One of the biggest questions that I believe summarizes the goal of aesthetics is: what is the purpose and meaning of art? Undoubtedly, humans have created visually striking objects since the dawn of civilization. But the purpose and place of art has been widely debated. For example the idea of “self expression” is relatively new. Vincent Van Goh was one of the first well-known artists to explore this idea. Prior to his creations, the goal of art was mostly to serve supernatural entities or a wealthy aristocracy. Artists in the early centuries were referred more as craftsmen, until that changed in the Renaissance which they were revered as creative geniuses. I talk about this history because when reading the articles, it’s important to forget the bigger picture. Philosophy is not an objective truth; it is only as real as the people who talk about it.
An activity I thought about to introduce students to the idea of aesthetics is splitting them up into groups and having them each make a poster. On the poster, they must work together to list at least 8 purposes of art. Afterwards, everyone will come back together to compare ideas. I would then connect these ideas to other aesthetic concepts adopted by aestheticians. My prediction is that students will say things as “to express yourself” or “to make the world more beautiful.” However, there plenty of art that exists that contradicts these ideas. Ask the students: “does art have to express yourself?” and “Does art have to be beautiful?” A second activity involves having students find an artwork online and responding to a set of aesthetic questions. Then they would share to the class and answer a few questions such as: “what emotions do you feel when looking at this piece?” or “what about the piece intrigues you the most?”
In terms of formalism and contextualism, they both have their places within art education. Personally, I side with formalism slightly more being that I believe that it is okay for art to exist without any social context. Sometimes I find social justice images to be proselytizing. I much prefer art when it shows a reality, rather than trying to change it. In a way though, it is impossible to be completely one or the other even if you tried. For the formalist, they are always seeing art through the lens of their own culture, intentionally or unintentionally. For the contextualist, it is impossible to pretend that no visual stimuli produce an emotional reaction without knowing the backstory of a particular work.
If I end up teaching at the high school level, I would teach from a mimetic approach first. This is due to the fact that all art (realistic, abstract, non-objective) comes from reality at one point. Understanding the rules of reality is imperative before one breaks those rules. If I were to leave students to do whatever they please, there would be no standards or room for self improvement. As we would progress throughout the course, I would connect types of art that students were interested in with the concepts that were taught prior. To know what students are into, I would conduct surveys that ask various questions about their visual taste. A lot of what teenagers are interested in is often connected with some form of media (video games, anime, tv shows, movies, comics) All these forms of visual storytelling have artistic merit to them. They are not “below” academic art. Any visual imagery that conveys some form of aesthetic is art.
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