National Art Education Association

Visual Culture, Visual Brain, and (Art) Education Author(s): Anna M. Kindler Reviewed work(s): Source: Studies in Art Education, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Spring, 2003), pp. 290-296 Published by: National Art Education Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1321015 . Accessed: 05/09/2012 16:40
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ArtEducation Association National

Copyright 2003 by the

Studiesin Art Education

A Journal of Issues andResearch 2003, 44(3),290-296

Commentary: Visual Culture, Visual Brain, and (Art) Education

Anna M. Kindler
TheHongKongInstitute ofEducation

Correspondence regardingthis commentary should be addressedto the author at the School of CreativeArts, Sciences and Technology, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, 10 Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, New Territories, Hong Kong. E-mail: kindler@ied.edu.hk An earlierversion of this paper was presented as a keynote addressat the International Symposium on the New Prospectsof Art Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, September 27-29, 2001.

Many art education scholars have argued in recent years that visual culture, as an important cultural phenomenon, is worth addressing in the context of schooling because of its great social impact and relevance to the lives of young people (e.g., Barbosa, 1991, Duncum, 1990, 2001; Freedman & Stuhr, 2001; Garoian, 1997; McFee & Degge, 1977; Neperud, 1995; Tavin, 2001; Wilson, 2001; Wilson & Wilson, 1977). However, there are also other reasons for a more inclusive vision of art education that I have recently attempted to bring to light (Kindler, 2001). I have tried to rationalize the importance of visual culture in the educational enterprise on the basis that it provides a very fruitful ground for development of visual intelligence because of the richness of pictorial repertoires that it embraces. I see visual culture as central to visual education, a cognitive endeavor that would encourage a more complete and engaged participation in the visual world than what art education champions today.

Conceptions of Development and Visual Culture

As any other domain of education, art education has as one of its prerogatives encouragement of human development and learning. Consequently, how we conceptualize this growth is central to curriculum decisions, nature of pedagogical interventions and ways in which success is assessed. Art education has long been committed to linear notions of artistic development. From Lowenfeld's stages (1947) to the U-curve models (Gardner & Winner, 1982; Davis, 1997a, 1997b), artistic development has been conceptualized as a growth within a rather narrow set of understandings and abilities. Aside from the fact that these models focus on development within a single graphic medium (drawing), rely on culturally-selected endpoints and define development in terms of people's ability to conform to particular sets of aesthetic preferences (e.g., visual realism, expressive quality, etc.) that may or may not be relevant under different historical and socio/cultural conditions, they do not adequately account for the fact that pictorial behavior, as a semiotic activity, may be guided by different purposes and may be subject to different perspectives of interpretation. Over the past two decades, these uni-linear models have been critiqued by numerous researchers(Golomb, 1994; Kindler & Darras, 1994, 1997; Pariser, 1997; Wolf, 1994; Wolf & Perry, 1988) and exploration of their shortcomings lead to the call for freeing conceptions of artistic development from the constraints of linearity and single endpoints (Wolf and

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Perry,1988; Golomb, 1994; Kindler& Darras,1998; Kindler,1999). An alternative model of development, accountingfor a much broader rangeof of which have been as art behaviors classified (some pictorial traditionally or "visual while others have better fitted the realmsof "communication" culture")has emergedand broughtto light problemswith art education curriculum and pedagogythat maintainnarrowfocus on only veryselected & Darras,1994, 1998). aspectsof humanpictorialactivity(Kindler While this model offersa good rationale foundationfor and theoretical a possibleparadigm shift, the traditionof art educationpracticeis heavily that this model acclaimsas biasedagainstsome of the pictorialrepertoires valid.Forexample,in North American arteducationthe imagery prevalent in visualcultureof childrenand young peoplewho growup in media-saturatedenvironmentshas traditionally remainedexcludedfrom, or seen as less worthyof exploration than the traditional formsthat definedWestern art. Prejudiceagainstimagerycreatedbased on culturalmodels derived from these traditions(e.g., cartoonor mangadrawings),drawingconventions of initial imagerythat are seen as primitiveor immature,synthetic or images that are constructedat the map-like graphic representations intersections of graphicmarks,gesturesand vocal or verbalclues has been in this tradition. enshrined This prejudice and exclusionfrom curriculum is particularly disturbing becausethesekindsof imagery areoften at the heartof pictorial worldsthat createin theirlives (Kindler,1999). childrenand adolescents spontaneously the that that is constitute They imagery peoplehavea "needfor"- imagery not guided by artistic intentions but rather by the need to represent, communicate, express, processfor oneselfor sharewith othersevents,ideas, in one'slife. It is the imagery or emotionsthat aresignificant that often has a magneticinterestto childrenand youngpeople,imagery that is enthusiastically consumed, spontaneouslycreated,and personallysatisfyingwhile, to the concernsof arteducation.In mostlyirrelevant regretfully, remaining to judgeand dismiss,we havefailedto inquireinto the fasciour eagerness What specifically to our makesthis imageryso appealing natingquestions: In have the for it? what conditions students? do need contexts, Why they and circumstances does this imageryperformimportantfunction in their lives?What these preferences and interestscan teach us about the ways in which studentsprocessvisualinformation, and how this insightcould help of their visual us encourage development intelligence? It is importantto note that the same pictorialrepertoires can and have been used at times by artiststhroughouthistoryand acrosscultures.It is the dimensionof the "kunstwollen," groundedsocial alongwith culturally acclaimthat fund classificationmechanismsthat define art and non-art and that account for the shift in status of different kinds of pictorial
imagery. In other words, the debate of whether these diverse pictorial repertoires should be explored within the discourse of art is essentially a cultural argument.

