Concordia Journal Home > Archives > March 6, 2008 issue >

Art education also defiant 

By Karen Herland

Carol Becker ended this year’s Defiant Imagination lecture series by considering the artist’s imagination as a catalyst for change, and the roles of art educators in feeding and sustaining that goal in their students.

Becker has just started as Dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University in New York after a distinguished career at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She read from her book in progress, articulating the values young artists will need so that their work can help their audience “see reality stripped of illusion and give them the strength to confront it.”

Becker suggested that educators should equip their students with “a visual sophistication that allows them to see the world differently and a way of working that is not always evident.”

She spent a lot of time outlining how practicing artists need to privilege process over the final product. This is counter-intuitive in a results-oriented society. Becker discussed the importance of the process of trial and error, of finding ways to express or present ideas, regardless of the “success” of the final product in material terms.

She pointed out that artists are rarely appreciated in their own times, and that many successful ideas were often unintentional by-products of other projects. “The internet was initially going to be a way for high-tech types to stay in touch with each other.”

Becker stressed that privileging the process over the final product means honing students’ critical and self-critical senses, teaching fearlessness in the face of failure, and fostering a constant sense of playfulness that allows students to attempt the impossible or unreasonable, instead of being stymied by self-doubt. “A true independence of mind needs to be communicated to the next generation.”

This perspective is important not only to enable young artists to continue to find new ways to express themselves, but also in terms of the potential impact their work might have. “As artists, we need to understand the complexity of the issues, and not be immobilized by social problems.”

She also talked about projects that allow students to work in and with the community. In Chicago, she worked with the city to establish a program that allowed students to “have a direct impact in their community.”

In one instance, they re-designed the signage along the Chicago River. What had once been a series of warning signs became a set of symbols inviting people to walk along the river and learn its history.