Research in Visual Arts Education - The National Society for ...

ISSUES IN VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION
Art appreciation
Art appreciation, i.e. how we make sense of artistic pictures, has puzzled and
intrigued philosophers and artists for centuries (Winner, 1982). With the
rise of museum education as a discipline of its own, a growing body of empirical
studies has emerged. In 1997, the Danish psychologist Bjarne Sode Funch
published a comprehensive survey of the research on art appreciation. He
identified five different types of art appreciation, each one representing a
legitimate approach to visual art. In future research, these conceptions of
the phenomenon should be taken into consideration in order to further our
understanding of how different works of art can be appreciated in different
ways and for different reasons. Funch concludes that further studies will
be needed to establish the position of each type of art appreciation in a
comprehensive psychological theory. Funch’s principal contribution to such
a synthesis is an “existential-phenomenological thesis” of aesthetic experience,
which acknowledges the significance of individuals’ life experiences
in the encounter with distinct forms of art.
Among the many studies reviewed by Funch (op. cit.), Michael Parsons’
(1987a-b) phenomenological work on how we understand art is the most
well-known one in the Nordic countries. Parsons classified people’s responses
to paintings in four categories based upon what they primarily were
looking for in a work of art: subject matter (including ideas of beauty and
realism); emotional expression; medium, form and style; and the nature of
judgement. Parsons categories have inspired everything from a study of preschool
children’s art preferences in Norway (Andersen, 1998) to a national
evaluation of pictorial studies (visual arts) in the Swedish compulsory
school (Marner, Örtegren & Segerholm, 2005).
Helene Illeris (2004) at the Danish University of Education reviewed
ten years of Nordic studies and curriculum guides on art appreciation and
museum education. She concludes that although some Nordic contributions
reach a high level of quality, the field as a whole can be characterized
as “diffuse, fragmented and dependent on the interest and input of individuals”
(p. 66).
Education through art
Education through art has been a catch-phrase in the community of art educators
since Herbert Read (1943) in the United Kingdom published his wellknown
book with this title. The aim of education, according to Read, is to
nurture “artists”, i.e. human beings who are familiar with various modes of
expression. Behind this and similar expressions, such as “Arts as Education”
(Goldberg & Phillips, 1992), lies a belief that the arts are fundamental to
20 NORDIC VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION IN TRANSITION