Articulating Aesthetic Understanding Through Art Making

 

Tracie Costantino (The University of Georgia)

 

Citation: Costantino, Tracie. (2007) Articulating aesthetic understanding through

art making. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 8(1). Retrieved [date]

from http://ijea.asu.edu/v8n1 /.

 

 

Abstract

In this article I will present case study research of an elementary school art teacher who provided both verbal and visual means for students to respond to art while on a museum field trip. I will focus on how the students’ drawings from memory and artwork in their sketchbooks present compelling articulations of their understandings of certain artworks. I will also discuss how their reflective writing about the field trip supports and elaborates on their visual articulation, and how the students’ works are manifestations of qualitative reasoning, visual thinking, and imaginative cognition (Efland, 2004) in addition to linguistic thinking. Through this discussion, I hope to illustrate the essential role of imagebased, nonlinguistic thinking (as in visual thinking, qualitative reasoning, and imagination) in interpreting and expressing understanding of works of art.

Introduction

The Oxford English dictionary (Brown, 1993) defines the verb articulate as: “Pronounce distinctly; give utterance to; express in words; express clearly and fluently” and “Make distinct 1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Imagination in Education Research Group annual conference in Vancouver, B. C., July 2006.

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to sight, etc.” Both of these definitions are relevant to art criticism and interpretation as they emphasize the importance of clear and fluent expression, whether verbal or visual (i.e., “distinct to sight”). In K-12 art education, engaging in art criticism has primarily meant talking or writing about art. Terry Barrett (2003), in his recent book on interpreting art, identifies talking or writing about art as critical components of the interpretive process: “to interpret a work of art is tounderstand it in language” (p. 198).

However, there is also a long tradition of artists responding to works of art through artmaking. Artists typically make sketches or drawings of works by other artists that inspire or challenge them; they may later incorporate these drawings into an artwork. Artists also make finished works that appear to be in direct dialogue with specific works of other artists, as in Rembrandt’s Self-portrait (1640, National Gallery, London) in which the artist leans his right arm on a ledge with his elbow jutting out at the viewer. This pose echoes that in Titian’s Portrait of a Man (1508-10, National Gallery, London). This type of artistic response articulates the artist’s understanding of the work under study, whether the artist is interpreting the compositional structure, examining an evocative gesture, or responding to the work’s metaphoric content. It relies on visual thinking and qualitative reasoning as well as linguistic thinking, which may occur throughout the cognitive process but especially when the artist is reflecting on or sharing the ideas that compose the artwork and its making. It is important to emphasize that in addition to linguistic thinking, visual and qualitative thinking play a significant role in interpretation.

There is a substantial body of research and theoretical literature explicating the cognitive sophistication of visual thinking—that is, the intelligence of perception and the role of images in concept formation (e.g., Arnheim, 1969; Zeki, 1999; and see Efland, 2004). The perception of a work of art is essentially interpretive, and the creation of a work of art is dependent on visual thinking and qualitative reasoning—the manipulation of non-linguistic percepts and concepts that are based in sensory stimuli and emotion (Arnheim, 1969; Dewey, 1934; Eisner, 1994, 2002). Since a primary goal of art criticism in art education is to develop students’ ability to construct reasoned and meaningful interpretations of art, it seems important not to restrict the interpretive process solely to linguistic thinking and articulation, but include opportunities for visual thinking and qualitative reasoning through art making to fully express one’s understanding of an artwork (see, for example, Emme, 2001). By utilizing visual and verbal modes of thought, the student would be engaged in the highest levels of cognition.

_In this article I will present case study research of an elementary school art teacher who provided both verbal and visual means for students to respond to art while on a museum field trip. I will focus on how the students’ drawings from memory and artwork in their sketchbooks present compelling articulations of their understandings of certain artworks. I will also discuss how their reflective writing about the field trip supports and elaborates on their visual articulation, and how the students’ works are manifestations of qualitative reasoning, visual thinking, and imaginative cognition (Efland, 2004) in addition to linguistic thinking. Through this discussion, I hope to illustrate the essential role of image-based, nonlinguistic thinking (as in International Journal of Education & the Arts Vol. 8 No. 1 3 visual thinking, qualitative reasoning, and imagination) in interpreting and expressing understanding of works of art.2

