What is significant about her approach to curriculum design? Where do you think the elements and principles of design fit into curriculum and teaching?
-I don't know if she is the first ever but this is the first article I have read where she is questioning fundamental art practices. "When visiting K-12 school art programs, I rarely see meaningful connections being made between these formal descriptors and understanding works of art or analyzing the quality of everyday design. I ponder the piles of exercises on line, shape, or color harmonies left behind by hundreds and hundreds of students each year. I wonder why what is still considered by many to be the appropriate organizing content for the foundations of 21st century art curriculum is but a shadow of what was modern, fresh, and inspirational 100 years ago." Olivia Gude She goes on to explain how the government mandated standards have forced teachers to engrain in students the big seven elements and seven principles of art or the 7+7. She explains how these 7+7 leave students without the ability to assess modern art, contemporary art, or conceptual art. Students are left with a gap pertaining to arts most current movements. Gude mentions a few classic modernist text such as If one consults a number of classic modernist texts about teaching art and design, such as Arthur Wesley Dow's Composition :A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers (1920), Johannes Itten's Design and Form: the Basic Course at the Bauhaus (1964), or Maurice de Sausmarez's Basic Design: The Dynamics of Visual Form (1971). I thought it was interesting that the Bauhaus textbook of 1964 doesn’t even mention the 7+7 as they were considered a ground shaking art institution that produced so many important artists. She went on in her article to talk about how none of the examples of student work from these texts looked anything like the contemporary textbook art exercises. I had never considered we were limiting ourselves by trying to fit all art into the elements and principles of design but she’s right we can’t simplify art by ignoring the most contemporary movements of art. I think reviewing the curriculum I teaching and making sure I’m incorporating social themes effecting the youths I’m working with and exposing them to current living artists. I plan on using her 8 important postmodernist principles to lead discussions in my class. 1. Appropriation 2. Juxtaposition 3. Recontextualization 4. Layering 5. Interaction of Text and Image 6. Hybridity 7. Gazing 8. Representin’ I would like to use any information or tools I can for my students. The 7x7 works well for basic exercises but they shouldn’t be the only tools used by to address art. I plan on using her 8 principles and elements of design to build on top of the 7x7. Then hopefully I will have exposed my students to all the resources available to me and they will be able to understand contemporary art as well as they understand the classics.
1 Comment
Mark Graham
10/1/2018 10:10:28 am
I like how you marked up the original text.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Myleka Bevans
Classwork for Art 450 Archives
December 2018
Categories |