Abstract :
With the National Foundation for Educational
Research concluding that schools which include
Contemporary Art Practice (CAP) in their curriculum
add significant value to their students’ art
experience [1], and at a time when much of the
discussion around contemporary art questions
the value of the art object itself, this article
addresses the question: how are we to engage
students with the contemporary and, at the same
time, make value judgments of their own work?
And, while the professional fine art world
subscribes increasingly to the ‘rhizomatic’ [2]
template of art processes, how do we square this
with current assessment criteria which require
that students produce work where the preparation
and finished product occupy separate
domains and rely on ‘procedures and practices
that reach back to the nineteenth century’ [3]? By
way of a postscript to the inconclusive findings of
the Eppi-centre art and design review group [4],
this article will also address what we have lost in
the drive for domain-based assessment and how
to regain some of the ground lost since the introduction
of Curriculum 2000.
Picture this: a student, following to the letter the
brief to contextualise and validate work within an
historical framework, pins his or her flag to the
mast of Les Barbus, described by Hugh Honour
thus:
their passionate yearning for line and simplicity
was combined with an aggressive abhorrence
of colour modelling, compositional integration,
any suggestion of illusion or even technical
competence [5].
The outcome of such study will present a teacher
moderator steeped in traditional skills and values
with a tricky dilemma. We all surely have fielded
suggestions from the class smart Alec that, if
Malevich can exhibit an empty canvas, why, in
this age of ironic appropriation, shouldn’t s/he? As
the mark scheme disingenuously suggests, all is
valid if ‘appropriate to intentions’ [6].
Indeed, any inconsistency in a student’s
submission can be given contextual credibility
with an obscure enough trawl through the
further flung nooks and crannies of art history or
an ironic postmodern tongue firmly in cheek.
Some such contextualising will, of course, be
cynical but some will be genuine in their pursuit.
If Les Barbus are worthy of review in an august
monograph, who are we as examiners and
teachers to succumb to our own aesthetic prejudices
when confronted with students of an
equally passionate bent towards iconoclasm or
aesthetic nihilism?
But perhaps my glass is half empty. To paraphrase
Holt: learning the rules of composition
does not guarantee good music.
It is worth remembering that education theorist
Robert Witkin described the process of
assessing art as demonstrating that it is possible
for one individual to be ‘more himself than
another’ [7].
With his glass half full, Atkinson extends this
point and invites us to consider signifiers other
than accuracy and ability and to celebrate work
which ‘lies beyond our conventional frameworks
of understanding’ [8]. While in my view there is a
danger here of throwing out the aesthetic baby
with the bathwater, it is certainly true to say that
the process of celebrating any genuine outcome
allows for the kind of chance discovery, either stylistic
or technical that has all but been eradicated
from the current curriculum. Much is made of the
importance of risk-taking and happy accident in
theoretical forums away from the front line of
teaching, but students are more savvy than this.
When they need their grades they will take the
tried and tested route:
if a student seeks to be successful in an objective
test he must think as the examiner as objective
tests lead no room for divergence. In a subject
such as art which actively encourages the
production of divergent responses the possibility
of using objective means of assessment would
seem as remote as assessing attitudes [9].
My own students have developed since
Curriculum 2000, by osmosis and in spite of my
best efforts to elicit work of individual relevance,
a grass-roots house style whereby, to facilitate
working through the quantity of work required,
great value is placed on the acquisition of a deft,
broad brush, painterly form of expressionism
which allows for work of ambitious scale in the
time given. And it would be churlish not to admit
that most of this work is impressive and exciting
in its own terms. However, it is noteworthy that I
have not seen work that might have been impressive
in terms of sustained intricacy (such as
embroidery or weaving) since Curriculum 2000
came on board. Welded steel work has
completely overtaken ceramics as the sculptural
medium of choice due to the speed of the
process, with 3D work generally in decline; this is
of course a national trend noted by Downing and
Watson [10]. The work becomes overwhelmingly
an exercise in how to exploit the limitations of the
specifications and cope with what the Excellence
in Schools paper described almost gleefully as
the ‘unrelenting pressure’ [11]. With such a game
plan, little emerges which could be said to be
from the heart.
