Visual Fine Arts Research Articles

Теоретико-методические основания в развитии художественного образования обучающихся

The study appears relevant due to the need of theoretical and applied pedagogy to research the issues of art education concerning its theoretical and methodological aspects. The purpose of the research is to study the theoretical and methodological principles in development of art education. Attention is drawn to the content of the Art Education Framework as a federal-level document that develops the strategy of the cultural policy of the Russian Federation in the designated area and regulates art education in educational organizations of different levels. Research results. It is shown that the creation of art education theories is a rather complex process which makes scholars consider basic scientific theories: the theory of artistic perception and the theory of artistic creativity, which are regarded through their applied aspect. Our interest in visual fine art determines the prerequisite of considering the theories of visual fine arts in various historical periods. These theories serve as a theoretical basis both in the field of art education and in the field of fine arts. The article summarizes the main movements in teaching fine arts at school created by various authors. The article emphasizes that the study of both these movements and the fine arts educational programs that correspond to them facilitate the choice in favor of the program that would fit the curriculum of a particular educational organization. The idea of what results of students’ visual arts development should be is reflected in both the concepts and methods of fine arts education that are presented in the program an educational organization will choose. These results become the methodological basis in development of art education. Main conclusions: the article emphasizes the necessity to carry out theoretical and methodological research in the field of art education as well as to overcome the problems of creating “coherent” theories of art education, theories of visual fine art and methods of teaching it based on the experience accumulated by Russian and foreign theorists and practitioners.

THE SILK ROUTE AND ITS REFLECTION ON KNOWLEDGE – SYNCRETISM AND IMAGES IN PAINTING AND ARCHITECTONIC FORMS IN MIDDLE-INNER ASIA A PARADIGM BEYOND SPACE AND TIME 13th – 15th CENTURIES AD

THE SILK ROUTE AND ITS REFLECTION ON KNOWLEDGE – SYNCRETISM AND IMAGES IN PAINTING AND ARCHITECTONIC FORMS IN MIDDLE-INNER ASIA A PARADIGM BEYOND SPACE AND TIME 13th – 15th CENTURIES AD

Ensemble practices in the arts: A reflective matrix to enhance team work and collaborative learning in higher education

Ensemble practices have been essential to the performing and visual fine arts over centuries. The skills of working in ensembles, including team work and collaborative learning, are increasingly understood to be critical and transferable professional attributes. However, much teaching of ensembles is practical and embodied, relying on tacit knowledge within a focused specialism. This kind of approach champions depth of expertise in a particular field, but may have limitations, particularly where more explicit awareness is needed to support transferring practical skills to new contexts. There is therefore a need to strengthen reflective practice in ways that connect explicit procedural understanding with tacit practical experience. To serve this purpose, this paper develops a reflective matrix as a framework to support dynamic reflection for students and teachers in higher arts education. The matrix emerges from analysis of the literature across music, theatre, dance and visual fine art.

Critique and process: Signature pedagogies in the graphic design classroom

Like many disciplines in design and the visual fine arts, critique is a signature pedagogy in the graphic design classroom. It serves as both a formative and summative assessment while also giving students the opportunity to practice the habits of graphic design. Critiques help students become keen observers of relevant disciplinary criteria; reflective about what they’ve been taught, what they’ve observed, and how they’ve applied both; articulate in giving meaningful feedback to peers; and capable of using a specific tool to assess the successes and failures of their own design work.

Claims by Anglo American feminists and Chicanas/os for alternative space: The LA art scene in the political 1970s

Abstract: Originating in the context of the Civil Rights Movements and political activities addressing issues of race, gender and sexuality, the Women’s Liberation movement and the Chicano Movement became departures for two significant counter art movements in Los Angeles in the 1970s. This article explores some of the various reasons why Anglo American feminist artists and Chicana artists were not able to fully collaborate in the 1970s, provides some possible explanations for their separation, and argues that the Eurocentric imperative in visual fine art was challenged already in the 1970s by Chicana/o artists in Los Angeles. In so doing, the art activism by Anglo American feminists and Chicanas/os is comparatively investigated with Los Angeles as the spatial framework and the 1970s as the time frame. Four main components are discussed: their respective political aims, alternative art spaces, pedagogical frameworks and aesthetic strategies. The study found that the art activisms by Anglo American feminists and Chicanas/os differed. These findings suggest that a task ahead is to open up a dialogue with Chicana/o activist art, making space for more diverse representations of activities and political issues, both on the mainstream art scene and in the history of art.

