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Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education 20
Studies in Philosophical
Realism in Art, Design
and Education
Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education
Volume 20
Series Editor
Liora Bresler, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A
Editorial Board
Eeva Antilla, Theatre Academy, Helsinki, Finland
Magne Espeland, Stord University, Norway
Chris Higgins, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A.
Rita Irwin, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Samuel Leong, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po, Hong Kong
Minette Mans, International Consultant, Windhoek, Namibia
Mike Parsons, The Ohio State University, Columbus, U.S.A.
Eva Sæther, Lund University, Malmö Academy of Music, Sweden
Shifra Schonmann, University of Haifa, Israel
Julian Sefton-Green, University of Nottingham, UK
Susan W. Stinson, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, U.S.A.
Christine Thompson, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, U.S.A.
Scope
This series aims to provide conceptual and empirical research in arts education,
(including music, visual arts, drama, dance, media, and poetry), in a variety of areas
related to the post-modern paradigm shift. The changing cultural, historical, and
political contexts of arts education are recognized to be central to learning,
experience, knowledge. The books in this series presents theories and methodological
approaches used in arts education research as well as related disciplines—including
philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology of arts education.
Studies in Philosophical
Realism in Art, Design
and Education
Neil C.M. Brown
East Balmain, NSW, Australia
Artworks that meant little to me once now mean everything, and I attribute these
changes of heart almost entirely to changes in my understanding. For this reason,
what I want to say about education in art reflects my desire in becoming more
deeply acquainted with the elusive and enduring autonomy of art. I trust that my
need for understanding grows out of a respect for art rather than a wish for its defini-
tive control. While happy to construct, deconstruct, reconstruct and reframe my
understandings of art, I oppose the imposition of these as conceits on the existence
of artworks. The pretence of remaking art into a creature of one’s understanding
means that you can never be wrong about the meaning of works shutting out the
possibility of changes of heart that, in my opinion, nurture the integrity of arts
education.
Bringing together the papers for this book is the inspiration of Dr. Kerry Thomas,
my joint collaborator in the exploration of philosophical realism in art and educa-
tion. In her role as senior curriculum officer (visual arts) and then inspector (creative
arts) with the New South Wales Board of Studies, Kerry made possible the practical
implementation and revision of ideas elaborated in the following chapters. Then as
my PhD student and currently as associate professor in the School of Education at
the University of New South Wales, Kerry saw value in telling the story of philo-
sophical realism as an evolutionary narrative of my papers stretching back 30 years.
I am forever grateful to Kerry for her gracious and selfless endeavour in this regard.
I also wish to thank Liora Bresler for considering this book for inclusion in the
“Landscape” series.
Arts education is the most eclectic of domains, and its collaborative demands are
correspondingly onerous. I thank all those who have taken an interest in my ideas
including those less well disposed in the early days. I have strived for consistency in
my views, and I hope this is sustained over the quarter century in which they are
presented.
v
Contents
vii
viii Contents
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
List of Figures
xv
List of Tables
xvii
Part I
The Development of Philosophical Realism
in Art, Design and Education
Chapter 1
Introduction to Studies in Philosophical
Realism in Art, Design and Education
Brown’s development of Philosophical Realism in art education over the past thirty
years is evolutionary rather than programmatic. It springs from events in the early
nineteen eighties coinciding with his research into the limitations emerging with
New Criticism, the psychologically framed aesthetic orthodoxy underlying Anglo
Saxon theory of art in the first half of the twentieth century. The subjectivist aesthet-
ics of New Criticism was under siege from influential structural and historicist revi-
sions in aesthetics, many originating from revolutionary developments in Europe
during the late nineteen sixties. The corresponding shift from a subjectively causal
to a cognitively based aesthetics in North America had a revolutionary impact on
the politics of practice in art to the extent that foundational concepts of art and aes-
thetics could no longer be dismissed as esoteric curiosities by art educators as they
may have been earlier in the century (Weitz 1956; Dickie 1974). In consultation
with the North American educational philosopher Elizabeth Steiner, Brown’s inter-
est in the details of European aesthetics turned to focus on the conundrums these
systems posed collectively for practice in art and education. He believed that onto-
logical incompatibility, underlying a plurality of European aesthetic systems, fore-
shadowed dilemmas of value in art education that would lead the field into a
revolutionary politics of choice. The uptake of structuralism, culture theory, includ-
ing the legacy of subjectivist aesthetics, Brown believed, would oblige the making
of ontological choices in art education, breaking down the division between theory
and practice in art teaching, with implications for the nature of content to be taught,
and ways it was to be understood and assessed.
as ontology. That is, philosophically derived beliefs about art, although solemnly
held, were misappropriating the autonomy of art’s existence. The consequences of
mistaking epistemology for ontology in this way implicated art educators in the
making of exclusive theoretical choices, constructing what art could be and thus
severely handicapping art educators’ freedom in the interpretation and explanation
of artistic meaning with students.
