What is Critical Studies in Art and Design?
A way to relate the different elements of study in art, craft and design: production, reception, history, so that it can be undestood as central to society and culture, not a separate entity.
A way to understand how art not only reflects but produces culture.
A way to connect with other subjects in the curriculum and to the lives of members of the school community.
"By changing the material's environment you can make something new."
You are not knowledge providers, you are knowledge makers. You do not neccesarily have to have the asnwers, but to provide a space to discover it with the students.
Critical and contextual studies in art and design.
Thematic and/or issue based. e.g. the seasons inside/outside, demonstrations of islam, homelessness.
Semiotic - e.g. Materials as signs, the meaning of represented gesture
Fucntional - e.g. why? contemplation, utility, propaganda for. whom? private/public status, ideology.
Sites (real and virtual) - e.g. Studios, Galleries, Museums, Libraries
Critical - Art criticism, engagement with contemporary practice, judgement and taste
Object based analysis - e.g. description, form, content, function, context
Comparative - e.g. cross-cultural, high/low, applied/fine
Cross curricular - e.g. ecology, politics, performing arts
Object-based analysis - e.g. description, form, content, function, context
Visual investigation - e.g. drawing, paiting, mindmaps, collage
Textual/ histographical investigation - e.g. the writing of artist critics and historians
Multi and intercultural
The bases for Enquiry, your practice as a maker.
Find a way to work with your students. - IF students cannot draw, find other ways to engage with them, such as collage.
Collaboration is good, but working independently can also produce strong work that can inform pedagogy.
Collaboration breaks down ideas of self expression, engage students in tasks of planning and teamwork, finding out how their talents can contribute to a group knowledge.
Own interests interpretation
Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1957. - Film semiotics, the construction of meaning, expanding across language and image. - Multimodal (sound, image, text).
Deconstruction of this image, association of the women by the cliff with Odysseus and the sirens. Associations with death and cliffs of Beachy head
Students' interests
How often are students asked about their interests?
Up until GCSE, students are not given freedom to explore their own interests.
Doesn't always have to be artists. Anything in visual culture can be related to art development.
Importance of trying to encourage student responses and interest development.
Interest of defining a dialogue between images and word, ask students to come up with titles for their work. Or perhaps even a statment about the work; not just the intention of the work, but the expected reception.
Ask students to look at work in progress, setting even a few rules to provide positivity and vice.
Gear discussion about the work itself.
Draw student attentinon to work that is not necessarily good, but show through that work something that is valuable and that provides a learning point for other students.
Good teahers teach through good work, Great teachers teach lessons through developing work.
Spend time to investigate what students are really trying to say.
Thematics and Issues based
Pablo Picasso - Nude with raised arms - The Avignon Dancer (1907)
Submissive pose of arrest - terrified expression. OR La Source pose - everything comes from them - classical lteracy of the pose that was pospular at the time.
Picasso - "I am what I am, I want to become a savage". The corruption of civility and noble savagery - a binary opposition, some of whom at the time believed that savagery was better than civility.
Representing 'others'
All cultures have depicted 'otherness' in arts.
Images of the west around the world is typically one of aggression.
A french Artist imagining an execution in 12th century Spain. 'Summary Execution under the Moorish Kings of Granada (1870)'. Below.
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