruth's responsibility to provide the broadest, richest experience
possible within the time limits of the program. The activities reflected
Ruth's desire for the girls to understand the complexity of the art forms and
individual works and to recognize that their creation or their performance

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92 Jerilynn Changar

was not a simple process to be taken lightly. Lessons such as her presenta-
tion on the Peking Opera demonstrate the importance of the skill, ability,
and hard work that are required of the performers.
Information about specific techniques and the use of innovative instru-
ments that required different technical skills is included, as well as ap-
propriate terms and definitions of the language of the arts.
Artist's Life and Ideas. One might ask why the title of this section isn't
"The Artist's Intention." Ruth's lessons occasionally include information
about the artist's intention, but she usually speaks more generally of the
artists' ideas about art and their own work and supplies the girls with anec-
dotes about their lives. The information is presented in a historical context
and from the point of view that some incidental details help bring the ar-
tists to life as human beings. While the information did not necessarily con-
tribute to the girls' understanding of the art, it sparked their curiosity and
developed their interest by bringing the subject to life.
Ruth always tries to give the girls a sense of the artist in relation to the
times and the influences of the physical, social, and cultural environment.
Although Ruth generally provides this kind of information when speaking
of specific artists, she never lets the life of the artist dominate the lesson.
The major portion of the class time is spent on listening to the artists' music
or looking at their work.

Isolationist Approach to the Aesthetic Experience

The aesthetic qualities of a work of art are the result of the expression of
ideas and feelings in a unified whole through the interaction and inter-
relationships of arts elements and principles pertinent to the specific art
form. The universality of the statement and its ability to capture the atten-
tion and the interest of the audience is a reflection of the aesthetic quality of
the work of art. A work of high aesthetic quality entices the individual to
return to it for continued re-exposure and examination. Hosper phrases this
concept more directly: "Great works of art tend to be those to which you
can return with pleasure and profit again and again, though not for the
same qualities each time: often you will enjoy it for some particular quality
or qualities for a time, then come to enjoy other qualities of it that you
hadn't suspected were there."1 It is what Monroe C. Beardsley calls "inter-
nal evidence" that one is dealing with when perceiving an object aestheti-
cally.2 He refers to the external evidence as the psychological, social
background of the object. When viewing a work of art, listening to music,
reading a classic novel, or attending a ballet or play, one is involved in the
process of experiencing the aesthetic qualities of the object or performance.
At this time there is a direct interaction between the audience and the work
of art. The external evidence Beardsley is talking about has been discussed
as part of the contextual approach to aesthetic education. What follows is a

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 Innovative Arts Program 93

discussion of Ruth's approach to aesthetic perception and the interaction of

the elements, principles, and expressive qualities of the individual work of
art. The development of aesthetic perception was an integral part of almost
all of Ruth's lessons. Although the contextual information remained
dominant, something approaching a balance between the contextual and
aesthetic information developed over time.
Ruth approaches the arts from the pragmatist's point of view. She
believes that the ability to appreciate a work of art is something within the
grasp of all the students at Nerinx Hall. When she speaks about a great
work of art and its beauty, she speaks as if it were impossible not to per-
ceive the beauty in the work, as if it is a given that the work is easily percep-
tible if the students would open their eyes and ears and take notice. Her
attitude is that the arts belong to everyone and that the students' quality of
life would lack richness without aesthetic exposure, perception, apprecia-
tion, and understanding. There is never any indication that she believes the
ability to appreciate the arts is a rarefied experience for a limited, sophisti-
cated audience. While most individuals have limited experiences with
works of art of high quality, increased exposure carries the potential for un-
derstanding and appreciation-even though the same level of exposure will
not suffice for understanding all works of art because some works are very
complex and not easily understood.
Most of the girls were introduced to the artworks for the first time in
Ruth's classes. She asked them to take notice of the phenomenal aspects of a
work and to stay open to it regardless of how they felt about it. She
repeatedly encouraged them to appreciate and understand the work even if
they did not like it or their emotions were minimally involved or affected.
She continually focused on the internal qualities of the object and those es-
sential elements of the work that contributed to its aesthetic value.

Although objects like Picasso's Guernica, Dali's Persistence of Memory, and

Ivan Albright's portraits are not considered pleasant works of art, indi-
viduals choose to experience them because they find the experience in itself
pleasurable. Ruth wanted the students' experiences with the arts to be
pleasurable enough to be pursued beyond the high school classroom. When
planning assemblies, she tries to find performances that are sometimes in-
formative and always of high quality, but are most of all enjoyable. On
many occasions she would ask the girls to sit back and enjoy the experience,
to reserve judgment, and to try to understand.
Aesthetic Perception/Appreciation. The girls' exposure to music and art
comes primarily through slides and recordings, although Ruth occasionally
brings in musical instruments and includes live music as part of her presen-
tation. Live performances are experienced through assemblies and field
trips and whenever a student takes it upon herself to attend a performance
or an exhibition. The viewing of great art on slides does not generally elicit