Chasing Theme Number Nine: Five Practical Strategies for Making Global Connections

This article explores practical avenues for making global connections within the social studies classroom. Drawing from my classroom experiences and utilizing the basic principles of global education outlined by Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker (2009) as a conceptual frame, I attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Such an endeavor aims to provide social studies teachers with five practical strategies for making global connections that can be readily employed in their middle and secondary social studies classrooms. These strategies discussed here include structured academic controversy, globalizing physical place, reading visual fine arts, incorporating the natural world, and sampling.

Art therapy for terminal cancer patients in a hospice palliative care unit in Taiwan

Even though terminal cancer patients receive help from a hospice palliative care team, they have to suffer the pressure of death with deteriorating conditions. This study aims to evaluate the effect of art therapy for these terminal cancer patients. The patients involved were terminal cancer patients who were under the care of team members, which included physicians, nurses, social workers, clergy, art therapists, and volunteers in a hospice palliative care unit in Taiwan. The art therapy in our study took the form of visual fine art appreciation and hands-on painting. The effects of the art therapy were evaluated according to patients' feelings, cognitions, and behaviors. There were 177 patients (105 males and 72 females; mean age: 65.4 ±15.8 years) in the study. Each patient received a mean of 2.9 ± 2.0 sessions of the art therapy and produced a mean of 1.8 ± 2.6 pieces of art. During the therapy, most patients described their feelings well, and created art works attentively. Patients expressed these feelings through image appreciation and hands-on painting, among which the landscape was the most common scene in their art. After the therapy, the mean score of patients' artistic expressions (one point to each category: perception of beauty, art appreciation, creativity, hands-on artwork, and the engagement of creating artwork regularly) was 4.0 ± 0.7, significantly higher than the score before therapy (2.2 ± 1.4, p < 0.05). During the therapy, 70% of patients felt much or very much relaxed in their emotional state and 53.1% of patients felt much or very much better physically. Terminal cancer patients in a hospice palliative care unit in Taiwan may benefit from art therapy through visual art appreciation and hands-on creative artwork.

Electric Light as a Medium in the Visual Fine Arts: A Memoir

Electric Light as a Medium in the Visual Fine Arts: A Memoir

Industrial Design: On Its Characteristics and Relationships to the Visual Fine Arts

Industrial design and the visual arts share a common aesthetic basis as demonstrated by their common use of aesthetic principles and by designers who are also visual artists. The author examines the rationale for exhibiting industrial products in art museums and the similarities and differences between industrial design and the fine arts. He argues that industrial design shares important theoretical concepts (expression, representation and style) with the visual fine arts.

Concepts of Order in the Natural Sciences and in the Visual Fine Arts

The article is concerned with the fine rather than the applied arts and with the pure or basic rather than the applied natural sciences. These are activities that find their goal in the activity itself: In the one case, it is the satisfaction provided by the cultivation ofaesthetic apprehension, in the other, the satisfaction of understanding ofnaturefor its own sake. Both kinds of activity are in pursuit of order. The order that is the object of the sciences consists in the system of regularities discovered in the external world. The order of the visualfine arts is an inner order provided by artistsfor aesthetic enjoyment by others. The article compares these two types of order in some detail.

Visual Artists and Government Policy in the Netherlands

In other countries the Dutch government art policy is regarded with surprise, often with admiration bordering on envy. A large number of visual artists, nearly 2700 at the end of 1979, receive a regular, practically guaranteed, yearly income in exchange for a proportion of their artworks. While not providing a luxurious life-style, the policy does enable the artists to live and work. The policy of support of artists in the domain of the visual or plastic fine arts is officially a social program sponsored by the Ministry of Social Affairs. In addition, several ministries provide percentage schemes for adding artworks to public buildings, and the Ministry for Cultural Affairs provides grants to artists, scholarships for students, etc. Some art museums are supported by the Dutch government, but most museums of contemporary art are supported and operated by municipal governments.

A Discussion Paper on Research in the Visual Fine Arts Prepared for the Birmingham Polytechnic, England, in 1978

The paper deals with the problem of defining how an artist teaching a visual fine art subject in a Polytechnic can be said to be engaged in art research. The problem is of practical importance to a large number of artists teaching in Britain. The concept of research in other fields is briefly considered in order to arrive at a useful definition of the concept. Research in visual art is found to be a cognitive rather than an expressive activity and can therefore be compared with types of scientific and scholarly research. Reference is distinguished from research by the element of time. By citation of works by past and contemporary artists, research in the visual arts was found to be of three types: research into art, research for art and art as research. Rather than being a manifesto, the report aims at clarification of the subject. It is not suggested that visual art should be considered as research but that some such art can be research and should be so considered.

