Cross Currents:

Western based art education is at a cross roads with indigenous culture

InSEA World Congress New York, Thursday 22 August 2002

A joint presentation by Marian Strong, Amanda Snell and Alma Tooke

The accompanying slide presentation is available here.

Books and videos on Indigenous art and artists, many of which are available through the AEV.

Websites about Indigenous art and artists.

Introduction:

Modernist western approaches are insufficient to develop a full understanding of art and cultures. This paper is a survey of cultural perspectives including a recent Australian conference and explores the need for cultural frameworks for the interpretation and practice of making art.

The personal critical response model is the dominant approach adopted in Australian schools to the understanding of art. Although this approach has a place in current art education it is inappropriate on its own with much artwork, and does not lend itself adequately to the notion of ‘cultural or interpretive frameworks’. There is a growing urgency for art educators to adopt a culturally competent approach to the interpretation and practice of making art.

This model relies on two ‘disciplines’, Art Criticism - in practice this means making your own responses to art works after a careful analysis of the qualities they contain. The information gathered by the viewer comes from the art work itself not from research or exploration of context, and Art History - which focuses on questions of the so-called attributions of art works, dating, authenticity, quality and rarity.

This imbalance must alter, not only for the study of art of indigenous peoples but for all art work. We cannot ignore the broadly held notion that we are not ‘neutral’ nor ‘create in splendid isolation’. Indeed the very notion of what culture is and how it operates needs to be explored with our students.

It is useful to look at Mazrui’s seven functions of culture (1990) to help understand the basic process by which all cultures operate. These are:

Lenses of perception: A person’s view of the world is conditioned by culture.
Motives for human behaviour: People’s motives are conditioned by culture.
Basis for identity: A person’s individual and group identities are shaped by a fundamental historical understanding encoded and described in the oral, written, and social constructs of the specific culture.
Value systems: Values are conditioned by culture.
Modes of communication: These are external expressions of culture, including such things as language, dress, cuisine, art, and music.
Ethnicity: This includes concepts of race and social class and is the basis for distinction among diverse cultures.
Systems of production and consumption: This survival structure of the social group is the culture’s mechanism for the mutual provision of its members.

Mazrui believes that most education initiatives aimed at multiculturalism tend to centre on functions five and six. This furthers fragmentation and superficiality. Teachers must begin by broadening the way they, themselves, view cultures.

Eisner (1988) says that arts education should not only be concerned with giving students a structured understanding of its forms, but should provide them with opportunities to draw upon their emotions to develop an awareness of the complexity of the term ‘culture’.

Reid (1995) goes further, he stressed the need to teach art appreciation using a critical interrogation of the social and cultural context that provided its meaning. If reference was made to social and cultural factors that might have influenced a work’s construction during classroom discussions, then it was generally mentioned without questioning whose interests might be served by such visual representations

Wasson, Stuhr & Petrovich-Mwaniki, (1990) gave six position statements for teachers to consider.

Position 1.: We advocate a socio-anthropological basis for studying the aesthetic production and experiences of cultural groups, which means focusing on knowledge of the makers of art and visual culture, as well as the socio-cultural context in which it is produced. This entails exploring the social, political, and economic complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of the personal, national, global cultural belief systems.
Position 2.: We acknowledge teaching as cultural and social intervention; therefore, in any teaching endeavor, it is imperative that teachers confront and be aware of their personal, national, and global aspects of cultural identity(ies) and their social biases.
Position 3.: We support a student/community-centered education process in which the teacher must access and utilize the students' socio-cultural values and beliefs and those of the cultures of the community when planning art and visual culture curricula.
Position 4.: We support anthropologically-based methods for identifying socio-cultural groups and their accompanying values and practices that influence aesthetic production.
Position 5.: We advocate the identification and discriminating use of culturally responsive pedagogy that more democratically represents the socio-cultural and ethnic diversity existing in the classroom, the community, the nation and the world.
Position 6.: We want to focus on the dynamic complexity of factors that affect all human interaction: physical and mental ability, class, gender, age, politics, religion, geography and ethnicity/race. We seek a more democratic approach, whereby the disenfranchised are also given a voice in the art and visual culture education process and the disenfranchised, as well as the franchised, are sensitized to taken-for-granted assumptions implicit in personal, national and global culture.

Andrus (2001) believes culturally competent teachers exhibit the attitudes, behaviours and skillful use of culturally appropriate materials in ways that support the personal, social and academic growth of all students. For example, such teachers not only know about their students’ backgrounds, but also strive to understand their students’ culturally particular behaviours (Alexander, 1989). These should be considered in planning implementing and assessing the learning experience.

In addition to adopting a multicultural orientation to teaching in general, art specialists must also be adept at educating their students about particular cultures and their aesthetics productions. This requires that teachers become researchers, engaging their students in this inquiry process as well. (Andrus, 2001)

Both postmodern and multicultural theories have shown that selection of curriculum content is never neutral, but informed by patterns of power and privilege.

