Art and World View: Escaping the Formalist Labyrinth

Abstract

AbstractThis paper attempts to identify the theoretical and practical issues for developing the secondary art curriculum for dealing with the meaning of works of art in relationship to the demands of teaching attainment target 2 of the English National Curriculum for ait and the new GCSE syllabuses to be introduced in September, 1996.The first section deals with the theoretical issues related to art, meaning and life. Formalism is considered inadequate for understanding and responding to works of art and is rejected in favour of an approach that gives greater priority to the multidimensional and relational features that give works of art meaning. This places art back again as an irreducible feature of wider cultural processes. In advocating this approach I will criticise collectivist and historicist explanations that are ultimately rooted in Hegel's idea of the ‘spirit of the age’. The more dynamic understanding of culture as a product of an elaborate ‘conversation’ that is open but constrained, based on the available symbolic codes of a given form of life, will be preferred as an explanation for art and cultural change.The second section models some classroom strategies that can be used to teach art on the basis of considerations related to meaning that emerge from the previous theoretical discussion. Searle's [19831 distinction in the ‘direction of fit’ of perception between ‘mind‐to‐world’ and ‘world‐to‐mind’ is used to establish a methodological principle for understanding and dealing with meaning in works of art. The former starts with the pupils' existing schemata and deals in ambiguities and conjectured interpretation. The latter gives priority to the art object in context, and attempts to develop in pupils an empathy for and understanding of the multi‐dimensional factors that influence the making of art.The paper argues for the need for both approaches to be used in a complementary way so that a knowledge‐seeking rather than a self‐seeking attitude to the meaning of works of art is nurtured in pupils.