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P h i l o s o p h y
Administrative Philosophy
Exposing the Visual (Garoian's catalogue essay for the SVA2000 Exhibition at the Palmer Museum of Art, which represents his vision as the Director of the School of Visual Arts at Penn State University) Since the advent of photography in the 19th century, the production of visual culture1 via imaging technologies has risen exponentially to a level of saturation that now at the beginning of the 21st century requires serious critical attention. According to Guy Debord's notion of the "society of the spectacle," motion pictures, television, advertising, and the Internet have significantly altered the way in which we perceive, imagine and represent ourselves and the world in which we live. Ironically, until the invention of the camera over a century ago, the majority of Americans had never seen an image of their president, what he looked like. Today, images of the world's leaders are ubiquitous they are everywhere. With the apotheosis of the mass media, visual images now deluge the "information super highway" and determine not only the quantity and quality of what we see, but also how we perceive and define ourselves. Imaging technologies have created an ironic circumstance where their "virtual" experiences affect our bodies and identities as we emulate them in "actual" ways. Moreover, the globalization that has been made possible via telecommunications and telemarketing has fulfilled Marshall McLuhan's prophecy of the "global village," a miniaturization of the world made possible through mass mediation. What does it mean that we are living in a culture that is predominantly visual? Whose responsibility is it to expose, examine, and critique its forms and contents? Within which academic discipline should this responsibility lie? What difference, if any can the visual arts make in the study of visual culture? Realizing that much of visual culture is currently produced through digital means, what difference can the traditional art genres make in understanding its cybernetic character? How we perceive, represent, and define ourselves is inextricably linked to the history of image making. The production of visual culture has been, and continues to be, the purview of artists whose creative works signify the world through the language of the visual arts. Ideologically, visual representations are powerful as they can vilify or venerate their subject matter. Images can enlighten and emancipate, or oppress their viewers. According to art historian David Freedburg, they can bestow honor, deify, philosophize, incite revolutions, and to outrage or convert the incredulous. Freedburg claims: Art, and the larger context of visual culture in which it participates, is inherently ideological in that images represent the worldview of artists and/or their patrons. An intellectual form of cultural work that is often dismissed or marginalized in a science dominated world, the creation and experience of art requires visual exploration, experimentation, literacy and critique. Like literary works, the understanding and appreciation of the "visual texts" of art necessitates the exposure, examination, and interpretation of its salient signifiers. In doing so, the cultural codes and narratives experienced in art works function pedagogically as they convey the ideas of the artist which in turn represent the assumptions of an epoch. The value of this pedagogy is in its ability to engage viewers in a dialogue about their own perceptions of cultural life. This oft "silent conversation" requires the viewer's engagement through contemplation, empathy, imagination, and a questioning of the artist's representations, a process of inquiry and interpretation that exposes the fullness of the artwork's experience and meaning. Moreover, for viewers to interact critically in this way requires that they bring their own perspectives to the dialogue, memories and cultural histories with which to challenge the visual representations of the artist. Such an interaction with a work of art transforms the viewer's role from a spectator to a critical participant in the creation meaning. It is this pedagogy of art, its signification and expression of contemporary cultural ideas that the faculty of the School of Visual Arts undertakes. From their individual research and creative accomplishments as artists, faculty members develop curriculum and teaching practices that enable their students to learn how to ask questions and to create new metaphors and myths about contemporary cultural life through visual forms. Engaged in visual rhetoric, members of the faculty teach their students how to construct meanings in their artworks that serve as critical propositions for viewers to ponder, interpret, and engage in a dialogue. At a time in history when mechanically and electronically reproduced images daily bombard their senses and influence their choices in life, such visual literacy is essential. As students expose, examine, and critique the oppressive content of visual culture by creating new ideas, images, and visions of the world, they learn to disrupt the punitive ways that it represents and affects their lives. Critique in this sense represents reflection, examination, and the practice of ethical responsibility and accountability for the meanings students express through their artworks and the inevitable impact they will have on how we perceive, conceptualize, and represent culture. Such practice represents a form of critical citizenship that is essential to students' attainment of political agency within a democratic society. The SVA 2000 exhibition represents the research and creative accomplishments of the School of Visual Arts faculty, a body of professional artists and educators whose artworks respond to the vast ecology of visual images in art history and contemporary culture. It is in the mediums of drawing and painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, graphic design, digital media, printmaking, and metals that the School of Visual Arts faculty conducts research about the play of images that dominate and define our cultural experience. Their artworks challenge the stereotypical representations of mass mediated culture with new ideas, images, and myths about contemporary cultural life. This challenge of representation involves issues that deal with identity politics, the body's health, the mutability of time and space, the politics of art history, the valuing of human touch, intimacy and love, beauty and the sublime in nature, truth, transcendence and the reaffirmation of life, and the hidden truths in the detritus in life. In dealing with these issues, the artworks in SVA 2000 serve as critical forms of expression that enable us as viewers to re-think and re-consider our understanding and appreciation of visual culture through the language of art. Thus,
it is within the exploratory, expressive, and critical realms of the visual
arts that the complex and contradictory forces of contemporary visual
culture can be understood and appreciated. It is through the visual language
of art, coupled with interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives,
that a more comprehensive understanding of culture can be attained. Such
attainment represents not merely the production and appreciation of images
that are entertaining, but those that are thought provoking, challenging,
and empowering-the basic attributes of a literate and critical citizenry
that are essential to a culturally democratic world. References: Teaching Philosophy I believe teaching to be a collaborative art form; a democratic process that involves teachers and students in exchanging, critiquing, and debating cultural ideas, images, and actions. Collaboration does not preclude rigorous study. The adage, "two heads are better than one," assumes that teachers and their students contribute different kinds of experience, knowledge, and expertise to educational discourse. As a teacher, for example, I bring to my classroom an academic background, personal memories, and a cultural history. I have years of experience creating art works and teaching art at the high school and university levels. My students also have expertise. They also bring to the classes that I teach personal memories and cultural histories; knowledge and experiences that they have acquired from their families, neighborhoods, communities, and the classrooms that they have attended. What students bring to my classroom from their respective backgrounds serve as significant counterpoints to my curriculum; content from which a critical dialogue can ensue, and personal understanding and responsibility can take place, among us. As a teacher, it is essential that I create a context for interpretation; a place within the curriculum that acknowledges and enables my students’ personal perspectives on course content. I believe I am most effective as a teacher when I provide my students with a critical voice in the classroom by diversifying my pedagogy; by creating multiple strategies that will enable them to understand and critique what they learn from me and from each other. In doing so, my students learn not only the subject matter of art, but how to become critical citizens and to participate in a cultural democracy. By lecturing to large groups of my students, for example, I am able to impart academic knowledge efficiently, but my monologue dissuades my students’ individual discussions and interpretations. Their personal identities are hidden and their voices silenced in a lecture situation. By diversifying my teaching strategies, however, I can present lectures among small group activities and individualized instruction to provide my students with greater opportunities to challenge me and each other by engaging in discussions and voicing their personal interpretations about course content. By shifting my teaching strategies to accommodate different learning styles, my students are encouraged to brainstorm, improvise, and interpret my curriculum from their own cultural perspectives. In doing so, they learn to challenge and transform the academic knowledge that I teach into new cultural ideas, images, and actions that are meaningful to their personal lives. |