Abstract
The struggle to define appropriateness
in student art often leads to lists of contentious
imagery to be avoided. Although dogmatic adherence to
such lists might help the art teacher avoid controversy
it is more constructive to educate students to make
informed decisions leading to empathy and
self-regulation. Limiting student artistic expression
to hegemonic sites of appropriate and inappropriate
fails to promote an important aspect of learning.
Visual culture education requires literacy in social
communication, which is the result of students' ability
to deconstruct and reconstruct cultural meaning. Such
literacy is necessary for students to become active
participants and leaders of our present and future
global society.
Appropriateness: Traversing the Hegemonic
Minefield
Hegemony is the idea that ideologies
exist in a state of tension that maintains the
dominance of one set of beliefs. According to Sturken
& Cartwright (2001), "hegemony is a state or
condition of a culture arrived at through a negotiation
or struggle over meanings, laws, and social
relationships" (p. 54). When attempting to decide what
is appropriate in art we can go overboard and prohibit
a whole list of things or, like most of us do, we
struggle over what we can allow, encourage, discourage
or prohibit. If, for example, a student has a powerful
piece addressing abortion, what do you do? Perhaps
racial injustice or gender inequity is the student’s
theme, but the image is powerful and potentially
controversial. What if the student is visually
protesting the No Child Left Behind act in a museum
exhibition and you risk offending a Republican school
board member?
Do different media warrant different guidelines? At
what point does the lack of clothing become nudity?
What about the students taking figure drawing outside
of your class who bring work in to show you and to
include in their college admissions portfolio? Is the
challenge greater, or has the issue changed if the
medium is photography? What if a student speaks out
against anti-Semitism, but his image includes a
swastika? Another student becomes offended by the
swastika regardless of the intent of the piece and then
argues that the creator of the piece had no right to
address the topic because he wasn't Jewish and
therefore had no ownership of the topic in the first
place. What if, after closer scrutiny, the texture in a
very successful piece reveals itself to be an object
used for feminine hygiene or birth control? What if you
and your departmental colleagues have conflicting views
on what constitutes appropriateness? Conference
presentations and journal articles bear witness to the
fact that we as a professional collective are
continually grappling over the very nature and goals of
art education. Experiences and ruminations like these
are why I refer to the state of ideological tension
over appropriateness as a hegemonic
minefield.
Figure
1. Tom Kelly, 2002
Clock of Irony: With (very) Small
Pendulum.
My current interest in this topic is
inspired in part by incidents last spring in which
student artwork came under scrutiny following the
emergence of imagery in conflict with our
administrative ideology. The administrative and
collegial reaction prompted me to stop and question my
own beliefs and professional goals as a high school art
instructor.
During the weeks prior to summer recess, a chorus
teacher and an English teacher stopped by my classroom
within a thirty-minute span of time and resulting
conversations piqued my curiosity even further. The
chorus teacher voiced concern over producing a
particular musical because it had a questionable word
in the script. He weighed the risk of reprisal against
examples of similar content found in previous
performances that he viewed as valid or at least "safe"
based on the fact that he "only heard a few
complaints." I shared the story with an English teacher
colleague who reflected on some of the risqué content
and language in several literary works his students
study. Together we questioned the nature of what
different departments or disciplines "can get away
with." We marveled at the fragile space between safe
content and intellectual challenge.
I sent an email to Mary Ann Stankiewicz, past president
of the National Art Education Association, asking if
the NAEA might have a guide or policy statement
regarding appropriateness in the visual arts. She
replied that there weren't policy guidelines and
mentioned that she had recently been asked similar
questions from other art teachers. She had also checked
the NAEA Web site and did not locate any relevant
publications. She suggested I search for articles
addressing censorship in NAEA Advisories, Art Education
and the NAEA journal (M.A. Stankiewicz, personal
communication, May 25, 2005). Mary Ann further
suggested that I put together a proposal addressing
this topic for the NAEA conference.
I have struggled with defining my feelings toward the
topic. I have placed postings on the Pennsylvania Art
Education Association list serve and the Getty Teacher
Art Exchange list serve asking for examples, anecdotal
stories, and feedback regarding appropriateness. I have
emailed colleagues in my community as well as some in
other states. I have received minimal response and what
I have read is little more than laundry lists for
"offensive" imagery. Bowman (1999) and Tapley (2002)
have conducted surveys identifying images most often
censored and I have located a few Web sites listing
do's and don'ts. Although Danto (1997) describes our
need to define boundaries as a contemporary political
reality I am not convinced that we can map the
potential landmines that easily.