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Brain Researchand the Possibility of Visual Education

The last two decades have contributed immensely to the understanding of processes that account for seeing and processing of visual informationprocesses that are fundamental to encounters with art and participation in visual culture. If we accept that "all visual art is expressed through the brain and must therefore obey the laws of the brain, whether in conception, execution or appreciation" (Zeki, 1999, p. 1), it is certainly of great importance to art education to be appraised of and benefit from these new insights. The key shifts in thinking about visual perception and cognition relate to the concepts of "visual brain" (Zeki, 1999) and "visual intelligence" (Hoffman, 1998). These new theories contradict the long-standing notion that seeing involves a process of imprinting an image onto the retina that only later on becomes transmitted to the brain to be de-coded, analyzed, and interpreted. They posit that seeing is not a matter of passive perception, but rather an active act of construction that involves visual brain and requires visual intelligence manifested in the ability to construct one's visual experience. One of the main challenges in this construction is the ability to overcome the fundamental problem of vision, the fact that "the image at the eye (retinal image) has countless possible interpretations" (Hoffman, p. 13). Visual intelligence can be described as a brain's ability to search for constancies, essentials, and non-changing aspects of visual world that allow us to interpret the ever-changing retinal images in consistent and coherent ways. In other words, our visual brain reinvents a chair in front of us as a chair irrespectively of the fact that the retinal images of the chair significantly differ as we turn our head or move around the room. The brain overcomes the problem of the appearance that changes momentarily to arrive at a "sensible essence" (Riviere, cited in Zeki, 1999,

p. 11).
Both Hoffman and Zeki argue that the brain's quest for these essentials and the task to obtain the knowledge about the world and recreate it as it is can be paralleled to the tasks facing fine artists (and I would add designers and others who contribute to the development of visual culture): "seeking of knowledge in an ever-changing world" (Zeki, p. 12). One of the most exciting advances in neurosciences that could lend support to the notion that various pictorial repertoiresinvolve and provide opportunities for different kinds of learning (and thus an education that accounts for this diversity would be a richer enterprise) has to do with the evidence coming from research concerned with mapping of neural activation zones in relation to different pictorial tasks. There is a growing evidence, for example, that "different modes of painting make use of different cerebral systems" (Zeki, p. 215). For instance, it has been documented that abstract works activate more restricted parts of the brain than art that is representational or narrative in nature. This happens because of the general organization of the visual brain "in which each of the parallel

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processingsystemsconsistsof severalstages,with each stage constructing the figure at a given level of complexity."(p. 208). For example, some areasof the visual brain located within the inferiortemporalcortex are specializedin object recognitionand are activatedonly when presented art that involves with stimuli that lend themselves to such tasks.Similarly, a kineticdimensionwill activateareasthat remaindormantin experiences whether representational or non-objective.This involvingstatic imagery: information suggests that the inclusion in our curriculumof pictorial imagerythat relieson the involvementof movementand gesturemay have uniquebenefitsfor students. of the visualbraincan be relatedto what he Zeki arguesthat modularity calls "modularity of visualaesthetics" (p. 205) and suggeststhat in fact it of non-objective, maybe possibleto speakof distinctneurologies representationaland narrative it has been even more importantly, imagery.Perhaps some suggestedthat artiststrainedin theircrafthavethe abilityto override of the pre-wiredmechanisms.For example,artistswho use their knowledge to deliberately paint something differentlyfrom the ways in which it see have two subdivisionsof the frontalcortex of their brainthat they become active to communiunderdifferentsets of circumstances naturally cate with each other (Zeki, 1999). So it is possibleto arguethat engagement with visualimagerythroughthe exploration of its enormousrangeof can for of allow forms neural interactions and dynamicsthat possibilities otherwise would not be achieved. Clearly,thereis still much to be learnedaboutthe humanbrainand its function as it relatesto pictorialrepresentation, includingthose aspectsof it thatwe havelearnedto call art.However,research evidencethat the past two decades or so have affordedsends a powerful signal that our field should carefullytune to this knowledge.The fact that "whathappensin the brain of one individualwhen he or she looks at art is very similarof what happensin the brainof another" (Zeki,p. 218) makesthesefindings acrossdiverseculturalcontexts.Perhaps it is potentiallyusefuland relevant within this territory of neuroscience that we can find a groundfor discussion of universal issuesin a cross-cultural conversation aboutarteducation? The vision of visualeducationthat I am excitedaboutis certainly inclusive of a broad spectrumof visual culturethat has been at the center of attention of colleagueswho have arguedits importancebased on social or culturalarguments. relevance However,I think that we should also be concernedwith a broadlydefined visual culturebecauseit is constructed with and embodies a wide range of pictorial repertoireswithin which human growth can be achievedand presentsan arrayof choices of areas where visual imagerydoes matter. Immersionin visual culture offers an exciting opportunityto the visualbrainto engagein cognitiveactivityat every step of this experience-not only through the invitation of sociocultural interpretations that these encounters afford but also through the very processes of image construction that are intrinsic to them. Experiencing