Completing a study synthesising Monroe Beardsley’s (1958/1981) concept of
aesthetic criticism and Nicholas Wolterstorff’s realist theory of art kinds (1980) in
nineteen eighty-six, Brown began examining ways of overcoming constraints on the
application of Philosophical Realism to practice with a view to countering divisive
pluralism and providing tools for developing students’ conceptual autonomy in their
making and understanding of art. There was no doubt, he felt, that an art education
dominated throughout the twentieth century by a mind to world approach to aes-
thetic meaning was in need of a world to mind layer of reference or praxeology,
beyond that provided by studies in the critical history of art.
The chapters in this book analyse the advantages of Philosophical Realism,
including its capacity for preserving the continuity of inherited systems of artistic
value, while embracing new systems of meaning. Although Philosophical Realism
has never been seriously proposed as a revisionist option for art education, Brown,
with the support of Professor Elizabeth Steiner, was convinced by the work of phi-
losophers including Richard Wolheim (1968) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (1980) of
its value for the field. However, the pathway to Philosophical Realism in art and art
education is a trail strewn with many difficult theoretical, not to mention political
obstacles, as revealed in the following chapters.
The chapters in this volume, although thematically consistent, are written around
concerns and issues emerging within an historical context. This is consistent with
the tenets of Philosophical Realism insofar as it embraces a grounded historicism in
its approach to meaning in art and practice. Particular reference is made to papers
originating as groundwork for curriculum development in New South Wales,
Australia, many emerging as leading presentations in the Occasional Seminars in
Art Education series in Sydney at the College of Fine Arts (COFA), UNSW. The
Occasional Seminars series, conceived as an outreach program for art teachers by
Brown during his tenure as Head of the School of Art Education, continued over a
period of ten years. The seminars provided the opportunity for debate and the
exchange of ideas amongst international contributors, departmental staff, art teach-
ers and postgraduate students on questions referring to Philosophical Realism.
International contributors to the series included: Arthur Efland, Howard Gardner,
6 1 Introduction to Studies in Philosophical Realism in Art, Design and Education
While the Occasional Seminars provided academic leadership for art teachers and
academics in NSW, opportunities for practical implementation of concepts in
Philosophical Realism were made possible through institutional alliances between
Brown and the Creative Arts division of the NSW Board of Studies (BOS) in
Sydney, Australia—the statutory authority responsible for curriculum and assess-
ment in all schools K-12 across the state. Under the leadership of its President, John
Lambert, the BOS implemented a broadly based curriculum reform agenda (NSW
Ministry of Education and Youth Affairs 1989), the timing of which was well suited
to the collaboration, as described in Chap. 7, that followed between Brown, as the
architect of realist revisions including the “Frames” and Creative Arts curriculum
leaders at the BOS, Paul Milton, Inspector Creative Arts; Kerry Thomas, Senior
Curriculum Officer Visual Arts (later Inspector Creative Arts); and Amanda Weate,
1.5 Collaboration with the NSW Board of Studies in the Use of Philosophical… 7
Visual Arts Syllabus Chair (subsequent Head of the School of Art Education at the
College of Fine Arts, UNSW).
In working party meetings between the School of Art Education, Department of
Education, the BOS and its Visual Arts syllabus committee, Brown argued that stu-
dents’ understanding of contemporary art was being poorly served by the assump-
tion of artworks existing solely as immediately meaningful objects. What could be
learned about art, he insisted, was tied to particular frameworks of belief. Brown
recognised however, the need for cushioning the transition to reform and grafted his
proposal for the Frames onto the existing content areas—Art and Australia, Art and
Culture, Art and Media—resulting in a greater acceptance of these measures by art
educators and the BOS (Board of Studies 1987, 1995, 1999; Brown 1989a).
Running counter to these developments in the early 1990s, the Australian Federal
government following the international push towards competency-based education,
and in pursuit of micro-economic reform, embarked on the introduction of a national
curriculum. The national agenda aimed at converting subject content into key com-
petencies and was widely interpreted by academics as a threat to the intellectual
integrity of subject content including the Visual Arts in NSW. Although the NSW
BOS was reluctant to apply competency-based approaches to the Creative Arts, the
Visual Arts was nevertheless obliged to comply with this national agenda for some
years. Recognising the challenge that these ‘reforms’ posed for the identity of art in
education, and in collaboration with Garth Gaudrey, Professor of Mathematics at
UNSW and leaders from other subject domains, Brown opposed the national cur-
riculum by exposing the determinism of outcomes and profiles as representational
artefacts, as detailed in Chap. 11.
