Distinguishing Artistic from Vernacular Performances in the Visual Arts: A Classroom Perspective

Abstract

This chapter poses the question of what should be taught in the visual arts in primary schools? Syllabuses are often unable to meet their obligations in helping teachers distinguish suitable artistic content, either because of their competency based focus or because of stereotyped assumptions about children’s creative autonomy in the primary school. In this chapter the character of the visual arts is considered as a kind of practice and considered from three different perspectives of artistic value. Recognition is afforded to the ways in which success in children’s art is governed by values representing the quality of artistic ends rather than, for example, in acquiring technical routines, or in defaulting to the creation of vernacular imagery. Three value sources for the visual arts are proposed comprising the structural, sociocultural and psychological. These alternative value bases are explored as ways of helping teachers and students negotiate a wider range of activities within a framework of identifiable artistic ends.

Brown, N. C. M. (1990). Distinguishing artistic from vernacular performances in the Visual Arts: A classroom perspective. In Occasional Seminar 2: Understanding art as the basis for primary art teaching, pp. 1–11. Paddington, NSW: UNSW, College of Fine Arts. Reprinted by permission of UNSW Art & Design, www.artdesign.unsw.edu.au