The case study to be discussed herein was part of a larger, multiple case study project investigating the role of curriculum and pedagogy on students’ aesthetic experiences while visiting an art museum with their art teacher (Costantino, 2005). In the case discussed in this article, art teacher Carl Connelly guided fifth and sixth grade students from the Falcon Elementary School3 in the Chicago Public School district through The Art Institute of Chicago. I am focusing on particular findings and issues from the case study, specifically how Carl’s approach to visiting the museum reflects his philosophy of teaching art through apprenticeship, in his modeling for the students how an artist engages in visual dialogues with artworks through sketching and drawing, and verbal dialogues by note taking and discussion with other people.

Influenced by this pedagogical approach, students created sketches, drawings, and writtenreflections that represent their engagement with certain artworks. These visual articulations express their understanding and interpretations of the artwork and are visual representations of their aesthetic experience, when aesthetic experience is defined hermeneutically as interpreting or constructing meaning of a work of art (Gadamer, 1960/2000; Parsons, 2002).

 

Methodology and Theoretical Framework

Methodology

This study employed a naturalistic instrumental case study methodology (Stake, 1995). I used a variety of qualitative methods to understand the nature of students’ experiences encountering works of art at the Art Institute, and how that experience was mediated by pedagogy and curriculum. I acted as a participant-observer of the classroom lessons that preceded and followed the field trip to the museum, making sure to observe the entire unit that related to the field trip and additional lessons in order to get a sense of the classroom dynamic, and the teacher’s pedagogical style and approach to art education curriculum. I was also a participant-observer on the field trips to the museum. I was somewhat involved in the classroom and on the field trip as a way to interact informally with the students, for example, I helped to pass out and collect materials and spoke to students about their art projects or the artwork theysaw at the museum.

I was more participant than observer on the field trip with Falcon students as these field trips were structured so that students could talk freely with others about the artwork on view.

This gave me an opportunity to speak with a number of students about their ideas about specific

works of art, providing rich data for the study regarding how students constructed meaning of works of art. My observations were recorded by audiotape and written field notes.

2 I am grateful to the external reviewer that encouraged me to clarify my emphasis on the role of visual thinking in interpreting art, not to the exclusion of linguistic thinking, but in partnership.

3 Except for the museum and school district, all place and personal names have been changed to protect participants.

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I also conducted semi-structured interviews with the art teacher, a purposeful sample of students, and the classroom teacher that attended the field trip. The students were selected according to observations I made during the field trip and according to their responses to an open-ended reflective writing prompt, choosing students that seemed to have a significant reaction to the experience, whether positive or negative. The classroom teacher administered the writing prompt the day of the field trip. This prompt also asked students to draw their ideas, as desired. In addition to these drawings, I took photographs of student artwork that related to theunit in which the field trip occurred. In this way, I collected data on students’ experiences using a variety of expressive modes—oral, written, and visual/artistic. In addition to interviewing the artteachers, I collected related documents as available, including lesson plans, instructional materials, and student sketchbooks. The interviews were audio taped and transcribed.

The data were analyzed using coding and categorization methods (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996). Considering the often ineffable quality of aesthetic experience, I also analyzed how students and teachers used metaphor to describe experience (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996).

Students’ drawings were analyzed by asking specific questions, such as what is the student focusing on (composition, color, figure, etc.), what media are used, and how closely does it approximate the original work of art? By asking these questions I developed interpretations of the focus of the drawing and what this may imply about the student’s interest in the original artwork, and how they might have changed the original artwork, which implied a visual interpretation of the original work by the student. All of these possible interpretations contributed to my understanding of the nature of students’ experiences of specific artworks, combined with their written and oral responses from other data sources (i.e., the writing prompt and interview).