I am reminded of an experience from 1980, my first year
of teaching, in San Antonio, Texas, when I was summoned
to the building principal's office. The principal
directed me to a chair and stoically shut the door. He
pulled a brown paper bag from his closet and removed a
small painting, carefully keeping it at arm's length.
When asked if I recognized the painting I responded
affirmatively and pointed out that he had required me
to hang an example of my best student work at our
district office, which at the time served four large
high schools. I pointed out that the canvas he was
holding was easily the strongest example of my
students' technical
skills up to that
point. His response was to gravely tell me that the
painting had caused him the greatest embarrassment of
his educational career.
Needless to say I was stunned and frightened. What I
had naively overlooked was a shirtless male figure in a
landscape that included a mushroom. The principal
educated me to the notion that the painting endorsed
free sex and drugs. It was a truly enlightening moment.
I then had to tell a rebellious, young, underachieving
student that his painting had been removed and his
greatest accomplishment in school, thus far, had been
censored. His one shot at the mainstream failed. Sex
and drugs had not been the focus of the painting and
the student was crushed. His defeatist attitude and
distrust of the educational establishment had been
convincingly reinforced. The principal then made a
point of reviewing student work headed for local
contests and personally removing anything he found
questionable. One such piece contained the phrase "free
lunch and nickel beer". This principal voiced extra
disgust over that specific piece, while I had been
particularly proud of my student's ability to weave
something he had learned in social studies into my art
assignment. I wondered if social studies were only
acceptable in social studies class, not in art class.
I think I now know what had been bothering me. Art
education is not only technical training. Art education
reaches beyond discipline-based art education. Art
education is life education. Art education can be the
most effective course in the school for learning life
skills. Art education can be about communication.
Censorship is far too easy and it appears to undermine
true learning. It fails to elevate an experience beyond
the reinforcement of distrust and depends on dominance
and subordination, which are nothing more than power
relations. It is more constructive to educate students
to make informed decisions leading to empathy and
self-regulation. Freedman (2003) points out, "learning
about the complexities of visual culture is becoming
ever more critical to human development, necessitating
changes in conceptions of art and education" (p. xii).
The current paradigmatic shift to visual culture art
education encourages students to be active participants
in constructing meaning and deconstructing the content
of visual information they experience.
As a result of various readings and National Art
Education conference presentations I have experienced
over the past several years, I have come completely out
of the closet regarding content-oriented lesson
planning. For example, my students and I investigate
meaning and communication through semiotic
relationships between sender and receiver, content and
context. Deborah Smith-Shank (2004) reinforces the
value of this:
Semiotics is useful for studying, understanding, and making informed judgments about visual culture because it takes meaning seriously on its own terms. Rather than reduce the signs of social and cultural phenomena to underlying factors, they can be studied as complex, mediational, and meaningful entities that are necessarily juxtaposed with human experience(s) (p. viii).
My students enjoy the search for meaning and are fascinated by the range of interpretations voiced by their classmates.
We explore aesthetic implications of modern and postmodern perspectives as well as cultural positions on class, gender, power, privilege and race. Amburgy, Keifer-Boyd and Knight (2003) explain the purpose "is to emphasize that the visual is situated in specific cultural contexts of power and privilege" (p. 51).
Figure
2. Anjuli Rathod. 2004,
Exploring Around the World : A Look at
Stereotypes.
Ideology, hegemony, studium and
punctum become more than challenging vocabulary words;
they become cultural capital, allowing students to
become active participants in the zeigeist as opposed
to being needless road-kill of the "just say no"
machine of an art education grounded in censorship.
I have been troubled by my lack of a solution. It
serves little purpose to simply challenge a
traditional, time-honored practice. It is very easy to
create a laundry list of improprieties even if sticking
to that list might be problematic. I know for a fact
that some work produced by my students challenges,
questions and sometimes offends, but is that not true
of creative writing and other forms of expression? How
do I defend my students' expression and where do I
"draw the line"? I'm pleased when my students can
explain their visual essays verbally and textually;
they are often as eloquent in either form of
communication. But so what if we achieve some sort of
educational gestalt? What does that have to do with
problematic imagery? Am I not opening myself up to
professional criticism? Tapley (2002) reminds us
"context is always important to consider whether making
initial judgments about student art or any other art"
(p.52). Sensitivity to the right time and place is
important, but not always so simple.
I recently overheard some students talking about
imagery in one of their works. One student questioned
something that could have a negative impact on the
reception of the piece. When the explanation, or
defense, was offered the first student wasn't convinced
and asked if the author was considering the context of
the audience. He reminded the author that our district
art show included kindergarten through twelfth grade
students as well as their families. On another occasion
a student proudly showed me how he was able to present
an unclothed human body within the context of a larger
piece in such a way as to avoid being offensive without
compromising the overall integrity of the artwork's
content. He didn't want his message to be inadvertently
sabotaged.