Science and the Fine Arts: Reflections of Platonic Idealism and of Aristotelian Naturalism

The scientific explanation of natural phenomena by means of postulatory-deductive theoretical structures originated in the classical Greek world about 600 B. C. In the 4th century B. C. philosophical analysis of knowledge identified three essential elements for science: the idealistic view that concepts are real and that things are unreal imitations of concepts (associated with Platonic philosophy); the naturalistic view that things are real and concepts are intellectual constructs, important but not real (associated with Aristotelian philosophy); the logical apparatus essential for the intellectual manipulation of scientific knowledge (transmitted by the writings on logic of Aristotle). Only where these three elements have been available has science occurred. The visual fine arts faithfully follow later ascendancies of the two opposing views of reality: the highly idealistic early European Christian culture produced non-naturalistic art, extremely idealized; the dominance of the Aristotelian philosophy in the High Middle Ages was accompanied by a revival of naturalism in the arts; the Renaissance, in which both philosophical views were again available, resulted in highly naturalistic art used to portray idealistic conceptions. It was also during the Renaissance that, for the first time since Classical Greek Antiquity, the three essential elements for science were brought together: Platonic idealism, Aristotelian naturalism and logic. It is with this event that what is called modern science began.

On Visual Art and Camouflage

In a number of books on visual fine art and design [1, 2], there is mention of the kinship between camouflage and painting, but no one has, to my knowledge, pursued it. I have intermittently researched this relationship for several years, and my initial observations have recently been published [3]. Now I have been awarded a faculty research grant from the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to pursue this subject in depth. I am, therefore, collecting documents and personal accounts pertaining to historical and theoretical connections of the kind that are listed below. Military and natural camouflage are often discussed in terms of the visual distinguishability of an object (e.g. or ship moth) in relation to its background or surroundings [4]. The requirements for distinguishability are included in what perceptual psychologists refer to as figure/ground theory [1, 5, 6]. Generally, the distinguishability of a figure is directly related to (a) the degree to which its components are visually homogeneous, and (b) the extent to which the figure is dissimilar from its surroundings or ground. Effective camouflage may violate one or both conditions through such techniques as blending, in which the color or other properties of the figure tend to resemble the characteristics of the background; disruptive patterning, in which the integrity of the figure is weakened by the visual heterogeneity of its components; countershading, in which a 3-dimensional figure bears a pattern of gradation that contradicts the gradation produced by sunlight, making the object look flat; and mimicry, in which the figure imitates the appearance of some other recognizable object. Descriptions and illustrations of these and various other camouflage techniques may be found in the writings of Cott [7-9]. A major breakthrough in the study of natural camouflage occurred in 1896 when Abbott H. Thayer, a painter in the U.S.A., published a paper on The Law Which Underlies Protective Coloration [10]. This was followed in 1902 by a paper on The Meaning of the White Under Sides of Animals [11 ] and, in 1909, by an influential book on Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. An Exposition of the Laws of Disguise through Colour and Pattern, the illustration of which was assisted by the author's son, Gerald Thayer, and artists Rockwell Kent and Louis A. Fuertes [12]. The study of natural camouflage, wrote Thayer, 'has been in the hands of the wrong custodians ... it properly belongs to the realm of pictorial art, and can be interpreted only by painters. For it deals wholly in optical illusion, and this is the very gist of a painter's life' [12]. Thayer emphasized his discovery of countershading (Thayer's principle), in which the techniques of chiaroscuro are employed in camouflage just as in painting, but with opposite effects-

On My Experiences as an 'Artist in Residence' in a Secondary School in the U.S.A.

In recent times in the U.S.A. there has been considerable pressure for professional artists to overcome the 'ivory tower' mentality [1]. Art schools frequently arrange visits to the studios of artists and privately organized studio tours have also become quite popular. Professional artists are also participating more and more frequently in primary, secondary and higher education. Some are invited as 'artists in residence', on the assumption that students will learn something about the way artists work by watching and listening to what they have to say [2]. Malina has made the following comment on this practice: 'That studio artists do not control art education is indicated by the recent invention of the category artist in residence, as though they were akin to an exotic species of beast installed for observation in a zoo' [2]. I have described some problems arising from this laudable effort in my article on Teaching Art in America [3]. In the article I divided art students into three categories: (1) those who wish to become professional artists, (2) those who want to become elementary or secondary school teachers and receive only superficial instruction in the visual arts and crafts, and (3) those who are interested in developing a layman's appreciation of art. In an interesting article entitled Artists in Schools: Why Bother? [4] the importance of art in primary and secondary schools is stressed, but how to go about it is treated very vaguely. Today in higher education institutions a large number of students obtain degrees in art education in order to qualify to teach arts and crafts in primary and secondary schools. The question that I pose is: Do these future teachers learn to transmit to children and teenagers a conviction that the visual fine arts can provide 'joyful experiences'?