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94 Jerilynn Changar

the same emotional response as coming in direct contact with the original.
Many of the works that Ruth shows she had experienced in their original
state. Ruth frequently relates her experiences with the objects or perfor-
mances with such enthusiasm that it is infectious. She wants the girls to be
sensitive to the beauty in the work and to appreciate it as she did. When she
speaks of the beauty of the object or performance, it is with an emotional,
personal tone, not in a clinical, analytical manner. Hers is a voice that ex-
presses appreciation in a gentle and almost loving manner. It is obvious
that the arts are an integral part of her life, a part of her whole inner being.
She is never condescending toward the students or impatient because they
are so young and their experiences so limited.
In some instances, Ruth spoke more of the beauty of the work and less
about what elements contributed to that beauty. For example, from the
early lesson on African music and folk stories: "African instruments are
beautiful instruments. They always take time to make things beauti-
ful.... Listen carefully, see how many rhythms we can catch. African music
is complex." And in a lesson in a theology class about marriage and the
family, the theme was tenderness. Ruth brought slides of paintings, sculp-
ture, and prints and examples of poetry and music. She tried to attract the
girls' attention to the feeling of tenderness in the works and how the artist
expressed this sentiment through the elements of the art form: "Look at the
Michelangelo sculpture and notice the soft folds in the marble and how he
portrays tenderness and caring. Look at the Eskimo print. It is different but
beautiful.... Notice the form and the movement of the figure, how it rein-
forces the theme and motherhood." She played an African song and
pointed out the rhythm, relating it to the rhythm of a rocking cradle and
referring to the music at one point as "gentle." Another painting was intro-
duced, and she stressed the angularity of the form and asked the students
how it affected them. At the end the students commented that the presenta-
tion was beautiful.

As the program grew, the amount of time spent in drawing the students'
attention to the aesthetic elements and principles and to the style and the
formal qualities of the works increased. This information was presented in
no other class in the school.

According to Hospers, Ruth was acting in the role of the critic, but not in
the negative sense in which the word is frequently used:

Criticism in the arts is the enterprise of describing, interpreting, and

evaluating works of art . . . but usually its main function is to cast
some light upon the work of art which the critic is discussing-to
make the work intelligible to us, to illuminate it for us, to help us to
see things in it we failed to see before, or to put the things we did see
into a new pattern or perspective.3

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 Innovative Arts Program 95

Ruth's role is that of "critic," for one of her ultimate goals is to illuminate
the works of art, to increase understanding and appreciation. She provided
description, interpretation, and evaluation, with the primary focus on de-
scription and interpretation. The presentation of the lessons themselves was
sometimes so well orchestrated that they had an aesthetic quality of their
own due to their harmonious and unified composition.
In brief, the students certainly do not become experts in one particular
art form or period of art, but they acquire particular knowledge and percep-
tions and can respond in an analytical manner to the arts experiences
through written essays and creative pieces. One might agree that Ruth's
program fits C. M. Smith's definition of aesthetic education:

Aesthetic education will properly designate any kind of instructional

program designed to educate the students' aesthetic preferences in
the direction of critical connoisseurship or, as it has also been called,
enlightened cherishing. Very briefly, the objectives of aesthetic educa-
tion are, first, to induce in the pupil a genuine appreciation of and
preference for significant, serious art; second, to provide the student
with the knowledge and abilities needed to justify his preferences
reasonably and intelligently.4

It was towards this goal of aesthetic education that Ruth aspired.

Student Responses and Program Outcomes

Teachers and students are very positive in their comments about the
program. A student who commented that the program adds "spice" to her
classes explained what she meant: "Excitement! She's very enthusiastic.
She's always adding something extra that we wouldn't know otherwise
and something extra you know everyone is eager to learn.... She adds so
much, she's always great."5 The girls feel that Ruth contributes something
to their classes that the classroom teacher cannot, or does not, or did not
have the time to do. "She brings in things that you wouldn't ordinarily hear
or learn in a classroom." "We just listen and drink in information."6 Stu-
dents use phrases such as "a different perspective," "extended knowledge,"
"perks up," and "more interesting" in describing what Ruth did. They felt
that she provides a different perspective and shows the relationship be-
tween art and life. The girls commented about how she opened their eyes to
arts experiences that they didn't even know existed. The girls generally
agreed that the arts should not be missed, that they were an important part
of life, and that the program was worthwhile. They saw the program as
something that would help them in their "adult life." Some of the teachers
stated that they couldn't imagine not having the aesthetic education
program as part of the educational program at Nerinx Hall.

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96 Jerilynn Changar

After over seventy-four classroom observations, over fifty formal and in-
formal interviews with Ruth, the administration, and students, and the col-
lection of over 250 lesson descriptions and other pertinent documents, it has
become apparent to me that this program is a meaningful way to extend the
students' appreciation of the arts, to enrich the course content, and to in-
crease their cultural knowledge and understanding. At Nerinx the students
are continually challenged to notice and give their attention to some of hu-
manity's greatest achievements. The Nerinx Hall program as designed and
taught by Ruth Burgett is truly an innovative arts program which draws on
both the isolationist and the contextualist approaches to aesthetic education
for its strength.

NOTES

1. John Hospers, Understanding the Arts (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982),
p. 81.
2. Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in Philosophy of Criticism (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958), pp. 64-65.
3. Hospers, Understanding the Arts, p. 287.
4. C. M. Smith, "Style and Education," in Aesthetic Concepts and Education, ed. Ralph
A. Smith (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), p. 421.
5. Interview, Sue, 1983.
6. Ibid.

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