As I began to identify my pleasure over those two
experiences it occurred to me that this type of student
dialogue is actually becoming the norm in my classroom
and I had been taking it for granted. I was reminded of
Michel Foucault's theory of panopticism and realized
that my students are often internalizing my oversight
and regulating their own behavior (Sturken &
Cartwright, 2001). It appears that the art class is
prompting students to recognize that they have a vested
interest in their own education and that empathy might
be an admirable trait.
Figure
3. Chris Henkels , 2005,
Is this Acceptabile?
Including the students in the
decision-making process is very important. Explaining
the difference between the classroom environment and
public venues can help clarify issues of
appropriateness. A colleague in Texas elaborates:
Our practice for dealing with work of a "sensitive nature" has been to allow student exploration and discussion of most any subject area within the classroom. However, this is coupled with the realization that not all imagery produced will be displayed in the public domain (our gallery). We explain to the students that we are a public high school not a private institution and that we are accountable to the public/tax payers within our school district. And, that people of all ages and persuasions come into our building to conduct a wide range of activities not necessarily related to viewing art. This is unlike going to a private gallery or a museum where the sole intent is to view art and that one may well expect to encounter works of a "sensitive nature".This still leaves the question as to what is appropriate to exhibit in the gallery. Our Principal leaves the initial decision up to the Art Department Chair. In my opinion, making the decision as to what is appropriate or not for the gallery parallels making an evaluation as to what grade I will give a student's work of art, and as teachers we are required to do this all the time. In both cases it is necessary to weigh the many subjective facts with all of the intangibles to reach our totally "objective" decision/evaluation. Lord knows we seldom get a consensus on either, but as is our want in life, we will continue to do our best at both! (D. S., personal communication, October 4, 2005)
Perhaps the path to appropriateness in the visual arts should be paved with enlightening and empowering experiences designed to produce knowledgeable citizens capable of informed and empathetic decisions.
The art teacher grounded in visual culture should not use their position to repress student expression when learning is best served by educational experiences. Tapley explains "It is important as an educator not to just 'silence' a student or completely self-censor yourself in fear of getting into sticky situations. A strong educator goes beyond the classroom" (p.52). I would add that it is important for an educator to avoid overacting when we occasionally are reminded that we might have misjudged our boundaries.
Figure
4. Jordan Winick, 2000,
Recontextualized Skeleton.
If we look to other professions we see
frequent examples of setbacks. Attorneys don't
discontinue their practice simply because they lose a
case and doctors don't stop operating when their
procedures fail to correct a prognosis.
In conclusion I am reminded of an article I recently
read in the Philadelphia Inquirer referring to the
prisoner abuse trial of Lynndie England. Ms. England
became the most recognizable of the American guards in
the photos of naked detainees at Abu Ghraib prison
outside Baghdad. A West Virginia school psychologist,
Thomas Denne, was quoted as saying he and the school
system had failed to adequately educate her. He said
that the focus had been on getting her through school
and not on equipping her with real-life skills. "Maybe
I thought, 'I didn't shoot high enough for Lynndie
England,'" said Denne. "Maybe I thought, 'We should
have taught her how to think.'" ("School Official,"
2005). Censorship does not prepare today's students to
successfully navigate or contribute to a world of
choices. Burton, Carpenter, Manifold, & Wightman
(2003) elaborate "Interpretive skills make students
more perceptive and aware of the dynamics of their own
visual culture environments through informed exposure.
Functional skills allow students to actively engage and
influence their visual culture and thereby become
agents of change." Meaningful art education takes a lot
of hard risky work, but it has the greatest potential
to make the world a better place to live.
References
Amburgy, P.,
Keifer-Boyd, K. & Knight, W. (2003). Three
approaches to teaching visual culture in K-12 school
contexts. Art Education, 56(2), 51.
Badger, T.A. (2005, September 24), School official says
system failed Lynndie England. The Philadelphia
Inquirer, p.A02.
Bowman, B., (1999, September). Art teacher censorship
of student produced art in Georgia's public high
schools. CultureWork, 3(3). Retrieved (10/10/05) from
http://aad.uoregon.edu/ culturework/culturework11.html
Burton, D., Carpenter, B., Manifold, M. & Wightman,
W. (2003). Teaching visual culture: Environment,
issues, empowerment, & skills. In Davis, C. (Ed.)
NAEA Advisory. National Art Education Association.
Danto, A. (1997). After the end of art: Contemporary
art and the pale of history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
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