In contravention of the national agenda, the commitment to curriculum innova-
tion through the Frames in visual arts education continued in NSW. Nonetheless,
work undertaken in developing the Visual Arts Years 7–10 Syllabus (Board of
Studies 1995) recognised the need for compromise with the BOSs curriculum com-
mittees. It was not until innovations in Philosophical Realism in Visual Arts were
accepted at committee levels, through broadly based state consultation and with
ministerial endorsement that they could be accepted for introduction.
Shortly after this, reforms to the Higher School Certificate (HSC) the major
matriculation examination in NSW, led by Professor Barry McGaw, sought a recon-
sideration of the purposes of the senior years of secondary schooling, focusing com-
prehensively on curriculum structure, assessment and the reporting of results.1
McGaw believed that it was possible to ensure differences in level of intellectual
demand within a single course allowing student performance in each subject domain
to be measured across the one scale (McGaw 1997). However, McGaw’s proposal
exposed a flaw in the way art was being assessed, namely, the capacity of art cur-
riculum to represent qualitative differences in levels of intellectual demand across a
course of study in creative practice.
1
English, Mathematics, History, Music were exempt from this 2-unit arrangement of subjects. For
further information on course, subjects and curriculum provision (See Aqilina n.d.).
8 1 Introduction to Studies in Philosophical Realism in Art, Design and Education
Part I collects together papers devoted to the elucidation and defence of Philosophical
Realism and its application to the practical arts (Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). Chapter
1, ‘Introduction to studies in Philosophical Realism in art, design and education’
provides the background to Brown’s development of Philosophical Realism. This is
set within the historical context of revisionist developments in art education during
the later part of the twentieth century. The chapter also briefly outlines the focus and
content of this volume.
Chapter 2, ‘Constraints on art in education’ deals with the theoretical difficulties
facing the educational representation of art in the curriculum at all levels. Brown
argues that art education can be seen as an institutional network of implications,
influences and limitations that is imposed on educational practice as a consequence
of characteristics relating to the special nature of art as its referent. This chapter
foreshadows the strategic approach to curriculum development in the Visual Arts
since 1994 as represented in Australia through the NSW Board of Studies and syl-
labuses used in secondary schools. In Chap. 3, ‘Making art a real thing’, Brown
identifies how art education has been slow in learning the lessons of the avant garde:
namely, that there are few privileged performances in the visual arts and that the
artistic imagination can be accounted for in various ways. He argues that an inten-
tional account of art should be able to accommodate different theories of art rather
than favouring one theory over another or abandoning explanation to a negative
pluralism. Projects related to art in education, Brown says, are in urgent need of
ontologically neutral presuppositions about the domain of art and he sketches a
minimal set of conditions to meet this requirement:
Brown goes on to explore how, despite their causal density, true assertions can be
made about the meaning of artworks framed in the form of satisfying non-reductive
explanations. These ideas are elaborated on in Chap. 4, ‘Aesthetic description and
realism in art education’, where the usefulness of a stable realism, rather than a
metaphysics of art, is discussed. Brown explains how questions related to the
10 1 Introduction to Studies in Philosophical Realism in Art, Design and Education
Part II includes Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. Chapters 7, ‘Art educa-
tion curriculum praxis: A time for collaboration’ and 10, ‘The Frames and Relational
Aesthetics’ deal with innovation in curriculum development at state level in NSW
syllabuses in the Visual Arts. These two chapters focus on the origination of the
‘Frames’—subjective, cultural, structural, and postmodern—that, while not exhaus-
tive and in a continual state of mutation, inherit ways in which objects are valued,
interpreted, created and made use of as art. The Frames are not artefacts of curricu-
lum but chosen as distillations of historically emergent, axiomatically distinct and
grounded epistemologies. Brown considers the ongoing authority of these frames as
different systems of knowing functioning within overlapping constraints.
1.6 The Chapters in This Book 11
The contribution of the Frames, as elaborated on in these chapters, lies not only
in their complementary epistemic perspectives but also in the way, at varying levels
of complexity and with increasing degrees of autonomy, they present students with
a new layer of conceptual tools for the explicit interrogation of artefacts and artistic
ideas. Placing students in conceptual charge of their artistic development Brown
sees as the eventual goal of art education.