The use of several methods for data collection (observations, interviews, reflective writing (with drawing), and photographs) and analysis (coding and categorization, use of metaphor, document analysis) helped to triangulate (or to use Denzin and Lincoln’s term, to crystalline) the findings, providing “rigor, breadth, complexity, richness, and depth” to the inquiry (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000, p. 5). Member checking occurred at the end of each interview to insure that my interpretations adequately reflected the speaker’s intended meanings. The teacher was asked to review a draft of the written case study to further inform my interpretations and analysis.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework for the larger study was grounded in the aesthetic theories of John Dewey (1934) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960/2000), which assert the educational nature of aesthetic experience. Both philosophers describe aesthetic experience as a constructed event between the work of art and the viewer. An interpretive, meaning-making process is the central activity of this event, which occurs through perception. For Dewey, emotion is the “cementing force” (Dewey, 1934, p. 42) that makes the experience memorable and productive, cultivating growth, which he considers central to education. “Education means the enterprise of supplying the conditions which insure growth” (Dewey, 1916, p. 51). For Gadamer (1960/2000), the International Journal of Education & the Arts Vol. 8 No. 1 5 experience is dialogic, an ongoing interpretive exchange between the viewer and the work of art that results in a disclosure of meaning:

And is not the task of aesthetics precisely to ground the fact that the experience (Erfahrung) of art is a mode of knowledge of a unique kind, certainly different from that sensory knowledge which provides science with the ultimate data from which it constructs the knowledge of nature, and certainly different from all moral rational knowledge, and indeed from all conceptual knowledge—but still knowledge, i.e., conveying truth? (p. 98)

This study applied the aesthetic theories of Dewey and Gadamer to provide a framework for the kind of meaning-making process, or learning, that might occur during student interactions with works of art in a museum setting.

Gadamer also asserted the essential linguisticality of understanding. He stressed that it is only by articulating ideas in language that understanding is achieved “…language is the universal medium in which understanding occurs” (1960/2000, p. 389). Gadamer’s emphasis on language in thinking reflects a longstanding tradition. Dewey, however, anticipates current research on the non-linguistic forms of thinking and the role of the body in cognition throughout his writing, most notably in Art as Experience (1934), “The existence of art…is proof that man uses the materials and energies of nature with intent to expand his own life, and that he does so in accord with the structure of his organism—brain, sense-organs, and muscular system” (p. 25). Indeed Dewey described thinking in terms of qualities (qualia)—which occurs during artmaking and results in artistic expression of ideas—as one of the most sophisticated modes of thought. “To think effectively in terms of relations of qualities is as severe a demand upon thought as to think in terms of symbols, verbal and mathematical” (p. 46).

Dewey also provides a kind of explanation of visual thinking in this book, admirable forits foresight before the cognitive revolution of the 1950s began to focus on the role of images incognition. In this case, he is discussing the need for the viewer to undergo a perceptive act of reconstructive doing.

For to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent…The artist selected, simplified, clarified, abridged and condensed according to his interest. The beholder must go through these operations according to his point of view and interest. In both, there is comprehension in its literal signification—that is, a gathering together of details and particulars physically scattered into an experienced whole. (p. 54)

Dewey’s description of the artistic process relates to what we know about cognition. The cognitive psychologist Rudolf Arnheim (1969) defines cognition as “active exploration, selection, grasping of essentials, simplification, abstraction, analysis and synthesis, completion, correction, comparison, problem solving, as well as combining, separating, putting in context” (p. 13). This occurs through language as well as images. In this same paragraph, Arnheim asserts

