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Studies in Art Education.
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Copyright2001 by the Studiesin Art Education
NationalArt EducationAssociation A Journalof Issuesand Research
2001, 42(2), 101-112
By Paul Duncum
Universityof Tasmania
Launceston,Australia
The author describes a shift in art education from studying the art of the institutional artworld Paul Duncum can be
to what many call "visual culture." The author accounts for this shift in light of contemporary contactedat the Faculty
cultural life, which is increasingly visual. Secondly, the author attempts to define the contested
term visual culture by reviewing the literature of the emerging field of visual culture. Finally,
of Education,University
some suggestions are made about a curriculum for visual culture. It is argued that instead of of Tasmania,Launceston,
specific content a curriculum for visual culture should be organized around provocative questions. Tasmania,7250,
Australiaor by e-mailat
Within art education a shift is discernible from studying the art of the Paul.Duncum@utas.edu.
institutionalized artworld to studying the more inclusive category of au
and communities (p. 31). Rhizomes also work on the principles of multi-
plicity and rupture, where a connection might be made to any other thing
and, even where a connection is broken, the rhizomatic structure will
rebound time and again with new developments along old lines or the
creation of new lines.
In attempting a definition, then, we should look for something that is
useful rather than something that is neat. Much depends on the discipli-
nary background of the proponents. In surveying definitions of visual
culture it is immediately apparent that this emerging field is far more
inclusive than anything we would want to be involved with as art educa-
tors. What I will do here, therefore, is to search out what is useful for our
purposes. I will take the position that as art educators we are concerned
with artifacts that are, first, significantly visual and, second, constitutive of
attitudes, beliefs, and values.
In one sense, visual culture refers to a field of study. The field is emerg-
ing from different disciplines, though principally sociology, and draws
upon numerous theoretical perspectives. Nevertheless, the field is usually
thought to be composed of two closely related elements: a focus on ways
of seeing, often referred to as "visuality";and an expanded range of visual
artifacts that lie beyond the art institution. Henderson (1999), for exam-
ple, defines visual culture as "what it is to see and what there is to see"
(p. 26). Enlarging the canon is a prime task (e.g., Bird et al., 1996), but
equally significant is an emphasis on ways of perceiving and reflecting
upon visual experience (e.g., Heywood & Sandywell, 1999). As a field,
visual culture is generally informed by the view that artifacts and their
perception are alike in being context bound, that is, they are historically,
socially, and politically determined and cannot be studied in isolation
from these factors (Barnard, 1998). Moreover, it is usually recognized that
visual artifacts exist in relation to other semiotic codes and appeal to sen-
sory modes other than sight, such as language, sound, music and human
gesture, and cannot be grasped without taking those modes into account
3Even among this (Mirzoeff, 1998).3
limitedrangeof literature Often the term is left either undefined (e.g., Chandler et al., 1996;
differentemphasesare
Marling, 1994; Morgan, 1999) or underdefined, for example, as "images"
apparent,with some rather than "art" (Bryson, Holly, & Moxy, 1994, p. xvi), as "visuality"
authorsbeing more
(Jenks, 1995, p. 1), as "a materialist analysis of art" (Bird, et al., 1996,
concernedwith the
morphologyof visual
p. 3), or as a "hermeneutics of visual experience" (Heywood & Sandywell,
cultureand othersmore 1999, p. 6). One way we need to understand the term then is to see how
with waysof viewing. it is used in practice. It is commonly used, as Llewellyn (1992) does, for
example, to refer to "prints and pictures" as well as "visual artifacts"
(pp. 7, 8) associated with a particular human activity and historical
period. Llewellyn examines the visual culture of death rituals, while
among the many other studies using the term visual culture are studies of
boxing (Chandler et al., 1996), American Protestantism (Morgan, 1999)
the artifacts have their being, including their production, distribution, and
use. Images are viewed in their contextual richness, as part of an ongoing
social discourse that involves their influence in social life.
If such a definition of visual culture is adopted as the focus of art
education, the role of the art educator, at least from a social reconstruc-
tivist position, will not significantly change. The range of artifacts we
study will be greatly enlarged, but we will continue to focus on the social
worlds of visual imagery as they are constitutive of attitudes, beliefs and
values.
Curriculum Directions for Visual Culture
As commentors have made clear (including Barnard, 1998; Hughes,
1998; Jenks, 1995; Mitchell, 1995), there are many ways to approach
visual culture. Art educators have already suggested some of these.
Chalmers (1981), Chapman (1978) and Duncum (1993), for example,
have sought to examine how images function within and across different
societies at different times. For example, Chalmers approvingly cites
Gowans's (1981) contention that popular art found in comic books,
television, and political cartoons, plays similar roles to those played by
painting in years gone by. Following this track, it is possible to link a
home page photograph with a Van Gogh portrait on the basis that they
are both substitutes, or to link Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling
with a soap opera on the basis that they are both narratives.
While the artworld canon is greatly expanded, artworld images
continue to be included. As Mitchell (1995) writes,
The genius and the masterpiece will not disappear in the context of
visual culture but the status, power, and the kinds of pleasure they
afford beholders will become objects of investigation rather than a
mantra to be ritually recited in the presence of unquestionable
monuments. (p. 210)
Freedman (2000) implies one way in which fine art invariably would
be incorporated when she points out that media images of gender owe
more to fine art images of gender than they do to contemporary reality.
Studying gender representation in the media, will then properly involve
studying gender in fine art images.
B. Wilson (2000) and M. Wilson (2000) also explore connections
between the artworld and popular culture. They point out that the
Internet provides seemingly endless possibilities for building hypertexts
that combine the images students create or prefer with the images and
ideas of others. Where access is possible to nearly every aspect of visual
culture, the challenge is to build and act upon these connections.
The above approaches simply combine artworld and popular imagery
on the basis of shared subject matter or themes. They might be appealing
to art educators because they extend to the unknown from the known.
However, I wonder if they are commensurate with the contextual embed-
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