Revisiting Visual Culture in Art Education: What’s Right and What’s Wrong with It?

Abstract

My presentation attempts to revisit visual cultural art education (VCAE) within the context of designer capitalism. I worry that teachers are not addressing youth fantasies that constitute their popular culture. My own involvement in visual culture since the 1980s through the Social Theory Caucus indicates that it is the digitalized world of the frameless image that is of high concern. I maintain that visual culture art education as it is currently theorized in art education is caught by the limitations of representation. Visual literacy is generally a structualizt endeavor. To move beyond this position requires that art educators necessarily recognize the affective intensity that underlies meaning making. What contemporary art can do and the structuring forces of bodily affect in popular culture are both required for art education in the 21st century. I draw on the ethico-political philosophy of Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari to make my case.