“The real question is not how to paint but what to paint” –Stuart Davis, 1923
According to Walker book “Art making involves problems technical’s, aesthetic, stylistic, conceptual, and expressive. How to paint is a technical problem, but what to paint is a conceptual problem when it extend beyond subject matter.” P49. For example, I know how to paint but sometimes I just cannot paint. That’s because I don’t have the conceptual idea. So then, I go and search for my idea either from my inspiration images or the world around me. I then can paint. In walker book “art making involves both presented and constructed problems, and art teachers must plan instruction for both. The design of art making problems begins with big ideas. Once big idea established, the art making problem becomes a strategy for examining and exploring the big idea” p.51.
Some examples of art making problems:
Transformation: Visual strategies that alter an object, person, or situation form its usual or normal representation.
Concealment: visual and conceptual strategies that partly hide or conceal; information.
Disruption: conceptual strategies that alter a viewer’s usual manner of perceiving and understanding specific subject matter.
Illogical combination: a conceptual strategy that is a subcategory of disruption.
Opposition: a conceptual strategy that utilizes polarities.
These art-making problems are generic enough to use with most big ideas.
“Descriptive drawing is extremely valuable if part of your ultimate expression is description. It is not all that valuable if that kind of describing is irrelevant to your ends.” Robert Motherwell.
In Walker’s book “to express and explore ideas, artists must work with another type of problems: setting boundaries for art making… artist create structure for art making with artist choices about media, qualities, subject matter, style, and technique.” Boundaries set necessary limits that enable artists to work productively. P.73 not really! For me, I don’t like to be limited to make my art work. I like to have to ability to do what ever I like in art. And I don’t like my students to be limited in their work . I like them to be more creative and to use their imagination in their artworks. As a teacher, I can give them the concept idea and explained to them, but then I will let them use their creativity to make their own project based on the concept idea that I already gave them.
For the artwork title:
I believe that the title is a part of any artwork even of its considered untitled. And a title should be considered part of the student’s artworks.
I found it very interesting that you consider a title as part of an artwork. Many artist argue that a title assigns meaning to a piece and takes away from an audience's opportunity to create meaning for themselves. If you were to require students to name their works, would you have any restrictions on the titles? For example, would you ask them to make the title mysterious and open to interpretation? Would you want them to name the piece in accordance with how they want their work to be read? Or would you just want them to give their pieces a simple name (like the materials used or "landscape")?
ReplyDeleteI believe that every artwork should have a title and we, as art teachers should teach our students how to name their artworks. Because title can tell us more about the art projects so I prefer to let it to them to consider the title they want. And even untitled is still a title! :p
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