Why a Theory of Symbols is Necessary for Teaching Art
1992; Wiley; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1476-8070.1992.tb00307.x
ISSN1468-5949
Autores Tópico(s)Art Education and Development
ResumoJournal of Art & Design EducationVolume 11, Issue 2 p. 143-153 Why a Theory of Symbols is Necessary for Teaching Art LESLIE CUNLIFFE, LESLIE CUNLIFFESearch for more papers by this author LESLIE CUNLIFFE, LESLIE CUNLIFFESearch for more papers by this author First published: June 1992 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.1992.tb00307.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat References 1 Quoted in E.H. GOMBRICH (1972) Art and Illusion, London , Phaidon Press, p. 23. Google Scholar 2 BRUNER, J. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, London, Harvard UP. Bruner uses the word ‘aboriginal’ to describe the idea that we can access a ‘given’ reality independent of knowing about it through a historically specific construction. I have extended his use of the word to include aboriginal expressionism. Google Scholar 3 For an introduction to constructivism and social interactionism, (Vygotsky, Feuerstein, Bruner) see BRUNER (n2). Google Scholar 4 GOMBRICH (n1) p. 22. Gombrich pokes fun at the relativism of Arnheim for confusing representation with perception. “The fact that different periods are known to have had different standards of ‘lifelikeness’ makes him hope that a ‘further shift of the artistic reality level’ will make works of Picasso, Braque, or Klee ‘look exactly like the things they represent.’ If he is right, the Sears Roebuck catalogue of the year 2000 will represent the mandolins, jugs, or twittering machines for sale on this new reality level.” I often make the same point to my students by challenging them to find multi-cultural lenses in opticians' shops. Google Scholar 5 Popper describes the mind as a searchlight. He contrasts this with the positivist idea of the mind as a bucket which gets filled with sense data. We are constantly engaged in perceptual cycles that dialectically relate our schemata to the environment. See also NEISSER, U. (1976) Cognition and Reality, San Francisco , W.H. Freeman, who writes, “Perception itself depends on the skill and experience of the perceiver—on what he knows in advance. You will not pick up much from this book, for example, unless you can already read the language in which it is written”. See also PERKINS, D (1988) Art as Understanding, pp.111–131 in: GARDNER, H. and PERKINS, D., (Eds) Art, Mind and Understanding, Chicago, Univ. of Illinois, who describes understanding as web-like. “Understanding involves knowing how different things relate to one another in terms of such relations as symbol-experience, cause-effect, form-function, part-whole, symbol-interpretation, example-generality, and so on. Broadly speaking, understanding something entails appreciating how it is ‘placed’ in a web of relationships that give it meaning.”. Google Scholar 6 KELLY, G. (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs, New York , Norton & Co. PubMedWeb of Science®Google Scholar 7 NEISSER, U. (n5). Google Scholar 8 BRUNER, J. (1975) Beyond the Information Given, London , Allan & Unwin. Google Scholar 9 NEISSER, U. (n5) pp. 180–81. Google Scholar 10 This diagram is taken from NEISSER, (n5) p. 112. Google Scholar 11 Recent research carried out by Dr. P. Adey and Dr. M. Shayer into thinking skills courses for secondary school pupils has highlighted the enormous benefits that such courses have on pupil performance. Results at GCSE level in schools figuring in the research improved dramatically in Science, Maths and English. Pupils exposed to the thinking skills courses (which were based on the work of Feuerstein and Piaget) developed much higher order analytic abilities. If the National Curriculum for Art is successful, it should lead to metacognition in Art and Design. For further information about the case research, contact Dr. P. Adey and Dr. M. Shayer, Centre for Educational Studies, King's College, University of London, Cornwall House Annexe, Waterloo Road, London SEI 8TX. Google Scholar 12 BRUNER, J. (1974) Relevance of Education, Harmondsworth, Penguin , p. 143. Google Scholar 13 GOODMAN, N. (1976) The Languages of Art, Indianapolis, Hackett , p. 37. Google Scholar 14 GOMBRICH, E.H. (1984) The Image and the Eye, Oxford , Phaidon Press, p. 280. Google Scholar 15 The Image and the Eye., see the chapters: ‘ Visual Discovery through Art’, pp. 11–39, and ‘Mirror and Map’, pp. 172–214. Google Scholar 16 The Image and the Eye. p. 19. Google Scholar 17 For a discussion of the effortless reading of an image based on perspective by people of a culture unfamiliar with this visual code see: TORMEY, A. (1980) ‘ Seeing Things: Pictures, Paradox and Perception’, in: J. FISHER (Ed) Perceiving Artworks, Philadelphia , Temple University Press, pp. 69–71. Google Scholar 18 GOMBRICH (n14) p. 283. Google Scholar 19 J.J. Gibson's idea of ecological optics would offer an explanation for why people can swiftly learn to read realistic images. Google Scholar 20 GIBSON, J.J. (1986) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, London , Laurence Erlbaum Assoc., p. 28. Google Scholar 21 TORMEY (n17) pp. 252–253. Google Scholar 22 GOMBRICH (n14) pp. 252–253. Google Scholar 23 HUGHES, R. (1990) Nothing if not Critical, London , Collins Harvill, p. 11. I am indebted to Robert Hughes for this ‘Oedipal’ insight. In the same passage he bitterly attacks late-modernist art education, seeing its products as a deep cultural loss: “For nearly a quarter of a century, late-modernist art teaching (especially in America) has increasingly succumbed to the fiction that the values of the so-called academy—meaning, in essence, the transmission of disciplined skills based on drawing from the live model and the natural motif—were hostile to ‘creativity’. This fiction enabled Americans to ignore the inconvenient fact that virtually all artists who created and extended the modernist enterprise between 1890 and 1950, Beckmann no less than Picasso, Miró and de Kooning as well as Degas or Matisse, were formed by the atelier system and could no more have done without the particular skills it inculcated than an aircraft can fly without an airstrip. The philosophical beauty of Mondrian's squares and grids begins with the empirical beauty of his apple trees. Whereas thanks to America's tedious obsession with the therapeutic, its art schools in the 1960s and the 1970s tended to become creches, whose aim was less to transmit the difficult skills of painting and sculpture than to produce ‘fulfilled’ personalities. At this no one could fail.”. Web of Science®Google Scholar 24 GADAMER, H.G. (1979) Truth and Method, London , Sheed and Ward, p. 458. Google Scholar 25 WOLTERSTORF, N. (1980) Art in Action, Grand Rapids, Mich., Eerdmans , pp. 91–121. Google Scholar 26 GOMBRICH (n1) pp. 304–329. Google Scholar 27 See: FULLER, P. (1980) Art and Psychoanalysis, London , Writers and Readers; pp. 177–238 (especially pp.210–213). See also GOMBRICH, E.H. (1963) Meditations on a Hobby Horse, London, Phaidon, pp. 45–55. See also WINNER, E. (1982) Invented Worlds: the Psychology of the Arts, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard UP, pp.104–111. Google Scholar 28 GOODMAN (n13) p. 248. Google Scholar 29 PICKARD, E. (1979) The Development of Creative Ability, Windsor , NFER Publications. Google Scholar Volume11, Issue2June 1992Pages 143-153 ReferencesRelatedInformation
Referência(s)