metaphor in art education

National Art Education Association

Metaphor in Art EducationAuthor(s): Robert D. ClementsSource: Art Education, Vol. 35, No. 5 (Sep., 1982), pp. 28-31Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192632 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

National Art Education Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArtEducation.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.45 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:23:35 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=naea

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3192632?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Metaphor in Art Education M etaphors are vital creative

instruments through which art education's finest writers,

such as Herbert Read, John Dewey, Edmund Feldman, Vincent Lanier, and David Perkins, have forged vivid freshness of meaning and secured the energy and intensity found in great writing. Aristotle believed that, ". . . to be a master of metaphor is ... a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars" (Poetics 22, 1459a5). What communi- cates is the creator's effort to develop his idea, to evoke imagery, to connect (Bruner, 1962, p. 67). Not merely content to tell his story one way, he not only tells it many ways, but tells in many ways what it is like.

While literature and art are fond of metaphors, yet, in scientific writing, poetic expressions and metaphors are not encouraged:

In scientific writing, devices that attract attention to words, sounds, or other em- bellishments, instead of ideas, are in- appropriate. Heavy alliteration, acci- dental rhymes, poetic expressions and cliches are suspect. They are unsuitable in scientific writing because they lead the reader, who is looking for information, away from the theme of the paper. Metaphors are sometimes helpful, but use them sparingly (American Psycho- logical Assoc., p. 28).

In art education, a field which straddles the freedom of art and the science of education, one finds that metaphors have indeed been used sparingly. Seldom do more than a very few clear metaphors appear in most articles. One exception is this present article in which half a hundred metaphors by art education writers are brought together in order that the reader might judge for himself how effectively art educators in their thinking and writing have used metaphors. One might keep in mind Aristotle's criterion, that a metaphor must not be too far-fetched or it will be difficult to grasp, nor too obvious or it will have

Robert D. Clements

E _114

= a _

no effect (Rhetoric 3.10, 1410, p. 12, 32). Other figures are also pointed out, for metaphor is but one of over a hundred figures of speech identified and used by rhetoricians to give their writing liveliness, wit, intellect, emo- tion, and power (Miriam Joseph, 1947, pp. 293-344,. Theodore, 1976).

Love Aesthetic response and art teaching have been described by the analogy of letting go and losing oneself in another, the metaphor of love. Kenneth Beit- tel's (1974) simile is stated in beautiful symploce (both the beginnings "teaching, teaching" and the endings "arting, loving" are repeated):

I see now that 'teaching' arting is like 'teaching' loving-one can only begin by loving the arting itself which is concretely present, no matter how weakly, in an other.

For him, both loving and art teaching must begin with an agenda for change, but with initial acceptance and rapport. Elsewhere, Beittel (1974) again uses similar beginnings and endings of words in another love-like

description of the artist, witness- teacher, and aborning work as a "trinitarian co-agency, co-sharing, co-creating, transcending but not usurping autonomous otherness." Likewise, Herbert Read (1945, p. 288) believed the good art teacher should have "a gift for enveloping the pupil." To the imagery of love, Schneider (1939, p. 60) adds the imagery of sailing with another, "in the creative process, a man is able to 'let go'; to let his imagination sail out, conscious of being alone, though with a second self for company." Edward Bullough (1905, p. 434) described the "sympathetic openness" necessary in order that the viewer can lose himself in an aesthetic object. In a similar discussion of aesthetic response, Edmund Feld- man's (1970, p. 77) use of a negative term highlights love's acceptance: "But this is not because he is a con- noisseur of exotic art; it is because he is cultured, that is, free of slavery to the status objects and open to the complete reality of their being." State- ments on the relationship between aesthetic response and love are often made in Duke Madenfort's (1977) Whitmanesque writing:

Are all of us members of one living body alive with the love of humanity, filled with the joy of the simple contact of another human being, deeply affected by the aliveness of the quiet touching and caring hand of a friend? Do we bring our hands, our heart, our mind to the hands, the heart, the mind of the other in a sur- rendering move to the wholeness of friendship . . . knowing the other in prim- ordial silence, gliding the widening glow of cerulean, creatively touching and being touched, reiforcing the living with the living, the sensuous with the sensuous, immediacy with immediacy, openness with openness?

