Abstract :
While rejecting modernist philosophical aesthetics,
the author argues for the use in art education
of a current, ordinary-language definition of
aesthetics as visual appearance and effect, and
its widespread use in many diverse cultural sites
is demonstrated. Employing such a site-specific
use of aesthetics enables art education to more
clearly address the realities of everyday life under
designer capitalism, a socio-economy based on
the drive to create evermore desire. Aesthetic
manipulation is viewed as a primary means to
facilitate the smooth operation of this system.
The recent craze for Bratz dolls is used to illustrate
the centrality of aesthetics to designer capitalism.
Finally, the author offers suggestions as to
how art education can view consumer products
like Bratz as pedagogic opportunities.
The kind of aesthetics considered in this article is
quite different from the modernist aesthetics that
was so influential in art education throughout
most of the twentieth century. Modernist aesthetics,
as derived principally from Kant and his predecessors,
was typically characterized as separate
from life, universal, self-sufficient, focused mainly
on art and entirely uplifting. It effectively separated
fine art from popular culture, seeing the
former as quasi spiritual, the later as base [1]. By
contrast, this article draws upon how aesthetics is
employed outside the specialised areas of art,
literature and art education [2]. Aesthetics is
viewed in site-specific and social terms – in what
has become an ordinary language sense of the
word as applied to everyday experience as diverse
as sport, consumer goods, plastic surgery, television
and so on. I argue that adopting this use of
aesthetics is particularly useful for those advancing
a visual culture approach to art education [3].
It allows art educators better to deal with the
increasing aestheticisation of everyday life under
conditions associated with the current development
of consumerist capitalism, often called late
capitalism [4], or what jagodzinski calls ‘designer
capitalism’ [5] where the economy is no longer
thought to be based on desire so much as on the
drive to continually create evermore desire. I will
discuss Bratz dolls as an example. Bratz appeal to
their preteen girl market as ‘so cool’ by offering
what is arguabley a ‘hooker chic’ aesthetic, and at
the same time they offer an empowering identity
in part by becoming a consumer [6]. Nevertheless,
I will suggest that like all other consumer
products, they offer pedagogic opportunities to
art educators who take seriously the visual culture
of their students.