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AnnaM. Kindler and creating visualimagery of different kindscan havesignificant cognitive benefits in making a more complete use of differentparts of the visual brain and allowing for developmentof diversestrengthsin creatingand to the visualworld. relating The potential impact of visual cultureon human cognition has been in studies concernedwith the IQ scores distributionover demonstrated time (Flynn, 1984, 1987). These studies,involvingextensivedata derived a fromdifferent socio/cultural revealed settingsand age groupsconsistently in increase scores over several decades. Needless to IQ say, significant weretestedto accountfor the "FlynnEffect," diversehypotheses including the possible impact of improved nutrition, more extensive access to and even the to formaleducation,test habituation, schoolingand exposure increasein the size of the brainrelatedto the overallincreasein the body 2002). However,all of these factorsprovedto be, at best, height (Darras, for the dramaticchange.A close analysisof the only partially responsible individualcomponentsof the test shed an interesting light on the possible on the IQ test performance. It demoncausesof this marked improvement stratedthat the gain occurredalmost solely on items measuringvisual/ that the changesin the visual It has since been suggested spatialreasoning. and spatial universe are in fact responsiblefor the current generation "moreintelligent"than their parentsor grandparents (Neisser, appearing it has been arguedthat these increased 1998; Darras,2002). Specifically, abilitiesof visualanalysis to the experience with "visual developin response media"that permeatethe world today. The proliferation of both staticas well as moving images in people's daily lives, exposureto photographs, film, video,variousformsof digitalimagery, graphs,diagrams, pictograms, and other manifestations of visual culturewere identifiedas advertising, on IQ tests (Darras, 2002). possiblecausesfor the globalimprovement Visualcultureoperates throughthe mediumof visualbrainand through modalities that are founded in human neurobiology. Consequently, I believethat we shouldbe concernedwith this realmof growth-not as an alternative but ratheras a necessary for complementto the opportunities socio-cultural of educationin pictorial learning.I see this revisedterritory as inclusiveof experimentation, representation teaching,and opportunities to practicea wide rangeof pictorialrepertoires. I regardthis territory as a place where studentswould not only have an opportunityto experience this diversitybut also have a chanceto understand that differentpictorial systems of representationmay have different salient dimensions, may necessitate the use of alternative structures and devicesthat may at timesbe to each and different and learning other, contradictory mayrequire teaching in order to achieve desired levels of and success. strategies proficiency While researchin recent two decades has delegated the theories of
"seeing eye" and "understanding brain" to the realm of myths, visual education seems to be an adequate umbrella to cover a wide range of cognitive endeavors that rely on the use of visual brain. There is no one

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Visual Culture Commentary: aspectof visualcultureto which we can relatewithout the involvementof this magnificent and still in manywaysmysterious organ. Researchin neurosciences that maps brain areas involved in visual problem-solving and creative visual thinking (e.g., Miller & Tippet, for 1996; Elliot, 1986), exploresactivitiesof the corticalareasresponsible the analysis or attempts and synthesisof forms,colors,and spatialrelations to understandthe nature of a "fundamentalthought" that constitutes "a mental stimulation of the picture"(Changeaux,1994, p.194). While this researchcan help demystifythe role that the brain plays in human productionand consumptionof visual culture, an active involvementof the art educationcommunity in such inquirycould make it more useful to our field. With interdisciplinarycollaboration being today more a normthan exception,it is perhaps time for us to seekscholarly partnerships with cognitivescientiststo betterunderstand foundationsof neurological the visual culturephenomenon and considernew ways to integrateit in the educationenterprise. References
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