In the same sensuous issue of Art Education, Dean Howell (1977, p. 29) uses plays on words not only in his article's title, "The Sensuous Self-An Undercover Struggle in the Making of Art," but also in the antanaclasis (two meanings to the same word) and anti-

Art Education September 1982 28



metabole (transferring of things against each other) of its streaking conclusion, ". . . (artists should) have the courage to let it all hang out even in a threatening world that is 'hung up' about hanging-out." Nakedness is also metaphorically related to perception's being influenced by environment, learning and experience in George Steiner's (1977, p. 18) beautiful, powerful synecdoche, alliteration, and catachresis (borrowing the word "naked" and applying it to vision), "The eye is never naked." Love's negative, torture, is used in George Bernard Shaw's (1945, p. 1) hyperbole about art and education: "I am simply calling attention to the fact that fine art is the only teacher except torture."

The same idea is expressed by Nelson Goodman's (1968, p. 7) metaphor using age, "The eye comes always ancient to its work, obsessed by its own past ... ." On the other hand, Paul Valery (1960, p. 17) wishes that perception was not so influenced by the past in his powerful antithetical metaphor, "To see is to forget the names of the things one sees."

Play Shaw's statement also suggests the relationship between learning and play. One principal source of the metaphor that education should be like play comes from Plato's (1945, p. 6) theory of education: "Avoid compulsion and let your children's lessons take the form of play." Beittel (1974, p. 7) has used play in an analogy to depict the trilateral relationship of teacher, student, and his art as "three corner ping-pong." Clements (1979, p. 76) compared one step in the inductive method of art criticism to a child's imaginative play; rather than critically judging a work's value, one should take the work as a given and test one's own mental powers "like the young child's testing his imagination by seeing figures in the tree branches outside the window." One of the most vivid representations of play's vital and rowdy necessity in aesthetic response is depicted in Herbert Read's (1945, p. 33) parable:

When we look at a picture, we must think of the unconscious mind of the

spectator as a sort of carnival into which a strange figure suddenly strays. All the merrymakers turn toward the newcomer and welcome him; he joins in their dance and the fun goes all the faster.

Work Work comprises so central a role in the individual's life that it is natural to expect its appearance in art education metaphor. In a brilliant para- doxical trope which may be the most heartening metaphor ever stated for art education, John Dewey (1926, p. 358) turns topsy-turvey the layman's common sense idea of art's being a servant to more important activities: "Art is the complete culmination of nature, and . . . science (law, medi- cine, schooling) is properly a hand- maiden that conducts natural events to this happy issue."

The work-a-day drudgery of the art class is vividly depicted by Edward Jacomo's (1980, p. 8) triple similes about time dragging, inspiration waning, and discussion failing:

There are those days when each minute of the art class period appears to an- nounce its passing, when the spark is as dry as last year's paste, and response as difficult to pull from students as dande- lions in summer.

Other aspects of work have comprised art education metaphors. In describing the strengths and weaknesses of an anthropological art curriculum, Feld- man (1980, p. 7) uses similes to the business world: "Every plan of action has its assets and liability-'trade-offs' and 'cost benefit' ratios in today's jargon." Roger Fry (1956) metaphorically compared hasty art appreciation to shopping, where ". . . the normal person really only reads the labels, as it were, on the objects around him and troubles no further." Rubin's food- filled article "Carrots and Peas in a Single Pod" criticizes curriculum development which obfuscates art's wholistic integrity:

You would think me strange were I to ingest separately each of the pie's raw ingredients on the assumption that such digestive activity would produce in my body the complete and assembled pie.

