Art as Communication

Abstract

concepts to practical living. Its visible, tactile, end products have provided man with one of his most powerful tools for the dissemination of knowledge over the entire history of human development. In the evolution of a reasonably sophisticated educational system, our contemporary architects of educational doctrine seem to have ignored the potential of art as an instructional vehicle and relegated it to a minor satellite position. The subconscious retention of the Biblical connotation of imagery and sinfulness may be the hang up that obscures a broader application of art to oureducation. The role of art in the learning cycle could be of basic importance, once there is an understanding of what takes place during the process of the production of any piece of art-when the process is dissected and its structure or evolution explained in simple terms, and the relationship between that process and all other learning processes can be made evident. Despite the historic tendency to consider art as an effete or extraneous pursuit, a kind of mysticism has been attributed to the artist and sustained by popular legend and implication in many people's minds. The words talent and creativity are often used in a way that heightens the aura of mystery or implies some magical gift or occult visions. While the artist may find this attribution of mystical powers an asset, there is little truth in the assumption. The artist's talents and his creative capabilities are in reality the deliberate development of a fairly specific combination of basic skills, skills that exist to some degree in most of us. The fundamental skills of the artist are observation, recognition, transposition, and technical implementation. Three of these are basic _ This content downloaded from 207.46.13.98 on Wed, 29 Jun 2016 05:36:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms