Visual Inquiry - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011

Increasingly, engagement in the arts is believed to have the ability to address the challenges faced during adolescence and effect change beyond the scope of developing technical skills or aesthetic understanding. The purpose of this article is to review the literature on the benefits of arts engagement and self-efficacy: specifically its relation to the experiences of adolescent females. We will begin by providing a rationale for the focus on adolescent females by reviewing the role of self-efficacy in the developmental needs of adolescent women. Following this will be a review of the literature on youth engagement in the arts focusing on the potential positive outcomes on the affective domain. We argue that self-efficacy is fundamental for the positive development of young women and that within the context of arts education research further investigation into the relationship between arts engagement and self-efficacy is needed.

The authors recount lessons learned through the experience of interviewing Professor Pepón Osorio about his practice as an artist-teacher-researcher. Central to the authors’ interview method is ‘bead collage’, an arts-informed inquiry process that invites participants to construct and reflect on their experience by manipulating small objects of material culture. This interview methodology facilitated an encounter in which Osorio internally and externally organized his thoughts through the creation of a bead collage. The artefact is a visual testimony of the interview process, his teaching philosophy and his approach to art-making. As a result, the article is a visual and textual construction that unpacks Osorio’s approach and passion as an artist-teacher. The authors conclude that the centrality of stories, use of negotiation and improvisation, knowledge of self and situation, and art as testimony are valuable strategies to articulate when teaching others about meaningful intersections of community, collaboration and art.

The purpose of this article is to give a succinct historical analysis of the visual culture art education movement, thus updating art education’s history. This article looks at art education history through two broad perspectives – sociocultural and sociopolitical – for the purpose of gaining new insight into why this type of curriculum developed. Through this analysis six themes emerged in visual culture art education literature, supported by the writings of the leading visual culture art education scholars Paul Duncum, Kerry Freedman and Kevin Tavin.

In this article I explore the difference between individual and collective attention. I discuss the ways in which museum experience is impacted by the number of visitors in attendance and the social qualities of the environment. The Berkeley Art Museum’s L@TE Friday evening programme is introduced as an example of a programme that fosters collective attention. In this context, I discuss the performance of György Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique (1962), which resulted in a remarkable experience of collective attention.

The familiarity of iconic photographs make them helpful tools for building young people’s visual literacy, particularly those with limited art experience. In a seminar designed to introduce first-year college students to the rigours of academic work, Alberto Korda’s photograph of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara is the icon of choice. History has given Guevara many guises; throughout the course students consider how Guevara and others constructed his image, and how the replication of that image can be deconstructed in terms of various art media. Wedding word and image, and using museum-education techniques combined with traditional art-historical modes of inquiry, students explore the meaning of the man behind the t-shirt.

Artists train the next generation of artists. To the uninitiated, this system might seem mysterious, even bizarre. Communities of idiosyncratic creative individuals pass on a lineage that stretches back to some French caves, further perhaps. A life spent as an artist is remarkable enough. A life spent as artist and as an educator of future artists is extraordinary. This essay is a tender reflection of the joy and honour of being one link in the chain.

The artwork of Jeff Koons had always seemed intentionally ironic to me. But after re-evaluating his work, I find sincerity. My initial assumption of Koons’s use of irony formed a powerful impression on my understanding of the art world. Further research into Koons’s life and work revealed to me a different perspective, one that has impacted the way I approach my own work and instructional practice. Examining two works by Koons, I show how St John the Baptist could be interpreted as ironic, but the more recent Liberty Bell demonstrates deeper complexity and vindicates the sincerity that Koons claimed all along. Perhaps irony is not always the favourable means of communicating, and sincerity can be used successfully.

Los Angeles, once recognized solely for its orange groves and Hollywood glamour, has become a leading locale in the cultural art world. Author Sarah Schrank chronicles the events that shaped LA’s civic identity in her book, Art and the City: Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in Los Angeles. Starting with the early twentieth century, Schrank illustrates how social unrest and political conflict dictated the city’s identity and art, even exposing how LA’s perception of minorities stipulated its freeway system. Oscillating between civic censorship and promotion, artists were often held captive by the current ethnic and political environment. From landmark schools to civic icons, Art and the City is a useful compendium for understanding the influences that gave Los Angeles its urban identity.

In this award-winning documentary, Between the Folds, film-maker Vanessa Gould follows various artists and scientists and explores their shared love for paperfolding. Blurring the lines between ‘the science of art, the art of science’, Gould reveals how the creativity and intricacies of origami mimic nature’s own mysteries. This art form, once associated as a simple pastime for children, ranges in its expression. The provocative folds mimic all aspects of life, from human emotion to the detailed structure of a double helix. These artists-scientists appear qualified to solve any mystery, all with paper-folding. Between the Folds is an intriguing film about an art discipline that utilizes creativity and science.

This is a brief review of the 2011 CAA sessions pertaining to arts research, as perceived by one attendee. An effort was made to integrate the hybrid discourse of new media in contemporary art practice with the emergence of arts technology integration in education and arts research. Woven in briefly is a snippet from the contemporary studio artist scene in a dynamically changed and perplexing marketplace. This author is trying to synthesize conversations from several sessions that seem to provide a glimpse of some of the hot topics in contemporary art and arts education and their intersections. If this review was depicted as a word cloud such text would be featured as: living artist, emergence, artist-scholar, art as research, contemporary art practice, new media, terminal degree, sciarts, transdisciplinary and ruptured boundaries.