An Approach to Teaching Visual Fine Art to Engineers

This is a report on an elective visual fine art course initiated in 1969 to fourth-year engineering students in the Humanities Department at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S.A. The course is offered to students as an alternative to courses using written language. That many of the Institute's engineering students welcome the alternative was demonstrated by their queuing up at four o'clock in the morning to enroll in the course, which is called 'Principles of Form and Design', when it was first offered. The purpose of the course is not to train artists, but hopefully, to help students to be more imaginative in their engineering work. The first group was composed of 30 students from the U.S.A., Republic of China, India, Japan, Israel and Egypt. How would I, a sculptor, communicate verbally with these students who came from countries with different languages and, presumably, had not had a lesson in or shown a bent for visual art? I began with the certainty that I would do my best to give them an idea of how some artists go about their work and to let them try with their own hands to make art objects. This would have to be done within 40 hours over a period of three months.

Some Remarks on Visual Fine Art in the Age of Advanced Technology

The visual or plastic fine arts hold a relatively high place in Western culture. Considerable public and private funds are devoted to the making and sale of art works and to education for art appreciation. Yet, paradoxically, there is no general agreement as to what art is or what it is good for. This is causing an ever increasing uneasiness among artists and especially among art students. The incompatibility between values and instruction in traditional art education and the worlds of science and of technology is clearly evident [1]. Some of the essential factors that have led to this situation in art are the following: 1. New materials and techniques from science, industry and commerce are now available for artists to use. The best-known examples are cinema and television, pictorial techniques of social significance that are only slowly being used by artists. Only very few have come to realize that these media are suited not only for the transmission of information and of spectacles by performing artists but also for the contemplative fine arts. In addition, complicated equipment designed for technical and scientific applications is being introduced for the making of art, e.g. by the manipulation of electric light, by the polarization of light and by the use of lasers. The use of digital and analog computers for artistic purposes is also beginning to influence the adoption of new methods and ways of thinking about art. With the help of program-controlled output devices, black and white and colored, static and kinetic images on display devices can be produced [2-4]. The use of computers is important

Electric Light as a Medium in the Visual Fine Arts: A Memoir

The author describes how he was led to work with kinetic electric light art objects of the Lumia type in 1954. He then discusses the problems of applying light for artistic purposes from the point of view, primarily, of his own experiences with kinetic painting systems. These include the direct transmission of light to the eye or onto a translucent screen (Lumidyne system), the production of reflected light images on a translucent screen (Reflectodyne system) and the transmission of light through polarizing material (Polaridyne system). Technical details of the systems are given and the reactions of viewers of these kinds of art objects are briefly presented.

A Proposed Notation for Visual Fine Art

A notation system for the visual fine arts should provide the means for indicating certain visual aspects of a work as an aid to artists in formulating concepts and executing them. It also should permit the recording and transmission of these aspects to others in a simple manner. A notation for movements of the body in dancing, athletics, etc., the Eshkol–Wachman Movement Notation, has suggested to the author the employment of an analogous method in visual art. The basic assumption made is that two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional forms can be generated by the motion of lines or chains of lines. Thus complex shapes can be described in the notation by specifying the synchronization of motions, the lengths of lines, the omission of lines etc. The rigour of the notation makes it suitable for computer use but the author stresses the notation’s value as an aid to artists who deal manually with complex shapes in paintings or sculpture.

Mysticism, Science and Art

This article considers visual or plastic fine art from the viewpoints of Western metaphysics and mysticism. Considerations of this type led the writer to similar conclusions as the one reached by the Spanish philosopher, Ortega Y Gasset, who spoke about the ‘dehumanization’ of modern art, entailing a new conception of the relationship of art to nature. The author points out that kinetic art produced by means of electric and electronic systems transcends the traditional definition of visual fine art in terms of form, since form need not be either static, or else, as it is in the kind of art to which Ortega Y Gasset refers, true-to-life. Furthermore, the prospects of man, art and technology will be brighter, the author believes, if new modes are found by which all the three can be brought to work together in harmony for the development of mankind’s intellectual and spritual resources. This hope is likely to materialize when the tools of modern technology are used by artists to extend their creative capabilities.