Feminist Joelynn Snyder-Ott (1974, p. 18) uses a housekeeping metaphor to conclude her article, "The time has come to blow away the dust and cob- webs from them (women's historical contributions to art) as well as from our minds."

Humanities Literary references are sometimes used to cast insight upon art education problems. Art's tenuous position in the school curriculum has been metaphorically compared by Lanier (1979, p. 99) to that of the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland who had to run as hard as possible just to stay in place. In a brilliant use of contraries, negative terms, and unexpected contrast, David Perkins (1980, p. 18) cites Shakespeare to show the need for supportive structure, but a freedom from constraint:

In short, as Lear said, "Nothing will come of nothing." But nothing will come when everything is specified either, since there will be no room left in which towork.

In a similarly rich metaphor, Perkins (1977, p. 16) likens responding to con- ceptual art with responding to the Abominable Snowman; urging viewers to respond not with negative suspicion, but rather with sympathetic openness; to the synecdoche ("eye" for per- ceptual openness) he piles synoeciosis (the exchange of the contraries "beauty" and "beast") onto metaphor ("beauty" and beast") onto his original metaphor (art and Snowman) to powerfully conclude, "An adapt- able eye may make the beast a beauty." Irving Kaufman (1980, p. 13), spoofing the fervid belief in creativity in the 1960's, called it the time of Camelot, when confidence abounded that crises could be resolved, and common sense, good will, courage, and charm would overcome the world's disasters.

One example of an allusion to a philosophic reference is Vincent Lanier's (1979, p. 97) derisive exag- geration, personification, and anti- thesis, of those "who believe that the child who does not spend as much time with clay and paint as with words and numbers becomes a pathetic intellectual cripple, while the child who does so can become a sort of Nietz- schean Superman."




Nature Like the augurers of ancient Rome, individuals frequently see in water and other natural forces analogies to their own mental and physical force. The force of water is used in Elliot Eisner's (1974, p. 4) simile to modern education: "Like two streams running side by side downhill, they (educational technology and educational account- ability) have formed a confluence to shape the contours of American education today." The force of water also comprises Herbert Read's (1945) clever metaphor on the id and ego: "It is clear, for example, that the bubble does not control the force or direction of the stream-that the ego, that is to say, is not capable of con- trolling the id." Read, called the last great romantic art educator, used many natural analogies; for example, he compared Jungian archetypes to crystal structure: "The archetype is compared to the axial structure of a crystal which determines the stereo- metric structure, though not the con- crete form of the individual crystal." Metaphors to organic growth abound in Frederich Froebel's kindergarten idealogy, in Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture and in the entire Romantic Movement (Clements, 1975, p. 6). Feldman (1975, p. 85) has hu- morously compared educational frills to the forceful Dixie vegetable, kudzu: "Those frills were increasing like the kudzu grass that spreads so abun- dantly through our Southern fields and hillsides."

Law In considering art judgment, it is rea- sonable to expect analogies to be made to legal judgments. The most beautiful art-law metaphor is Henry Aiken's (1971, p. 67) antimetabole, "The judge for whom judgment is an end is no judge at all, but an executioner whose first victim is himself." (Aiken applies speedy reiteration and negative contrast in his use of the words "judge" and "no judge"; he then employs unexpected contrast "but an executioner", followed by a composition of contraries, "whose victim is himself.") In a similiar play on legal roles compared to the inductive method of art criticism, Clements (1979, p. 76) urged the art critic to play the role not of

a judge, but rather of a defense at- torney whose skill in unravelling the shreds of evidence in favor of his client may itself be judged. Dewey (1959, p. 326, 244) evoked the metaphor of future generations' judging the cultures of the past, calling aesthetic experience the ultimate judgment upon the quality of a civilization.

