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Preface And Table Of Contents

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Art Education that is socially relevant and responsible is the shared goal that brought a group attending the 1979 National Art Education Association Convention to form the Caucus on Social Theory and Art Education. Since then the Caucus has expanded both its membership and its endeavors to focus the art education profession on the importance of critical socio-cultural understanding. This issue of the BULLETIN, our second, reflects the progress we have made. Twice the size of the inaugural issue, this BULLETIN includes twelve of the many papers on the Caucus Program at the 1981 NAEA Convention. The ideas and issues …

Participant Observer As Critic, Robin R. Alexander

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Participant observation is a term used to denote a group of research techniques which anthropologists, sociologists, other social scientists, and in this case, critics, use to collect data in natural settings. By critics, I mean educational critics who utilize the paradigm of aesthetic criticism in their evaluation of education situations. From the several appropriate techniques for gathering data for educational evaluations, many educational critics choose participant observation techniques. This paper centers on 1) the similarities and differences between critics' and other researchers' use of participant observation techniques and 2) the differences between their research products.

Why Art Education Lacks Social Relevance: A Contextual Analysis, Robert Bersson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Contemporary art education is individual - focused (i.e. self-centered) to the almost complete exclusion of larger social concerns. This is true whether the art education is child-centered, discipline-centered, Rockfeller (Coming to Our Senses) - centered, or competency-based. The primary concern, notwithstanding differences, is on individual artistic productivity and, to a lesser degree, on personal aesthetic response. The enormous untapped potential of art education - and ninety-nine percent of us will be viewers and consumers, not artists - is in the social dimension. Critical understanding of the dominant visual culture - often dehumanizing in its effect, multicultural understanding through art, and …

The Image-Making Picture Art Process – Exploring The Social Dimension, Bruce Breland

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The basic assumption is that every artist works in the present. The objects (Art) that he produces are lessons about the environment which he wears like a mask. The artist through his mask, his art, his idiosyncratic set of goggles, is very much a part of the present. The artifact (Art) which the artist produces describes his world and, as a consequence, anticipates the future. Most artists are unaware of the critical role they play (few would admit to a status that resembles that of a social navigator). They, like most of us, do not think of the objects (art) …

The Getting Of Taste: A Child’S Apprenticeship, Cathy Brooks

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Childhood art experience reflects an apprenticeship to the taste systems which a child's family and the public school subscribe to. This paper sketches my own taste experiences as a school child advancing from age six to eleven. Taste is used here to mean a person's ability to discern among alternatives. Taste judgments rely on not only aesthetic criteria but also status and economic criteria that are part of the social context in which one makes choices in objects and images. Understanding this childhood apprenticeship reveals some of the factors influencing participation in art activity and aesthetic choice. I will outline …

Carl Jung: A Formalist Critique, Harold J. Mcwhinnie

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

I will present a review of the basic thoughts of Carl Jung and outline his research in areas such as psychological types and the uses of symbols in art. Special attention will be placed on his discussions of Schiller's work on aesthetic play. His work on the psychological types will be related to research in art education with the Myers-Briggs tests. His work on symbols in art will be related to the new and growing interest of art education in the whole field of Creative Arts Therapy. Jung's influence on art education will be discussed within the historical and philosophical …

Conceptual Art And The Continuing Quest For A New Social Context, Robert Morgan

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In challenging the notion of formalist aesthetic taste during the late sixties, a scattered group of artists, centered primarily in New York City, began to reveal the wider implications of art which had been largely ignored by galleries and museums. Their efforts suggested that objects made and distributed within a somewhat limited art context become part of a much larger social context; that, although art reflects the concerns of a society at a particular time and through a particular artist's interpretation, its attachment to that society is eminently clear. Whether art works exists in the form of objects, installations, propositions, …

Design: A Critique Of A Metaphor, Nancy R. Johnson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Teaching art is basically a process of sharing socially derived knowledge about art with other persons. In order to communicate the cognitive configuration of art as it appears in our culture, it is necessary to use language. In art education, the visual arts are often thought of as a non-verbal symbol system for encoding experience. For this symbol system to be socially known about, however, it must be codified in language. As Hertzler has pointed out, "The key and basic symbolism of man is language. All the other symbol systems can be interpreted only be means of language?". Language is …

A Socially Relevant Art Education, Lanny Milbrandt

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In view of the foregoing arguments for art education in a social context one might ask: do art educators bear a responsibility for the shaping of a society? If one agrees that such a responsibility is within our jurisdiction, the next question must be: what is our potential sphere of influence and activity in this realm of responsibility and how do we get on with the job? Art educators must develop a commitment to socially responsive goals and take active roles to enable those goals to be realized.