We need to check whether we are still, perhaps because of a lack of guidance in curriculum materials, including examples of aesthetic traditions of different cultural groups in a marginalised manner. If we are labelling practices like Indonesian batiks and performances by Indian dancers as activities that develop an appreciation of what culture means, then the study of the arts is continuing to be approached in the usual ethnocentric manner, perhaps even reinforcing stereotypical or even racist representations. (Wilks, 2001)

To quote the words of a contemporary Victorian Aboriginal artist/researcher,

We all know about Seurat and by the look of some of those desert ladies’ paintings, they’ve seen Seurat, too. I think at 12,000ft. There is privilege and properness in doing dots for some language groups. Many desert artists are struggling financially and methods and themes of art making should not be plagiarised by urban peoples’ dot painting facsimiles and the dollar. Aboriginal art theory needs to talk about all kinds of Aboriginal art, but discussion should include folklore and copyright issues. (Heckenberg, 2001).

Students can make there own designs and use own iconography and images. There are no concerns about the use of specific coloured as seen in contemporary indigenous art where acrylic paint has broadened the whole range of colours used. X-ray paintings are not to be copied, as it is someone’s story. People can make there own designs inspired by indigenous imagery using similar techniques, as these do not embody spiritual belief or meaning of others. (Hamm, 2001)

Dennis Taylor (2001) raises concerns about fragmented or superficial approaches to the cultural contexts of art. He cites (Davenport, 2000): Creating artworks inspired by the technologies used may have value, if accompanied by consideration of how this cultural art form has been and continues to be shaped by environmental conditions, available resources, culturally-defined beliefs and aesthetic systems, and possibly migration patterns, tourism, or cultural borrowing.

The danger, Taylor asserts, is 'in taking the exemplars out of context, particularly in a spiritually invested artwork'.

However, Isaacs (2002) argues that international observers tend leave Aboriginal art in a category of its own, rather than treating it as contemporary art, which it is. Notions of antiquity, primordial human visual communication or cultural practices that extend through millennia constantly enter discourses – indeed, they remain the entry point for many. She contends that these attitudes can lead to a retreat from further exploration of Aboriginal art practices as contemporary art.

Dawn Casey, an Aboriginal Australian who is the Director of Australia’s National Museum, says

It’s a mistake to put art styles or movements in boxes and pretend they are separate and independent. They are not. Art arises from the landscape, politics, human struggle and spiritual endeavour of any period. It is influenced, but not created, by the outstanding individual practitioners of the period.

…not long ago any meeting of Western and Indigenous creative styles was unthinkable. Australian Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander material culture was in a box clearly labelled Native Art and Craft or at best Folk Art. It was meant to be viewed by Europeans as quaintly or intriguingly ‘other’. Its colours or forms could be borrowed at will to give Western art some local colour, but the complexity of the culture which gave rise to it was not recognised, and certainly not considered important or worthy of further study.

Native peoples all over the world are reviving traditional art and craft forms and creating modern art works in order to re-assert their place in the nation and offer a powerful, alternative view of its culture and history. The stories, the culture and the art are being consciously transmitted by the people who have an inherited right to do so.

Art educators must find a way to explain the context of works created by people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. They must research and develop understandings of something of the traditional spiritual context, the artist’s own background and the forces which have led to the development of this kind of work at this time.

References

Aland, J. & Darby, M. (1998) Art Connections, Heinemann 2^nd ed. Melbourne, Australia

Andrus, L. (2001) The Culturally Competent Art Educator. Art Education, Vol. 54, No. 4.

Alexander, E. C. (1989) A methodology for teaching the culturally particular African/American child: A guide for teachers and parents. Chesapeake, VA: ECA Associates Press.

Casey, D. 'Teaching Indigenous Culture and Art'. ARTicle, Vol 3, No. 3

Davenport, M. (2000) 'Culture and education: polishing the lenses'. Studies in Art Education, 41 (4)

Eisner, E. (1998) 'Discipline Based Art Education: Its Criticism and its Critics'. Art Education, Vol. 41, No. 6.

Hamm, T. (2001) Indigenous Cultural Bridges in Art Education, Conference paper, Art Education Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.

Heckenberg, R. (2001) Dot to Dot and Copyright, Conference paper, Art Education Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.

Isaacs, J. (2002) 'International Exposure of Aboriginal Art 1970 - 2001' Art & Australia, Vol 39 No. 4

Mazrui, A. (1990) Cultural forces in world politics. New York, NY., Heinemann Educational Books.

Reid, A. (1995) 'Deconstruction: A Methodology for Exploring Dominant Ideologies and Gendered Relations in the Visual Arts'. Australian Art Education, Vol. 18, No. 2.

Taylor, D. (2001) 'Multinational Cultural Exemplars in Primary and secondary Curricula'. ARTicle, Vol 3, No. 3

Wasson,R., Stuhr, P. & Petrovich-Mwaniki, L. (1990) 'Teaching Art in the Multicultural Classroom'. Studies in Art Education. 31, (4)

Wilks S. (2001) Beware of Bulwinjbulwinj ARTicle, Vol 3, No. 3

Marian Strong
Executive Officer
Art Education Victoria
150 Palmerston St
Victoria, Australia
Tel: +61 3 9349 5188
Fax: +61 3 9349 3389
E-mail: marian.strong@aev.vic.edu.au
Web-site: www.aev.vic.edu.au

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