Religion In addition to love, play, work, humanities, nature, and law, religion has furnished colorful language for art education. A religious simile is used by Johannes Gaetner (1974, p. 11) describing the contradiction in talking about art: "It reminds me of the Kier- kegaardian dilemma that God wants us to do something, but we do not know what." Finding analogies between his study of Zen religion and his teaching, Kenneth Beittel (1979, p. 20) con- siders true art teaching a meditational technique useful for body-mind integration and self actualization. His Oriental study and religious quest have helped him find metaphoric relation- ships from his spirituality not only to his above-mentioned teaching, but also to his research (1972, p. 265): "I set out to do research and ended by participating in a sacrament."

Similarly, Paul Edmonston (1978, p. 58) described how he told his class a parable stimulated by his coming upon a tree flayed into two halves by lightning; it symbolized for him both the split in man's consciousness and also nature's continuous dying and rebirth, a metaphor of hope for man. "I went further," he writes, "telling them to respect the metaphoric power of their own minds, the originating source of all our beautiful, moving images and myths . . ." Because art educators frequently deal in percep- tions and thoughts which do not readily lend themselves to purely physical categorization and measurement, it is necessary, as Edmonston urges, for teachers to turn to metaphors, state- ments that one thing is another which it obviously is not (Thomas, 1969, p. 31).

Metaphors firmly impress themselves upon the reader's mind; through their aptness and affinity, they forcibly persuade, at one and the same time as they give pleasure and strike his emo-

tions (Peacham, 1577, p. 13). Meta- phors assist us both in our daily living and in our art teaching; through them we can interconnect the fragmented actions and thoughts which occupy our bodies and minds. Out of this multi- faceted interconnection, we achieve not only personal insight which guides our art teaching, but also a sense of unity which gives cohesion to our lives.

Robert D. Clements is professor of art at the University of Georgia.

References Aiken, Henry D., "Learning and Teaching

in the Arts," Journal of Aesthetic Edu- cation, Vol. 5, No. 4, October 1971.

American Psychological Association, Publication Manual (2nd ed), Washing- ton D.C.: American Psychological As- sociation, 1974.

Aristotle, Works, W.R. Ross trans., Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 1928.

Beittel, K.R., "Formative Hermeneutics in the Arting Process of an Other: The Philetics of Art Education," Art Educa- tion, Vol. 27, No. 9, December 1974.

Beittel, K.R., Mind and Context in the Art of Drawing, New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1972.

Beittel, K.R., "The Teaching of Art in Relation to Body Mind Integration and Self Actualization in Art," Art Educa- tion, Vol. 32, No. 7, November 1979.

Bruner, Jerome S., On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.

Bullough, Edward, "The Perceptive Prob- lem in the Aesthetic Appreciation of Single Colors," British Journal of Psy- chology, Vol. 2, 1905.

Clements, Robert D., "A Case for Art Education," Art Education, Vol. 28, No. 3, 1975.

Clements, Robert D., "Encouragement: Toward CBTE in the Art Working Period; Five Steps in Giving Students Support," Art Education, Vol. 29, No. 4, April 1976.

Clements, Robert D., "The Inductive Method of Teaching Art Criticism," Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 13, No. 3, July 1979.

Dewey, John, Art as Experience, New York: Capricorn Books, 1959.

Dewey, John, Experience and Nature, Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1926.

Edmonston, Paul, "Meditations on Teach- ing, Culture, Survival, and the Arts," Texas Trends in Art Education, Vol. 2, No. 3.




Eisner, Elliott, "Toward a More Adequate Conception of Evaluation in the Arts," Art Education, Vol. 27, No. 7, October, 1974.

Feldman, Edmund, "An Anthropological and Historical Conception of Art Curri- cula," Art Education, Vol. 33, No. 8, October 1980.

Feldman, Edmund, Becoming Human Through Art, Englewood Cliffs: Pren- tice Hall, 1970.

Feldman, Edmund, "Back to Images," in Stephen M. Dobbs ed., Education and Back to Basics, Reston: National Art Education Association, 1979.

Fry, Roger, Transformations, Garden City: Anchor, 1956.