Towards A Model For Considering The Social Functions Of Art, Ronald W. Neperud

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The purpose of this paper is to suggest development of a model for examining the social functions of art with the goal that art educators might better understand and value that dimension of human activity. In recent decades individuality, self-expression, and creativity have reigned supreme to the neglect of other dimensions of art important to human welfare--functions important to maintaining the group. The more recent valuing of art of the culturally diverse and the importance of art to groups such as Blacks, Chicanos, and the elderly, and others has suggested that art educators need to understand how art functions in …

Editor's Note And Table Of Contents

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The following papers were presented during the inaugural session of the Caucus on Social Theory and Art Education during the National Art Education Association Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, 1980. Peter Helzer and Ellen Kotz from the University of Oregon and Robert Bersson from James Madison University have compiled and edited these papers to show the diverse range of concerns of members of the Caucus. We hope these papers will stimulate contributions and dialogue that will expand in the years to come.

Introduction: “Toward A Socially Progressive Conception Of Art Education”, Robert Bersson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Given the range and subtlety of our cultural conditioning, art education must, of necessity, become critical. It must place critical cultural literacy in the heart of its theory and practice. Cultural literacy does indeed open the way to personal and social emancipation. It brings in its enlightening wake the preconditions of emancipation, knowledge and freedom: knowledge and freedom to think, feel, and perceive as human individual and not as manipulated social products; knowledge and freedom to experience and create forms of visual culture which are liberating rather than enslaving; knowledge and freedom to conceptualize and build toward a more aesthetic, …

The Journal Of Social Theory In Art Education

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The following papers were presented during the inaugural session of the Caucus on Social Theory and Art Education during the National Art Education Association Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, 1980. Peter Helzer and Ellen Kotz from the University of Oregon and Robert Bersson from James Madison University have compiled and edited these papers to show the diverse range of concerns of members of the Caucus. We hope these papers will stimulate contributions and dialogue that will expand in the years to come.

Established Ways Of Thinking, Jack Hobbs

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The following paper was presented by Jack Hobbs as a part of a panel discussion, "Toward a Socially Progressive Conception of Art Education," at the 1980 conference in Atlanta. As stated in the program: "Given the proposition that contemporary art education places insufficient emphasis on the interrelationship between art and society, the panelists will attempt to define what a 'socially relevant' or 'socially progressive' art education is or might be." However, Hobbs (the first presenter on the panel) attempted to show how present-day attitudes in art education do not favor such a direction. Besides Hobbs, the panel consisted of Robert …

Needed: A New View Of Art And Emotions, Ann Sherman

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Progressives have often neglected or purposely ignored the role of art and emotions in their analyses. Recently, however, critical theorists like Max Horkheiner and Theodore Adorno have focused on the place of the "subjective" (which usually includes art and emotions) in the economic framework of society. That such individuals have attempted to include art and emotions in their broad political/economic dimension is especially important for progressive art educators to pursue at this point in history. Art therapy programs which do not include a political/economic analysis of the images produced or the emotions expressed are becoming a significant entity within our …

Statement For Social Theory Caucus, Vincent Lanier

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In 1959, when C. Wright Mills made the statement quoted above, the dominant pathway to insight about human behavior was psychological. This situation appears to have been as true in art education as in any other discipline. Our primary conception about what art could do for people was creativity and our pedagogy for attaining this bounty was studio production, uninterrupted by other activities. Writers such as MIlls provided us with another dimension for the study of human behavior, and specifically, behavior in art. It is not that the psychological approach was then or is now incorrect, but rather that it …

Technological Metaphors In The Contemporary Landscape, Ellen Kotz

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

"First we build our buildings and then our buildings build us," Churchill once said. A Walt Whitman poem describes a similar relationship between buildings and the people who live in them: "A child went forth," and the first thing he saw he became on that day, and from that day forward. These two statements express different aspects of the metaphorical and symbolic level of form and our capacity to shape our environment according to our values, culture, and aspirations. Often our forms are pregnant with meaning that we don't understand. The buildings and environmental forms we shape in turn shape …

Contemporary Sociological Theory And The Study Of Art Education, Nancy R. Johnson

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

These contemporary theories in sociology could be useful in the study of art education. All of them focus upon meanings, interpretations, social context, beliefs, and interaction. What is significant is how people describe life in the world. They also describe human beings as persons who have personalities that are unique and which are not entirely manifestations of physiological processes. Human beings are seen as initiators of action and as creative agents. These premises about human beings seem to me to be ones that validate art.

Hot Weather Floral Art, O. Evans Scott

Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 4

Summer flower arranging is a problem for the country housewife who is restricted to a few shrubs and pot plants. This article presents some ideas to help overcome the difficulty.

AT this time of the year when heat beats the flowers and normal flower arrangements last such a short time, it is necessary to look around for something different.

Athy College And The Garda Station Plaque 1922 A Ty Art Installation For Kildare Decade Of Commemorations, Richard Daly, Christina Hayden, April Prendergast, Anne Murphy

Level 3

This article describes an art installation in Athy, Co. Kildare created by transition year students of Athy College to commemorate their school’s connection with the centenary of the casting of the first Garda station plaques in 1922 in the Duthie. Large Foundry, Chapel Street Athy. The installation was unveiled on 14 May 2022 on the original foundry site supported by a grant from Kildare County Council’s Decade of Commemorations and mentored by staff of Technological University Dublin. It is included here in Level3 to celebrate fruitful and sustainable collaboration among academia, schools, local knowledge-holders, local public representatives, Gardaí and heritage …