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the intelligence of perception “…the cognitive operations called thinking are not the privilege of mental processes above and beyond perception but the essential ingredients of perception itself” (p. 13). Visual thinking, then, is the process of identifying, categorizing, and generating images that are the foundation of all thinking. According to Arnheim, these images are directly perceived, as well as generated to refer to kinds of qualities, objects, and events, and stored in memory as visual concepts (p. 294). In visual thinking, the mind manipulates these visual concepts, directly perceived as well as from experience and the imagination (creation of images that are not necessarily observable or from memory), in the cognitive processes described by Arnheim above. The artistic process of manipulating the elements and principles of design, such as line and color, to express a concept in two or three-dimensional form is an example of visual thinking. The visual symbols or icons (the iconography) of an artwork are the result of visual thinking also, as conceptual metaphors become articulated visually and materially (see Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999; Parsons, in press). The interpretation of the resulting work of art through perception requires visual thinking as the viewer analyzes how the arrangement and physical handling of the formal and symbolic elements of an artwork convey meaning. Building on Dewey’s ideas of thinking in terms of qualities in Art as Experience, Elliot Eisner expands on the concept of qualitative reasoning, especially in Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered (1994) and The Arts and the Creation of Mind (2002), to describe the character of non-linguistic thinking that creating and responding to art entails. Qualitative reasoning is similar to visual thinking, but emphasizes the influence of emotion on our perception. What is particularly relevant to this study is Eisner’s discussion of the transformation that occurs when a student tries to verbally articulate his or her understanding of a visual expression. The student must use analogy, for a literal equivalent is not possible, and this insistence on analogy is another example of higher order thinking (2002, see p. 121-122). Therefore, regarding this study, there was the potential for more meaning making, or learning, for both the student-artist and for myself as researcher-viewer in the students’ combined verbal and visual articulations of their understanding of artworks. 4 Based on recent theories of cognitive psychology and neurobiology that emphasize the critical, foundational role of images and metaphor in cognition, art educator Arthur Efland (2004) offers the term imaginative cognition to describe the thinking involved in creating and interpreting works of art. He defines imagination as …the act or power of forming mental images of what is not actually present to the senses, or what has not actually been experienced. It is also the power of creating new ideas or images through the combination and reorganization of images from previous experiences. (p. 771) 4 I am indebted to Richard Siegesmund’s (2004, 2005) writing on Eisner’s theories of qualitative reasoning and non-linguistic thinking for highlighting the cognitive demands (through use of analogy and metaphor) of transforming qualitative reasoning into linguistic expression. Through his research Siegesmund demonstrates how qualitative reasoning and linguistic expression cooperate in a sophisticated learning cycle.

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In this definition, one can see how the students’ interpretive drawings required the use of the imagination (creating new ideas or images through combination and reorganization) and why it is important to give students an opportunity to articulate understanding visually through art making, in addition to linguistically. It provides another avenue for higher order thinking.

Michael Parsons (in press), building on Efland (2002), illustrates how metaphors can be visually based, and are not essentially linguistic. Using Lakoff’s and Johnson’s (1980, 1999) definition of a metaphor as “mapping the qualities of something in one domain onto another domain,” Parsons interprets Bierstadt’s painting Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains as a metaphor.

The majesty of this painting, produced by the towering size of the mountains, the tranquility of the scenery, and the patterns of light and color in the clouds, and the suggestion of the sun, unseen, may be said to be a metaphor for the glory of God.…We could say the Bierstadt maps the qualities of Nature onto its Maker, which would be a straight metaphor.

To further elucidate, Parsons uses the terms metonymy and simile, but emphasizes “all of these amount to mapping the qualities of the painting onto the idea of God, something that does not need to be put into words in order to be appreciated.” He applies this reasoning to other visual expressions, including an example from popular culture: the automobile advertisement that features a pretty woman with the automobile. “It is clearly grounded in the metaphorical thought that, in some unspecified way, the car is like a pretty woman. The literal reading, of course, would be that a woman is leaning on an automobile.”

I quote Parsons at length to emphasize the metaphoric quality of art and visual culture— that they may be visual metaphors that may be interpreted visually and not solely linguistically, to underscore the importance of providing opportunity for visual means of interpretation in addition to verbal.

Efland’s theory of imaginative cognition is also important for its emphasis on imagination as an essential aspect of art and art education, and its relevance for general education. Based on the research in cognitive psychology and neurobiology that describe the cognitive sophistication of visual thinking, the fundamental role of metaphor (visual and verbal) in concept formation and understanding, and the cognitive demands of imagination, which he carefully outlines, Efland asserts, “Education should have as its ultimate purpose the maximization of the cognitive potential of individuals, and this includes the use of the imagination—in all subjects to be sure but certainly in the arts” (p. 770).

Both Efland (2004) and Siegesmund (2005) discuss how imaginative cognition and qualitative reasoning may be implicit in an art teacher’s curricular objectives and approach to instruction, but should be made explicit for students to fully benefit from the cognitive demands of making and responding to art. Carl Connelly’s approach to art education and a tour of The Art Institute of Chicago is an example of implicit attention to imaginative cognition and qualitative reasoning and that with more explicit attention, more students may have experienced the cognitive challenge of visually articulating their understanding of specific works of art.

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