Gaetner, Johannes, "Zonk or Observa- tions on the Phenomenology of Aesthetic Talk," Art Education, Vol. 27, Nos. 4, 5, May 1974.

Goodman, Nelson, Language of Art, New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1968.

Howell, Dean, "The Sensuous Self-An Undercover Struggle in the Making of Art," Art Education, Vol. 30, No. 6, October 1977

Jacomo, Edward, "Wind Up More Than a Watch," Art Education, Vol. 33, No. 2, February 1980.

Kaufman, Irving, "Continuity and Change," Art Education, Vol. 33, No. 2, February 1980.

Lanier, Vincent, "Enhancing the Aesthetic Potential," in Stephen M. Dobbs ed., Arts Education and Back to Basics, Reston: National Art Education As- sociation, 1979.

Madenfort, Duke, "The Work of Art, Integrity, and Teaching," Art Educa- tion, Vol. 30, No. 6, October 1977.

Malraux, Andre, Museum without Walls, Stuart Gilbert and Francis Price trans., Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1967.

Miriam Joseph, Sister, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language, New York: Columbia University Press, 1947.

Peacham, Henry, The Garden of Elo- quence, London, 1577, p. 13. (Miriam Joseph, Ibid.)

Perkins, David N., "Learning the Lan- guages of Art," Art Education, Vol. 33, No. 6, October 1980.

Perkins, David N., "New Art and Abomi- nable Snowman," Art Education, Vol. 30, No. 1, January 1977.

Plato, Republic VII, trans. Cornford, p. 536. InH. Read, 1945.

Read, Herbert, Education Through Art,

New York: Pantheon Books, 1945. Ruben, Richards, "Peas and Carrots in a

Single Pod," Art Education, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 1974.

Santayana, George, The Life of Reason, New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1905-6.

Schneider, Elizabeth, Aesthetic Motive, New York: Macmillan Company, 1939.

Shaw, George Bernard, quoted in Read, Herbert, Education Through Art, New York: Pantheon Books, 1945.

Snyder-Ott, Joelynn, "The Feminine Experience and Artistic Creativity," Art Education, Vol. 27, No. 6, Septem- ber 1974.

Steiner, George, "The Kingdom of Ap- pearances," New Yorker, April 4, 1977, p. 132. (Greene, Maxine, "Imagi- nation and Aesthetic Literacy," Art Education, Vol. 30, No. 6, October 1977.)

Theodore, M.F., Figures of Speech and Style in Poetry, Philadelphia: Dorrance and Company, 1976.

Thomas, Owen, Metaphors and Related Subjects, New York: Random House, 1969.

Valery, Paul, in Alexander Liberman, The Artist in His Studio, New York: Viking Press, 1960.

exciting new series...

Let's Get Lost in a Painting by Ernest Goldstein

FOR THE MIDDLE GRADES AND UP.

e Now "The paintings are presented as puzzles that can Octot be solved by applying several forms of thinking and looking. So little is now being done in the schools with such means for appreciation that -

we should welcome this series."

3 -Ken Marantz/Design for Arts and Education

"Sensitive analysis and informed interpre- tation of the art works convey the extent of meaning that can be gained from works of visual art."

-Charles Wieder/Art Education

Each book focuses on a major work of art, inviting the reader into the painting and the life of the artist.

* full-color reproductions throughout * superb book design and diagrams * 48 pages hardcover guaranteed binding $8.95

Write for brochure of forthcoming titles. I

ber 15th*

With your orde?r of 10 copies Garrard Publishing Company will send a free large full-color reproduction of a painting. Send a copy of your order to:

Garrard Publishing Company 1607 North Market Street Champaign, Illinois 61820

*Emanuel Leutze Washington Crossing the Delaware

Art Education September 1982

Available lINSLOetLoinaPinti, I

WIN'SLOW HOMER

I

I ,

31



metaphor in art education

Documents