In Chap. 7, ‘Art education curriculum praxis: A time for collaboration’, Brown
suggests the potential of a fertile association between collaboration and curriculum
innovation, characterised through the introduction of the Frames. However, he
warns of how interdisciplinary collaboration can pose a threat to highly eclectic
fields such as art education. In this chapter ethical issues associated with collabora-
tion are discussed including differences between a right, an ought and a could, and
the opportunity is used to reject a popular synonymy of the time—between ‘col-
laboration’ and ‘action research’ in education. In Chap. 10, ‘The Frames and rela-
tional aesthetics’, Brown identifies resonances with Nicholas Bourriaud’s (2002)
concept of relational aesthetics. He explains how the Frames continue to bring a
theoretical power to art, as forms enabling students at varying stages of conceptual
autonomy, to reposition, dismantle, reassemble and apply the meanings of art into
intentional systems in art and design; including contemporary developments in
multi-modality and digital technologies. The Frames take the original step of mak-
ing conceptual positioning in art an explicit choice for students rather than imposed
as assumptions concealed in the rhetoric of the curriculum. Conceptual positioning
opens the way for concomitants in conceptual autonomy that can be used in regis-
tering differences in developmental levels of understanding in art.
In Chap. 8, ‘Coming to terms with Visuality in the content of art education’, the
most recent of the chapters written in 2015 and drawing on his Literature Review for
the National Review of Visual Education (2006), Brown explores how content in art
and art practice is generated in the form of curriculum narratives in art education
with a particular focus on how the concept of the ‘visual’ has emerged as a central
narrative in the field. He identifies how the tag of the ‘visual’ in the multi modality
of a post digital age has become ‘the elephant in the room’ when applied as a defin-
ing concept in art education. Then in Chap. 9, ‘The spectacle of the artist in art
education’, Brown focuses on how theoretical changes underpinning key functions
of content in art education are positively correlated with the spectacular advantages
they bring to the field. Borrowing from Guy Debord’s (1967) economy of the spec-
tacle, as appropriate to representations of the visual artist, Brown identifies three
spectacles of the artist in education—the psychological, epistemological and anthro-
pological. He shows how narratives, based on the spectacle of the artist’s role as it
is portrayed within curriculum content, flourish and endure by enchanting teachers
and then implicating them as dependents in the maintenance and production of the
gaze.
Taking a broader view of educational reforms in nation states and state based
curriculum that resonate today, in Chap. 11, ‘The meta-representation of stan-
dards, outcomes and profiles in visual arts education’, Brown examines the opac-
ity of meaning in competency based approaches to the field. He reveals the way
12 1 Introduction to Studies in Philosophical Realism in Art, Design and Education
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Un jour vint cependant où je sentis que cette confidence ne
m’était plus possible : le jour où, pour la première fois, les lèvres de
François touchèrent ma joue, puis mes lèvres, là-bas, près des
ruines abandonnées de cette villa où tint sa cour le beau cardinal
Julien de La Rovère. Alors mes promenades dans la campagne
devinrent plus fréquentes, mais je cessai d’en indiquer l’endroit. Si
j’étais montée vers les sauvages collines, je vantais au contraire les
chemins humides et bas qui vont retrouver les ruisseaux de la
plaine ; et si j’étais allée dans la plaine, je parlais des rochers de
Mornas et de leurs belles couleurs de cuivre rouge et blond. Je
mentais et je n’en avais point de déplaisir. Je n’avais pas de bonheur
non plus. Une espèce de révolte me soulevait, mais je la tournais
vers ma mère et vers Guicharde, et c’est d’elles que je jugeais
nécessaire de me défendre.
Ainsi passèrent le mois d’août et les jours de septembre.
François devenait plus avide de me voir et moi de le retrouver, et, si
nous marchions côte à côte dans les chemins brûlés par l’été
finissant, ou si nous allions nous asseoir dans les bois sur la terre
odorante et broussailleuse, il nous advenait de laisser se prolonger
entre nous un redoutable silence. Il m’oppressait soudain ; j’avais
l’impression de m’y débattre, et, voulant qu’il se dissipât, je disais au
hasard n’importe quelle petite phrase brusque et ridicule. Alors,
François me regardait avec son irritant et douloureux sourire, et il me
prenait dans ses bras.
*
* *
Il voulut une fois me mener dans ces bois d’où la vue est si belle
et qui s’étendent au delà des carrières.
Je le retrouvai à la fontaine de Tourde. Il n’avait pas voulu
prendre sa voiture, ne se souciant pas qu’un de ses serviteurs pût
connaître nos rendez-vous, et nous gagnâmes le sommet de la
montagne par un chemin pierreux et roide où les sauterelles
abondantes qui se levaient sous nos pas faisaient en retombant le
bruit de la grêle. Les petits chênes à cet endroit étaient durs et
rabougris. Aucune ombre ne nous protégeait et je voyais se soulever
les épaules de François qui haletait un peu sous le pesant soleil.
Enfin nous aperçûmes les grandes carrières montrant leurs
blancheurs fraîches et leur profondeur sombre dans le rocher
déchiré. Mais mon compagnon ne me conduisit pas de ce côté et je
le suivis sur le chemin d’où l’on voit la plaine avec ses villages nager
dans une vapeur bleue. Bientôt nous entrâmes dans le bois. La terre
était couverte déjà de feuilles tombées. Il se levait de leur amas des
souffles brûlants et l’on eût dit que, toutes craquelantes et sèches,
elles n’étaient point consumées par les ardeurs du ciel, mais par un
feu qui continuait de brûler sous la terre. François semblait triste et
las et, me taisant avec lui, je laissais doucement sa main trop
chaude caresser mon bras nu.
Or, dans cette solitude profonde, comme nous traversions une
sorte de clairière, je fus surprise d’apercevoir un homme qui fouillait
la terre d’un long bâton ferré. Il était vêtu misérablement d’un
vêtement amolli qui avait la couleur flétrie des feuilles tombées. Et
sous son feutre aux bords fatigués, avec ses bottes déformées,
blanchâtres et fendillées, j’eus d’abord bien de la peine à reconnaître
le docteur Fabien Gourdon. Mais François n’eut point cette
hésitation. Une joie cruelle éclaira soudain son visage souffrant. Il
s’approcha ; et savourant bien la confusion de l’autre, honteux d’être
surpris ainsi dans sa tenue misérable de braconnier :
— Eh bien ! docteur, demanda-t-il, elles sont bonnes, les
trouvailles d’aujourd’hui ?
— J’arrive seulement, dit Fabien Gourdon.
Il souffrait dans sa vanité si visiblement qu’il en avait rougi.
Cependant son regard, déférent toujours quand il se levait sur mon
compagnon, m’enveloppait de cette déférence et il s’y mêlait une
espèce d’admiration sincère et presque violente. François,
impitoyable, examinait le vieux feutre, les vieilles bottes, le vieux
vêtement.
— Bonne chance, dit-il enfin sans s’attarder davantage. Songez,
docteur, et le pli se formait à sa bouche ironique, que l’Académie de
Privas attend votre mémoire. Ne la faites donc pas languir.
Et sous les petits chênes, quand nous nous fûmes éloignés, il se
mit à rire méchamment comme il avait ri déjà sur la place ronde où
sont les maisons des chanoines.
— Ah…, disait-il, ce Gourdon !… que de qualités !… Économe,
n’est-ce pas, je vous l’avais bien dit, prétentieux et économe, avare
peut-être même, le charmant garçon ! Il ne se soigne point pour lui-
même, mais pour l’impression qu’il veut produire. Quand il pense
n’avoir personne à étonner, il se néglige honteusement. Vous avez
pu l’admirer… Le moindre de mes gardes, dans les bois de
Valbonne, est mieux tenu que lui… Ah ! qu’il était vexé, qu’il avait
raison de l’être et que cela est bien fait ! Vous avez remarqué ses
bottes, Alvère… Sûrement, celles-ci ne viennent pas de chez
Luscassé, puisque la maison n’est ouverte que depuis dix ans.
Marchant devant moi, de sa canne il frappait les ronces pour les
rompre et que je pusse passer ; et il continuait de rire nerveusement.
Soudain il se tut, réfléchit un peu, et se retournant :
— Savez-vous, Alvère, me dit-il, je crois bien que le docteur
Gourdon est amoureux de vous.
— Amoureux !… dis-je bien étonnée, et pourquoi serait-il
amoureux de moi ?
— Parce que je vous aime, déclara François avec une
nonchalance insolente.
Nous étions maintenant au pied de quelques ruines qui furent
autrefois, sur cette hauteur, un château formidable, et nous nous
assîmes à leur ombre, déjà longue devant nous. Une espèce de
langueur qui venait du temps orageux et de notre fatigue nous
pénétrait, et, les membres abandonnés, nous fermions les yeux à
demi, dans l’air pesant où les odeurs mêlées de la menthe et du
thym étaient lourdes comme un baume. François était très pâle dans
la grande lumière, et je crois bien qu’à ce moment sa maladie le