Joseph Beuys and the Artistic Education: Theory and Practice of an Artistic Art Education [1 ed.] 9789004424555, 9789004389816

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Joseph Beuys and the Artistic Education

Doing Arts Thinking: Arts Practice, Research and Education Series Editor John Baldacchino (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

Editorial Board Dennis Atkinson (Goldsmiths College, UK) Jeremy Diggle (independent artist and academic, UK) Nadine Kalin (University North Texas, USA) Catarina Sofia Martins (University of Porto, Portugal) Richard Siegesmund (Northern Illinois University, USA)

Volume 6

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/data

Joseph Beuys and the Artistic Education Theory and Practice of an Artistic Art Education By

Carl-Peter Buschkühle

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: Joseph Beuys (© bpk/Foundation Museum Schloss Moyland, Ute Klophaus) and silhouette drawing of sunflowers by primary school students (© Mario Urlaß) All chapters in this book have undergone peer review. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2542-9744 isbn 978-90-04-42454-8 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-38981-6 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-42455-5 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface vii List of Figures ix 1 Joseph Beuys and the Artistic Education 1 1 Freedom and the Challenge to Be an Artist of Living 1 2 The Polar Play of Artistic Thinking 3 3 The Decentralized Subject of Postmodernity 4 4 Identity and the Coherent Self 6 2 Beuys’ Extended Concept of Art 10 1 Art as Evolution of Mind 10 2 Emancipation of the Mythical Age – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Christ 12 3 Progress of Science – Kant, Newton, Helmholtz, Marx 14 4 Calvary Cross – Materialism 16 5 Christ and Man at Play 18 6 Humans as Artists and the Social Sculpture 20 7 Exercising Artistic Communication 23 8 Future Perspectives: Artistic or Artifijicial Thinking 25 3 Beuys’ Artworks as Lessons 29 1 The “Warmth Quality” of Artistic Thought 29 2 “The Chief” – Revolution of Communication through Art 30 3 Creating New Flows of Energy 31 4 Political Statement and Shamanistic Revolution 32 5 “The Chief” as Artistic Education 35 4 Artistic Learning through Artistic Projects 51 1 The River Metaphor 51 2 Pedagogy in Artistic Projects 53 3 Structural Elements of the Artistic Project 54 4 Experiment 57 5 Contextuality 59 6 Polarities as Tensions and Tools of the Artistic Learning Process 68 5 Artistic Projects as Practice of Artistic Education 75 1 Research Aspects 75

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2 3

“Head with a Story” 77 Aspects of Artistic Education 115

6 Variations of Artistic Projects 140 1 “Freedom and Dignity” 140 2 “The Leaf Principle – Bionic” 159 3 Diffferent Topics – Diffferent Ways of Artistic Learning 171 7 Studying Artistic Education 181 1 Becoming a Generalist 181 2 Art Educators Have to Be Artists 181 3 Providing Time and Space for Artistic Studies 183 4 Should I Study One Medium or More? 184 5 Giving Grades for Artistic Studies 185 6 Visual Studies – Pictorial Sciences 186 7 The Contemporary Relevance of Art History 187 8 The Role of Philosophy 188 9 Relevant Philosophical Disciplines 189 10 Pedagogy – The Art of Artistic Education 191 11 Educational Studies 192 12 Art Pedagogy as Art 193 13 Interdisciplinary Studies in Artistic Projects 194 14 Experiencing and Reflecting Polarities 195 15 Critical Reflection and Imagination in Pedagogy 196 16 Existential Creativity – Artistic Education as a Mental Attitude 196 8 Art Class as a Construction Site 200 Mario Urlaß 1 How Can We Bring Students into Educational Situations Which Foreground the Self and the World? 201 2 Conclusion 215 9 On the Educational Potential of Art: A Requiem for Schönau 217 Christian Wagner 1 Introduction 217 2 Pupils, Art, and Economic Utility 218 3 Pupils as Performers: Dying and Death from Diffferent Perspectives 219 4 Artistic Thinking as a Teaching Process 221 5 “Schönauer Requiem”: A Requiem for Schönau 227 6 Concluding Remarks 229 References 233

Preface Artistic education is an art-pedagogical conception which has become increasingly influential in the professional discussions and curricula of Germanspeaking countries over the past years. It has received substantial impulses from the art of Joseph Beuys, particularly from his theory of the “expanded concept of art”. Beuys continually emphasized the importance of pedagogy in his art. As a consequence, it was natural for art pedagogy to accept Beuys’ challenge and research the impulses Beuys could give to art education. I undertook this project in my dissertation, which appeared in 1997 under the title Warm-Time – Art as Art Pedagogy in the Work of Joseph Beuys (Wärmezeit – Zur Kunst als Kunstpädagogik bei Joseph Beuys). During my time studying art pedagogy and philosophy in the early 1980s in Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Wuppertal, Beuys was always present. He impacted the scene like no other artist of his generation through his works, actions, and public discussions. I first began my studies with a hunch that Beuys’ work had something new to offer to art pedagogy. In addition, I was dissatisfied with the established art pedagogy of the time, which emphasized the academic reception and production of images, while losing sight of the spirit of art and the potential of artistic thought and action. In the 1990s, several other German-speaking art pedagogues turned their attention to Beuys, in particular Günther Regel, who worked under the authoritarian socialist regime of East Germany until the fall of the Wall. Though art class had been politically instrumentalized in East Germany, Regel was interested in western contemporary art. This inevitably led to his political persecution and to a temporary work ban. Even during East German times, Beuys became a central inspiration for Regel’s research and work at the University of Leipzig. This continued post-unification, and Regel and I struck up a correspondance on Beuys and artistic education. Other colleagues gradually joined in, all of them art teachers with their own artistic practice interested in incorporating artistic thought more deeply into teaching and pedagogic practice. Joachim Kettel was already a successful painter when he obtained his PhD under Reimar Stielow (also an early proponent of artistic education) on the subject of artistic art pedagogy. Mario Urlaß studied in East Germany, was exposed to artistic education in the early 2000s, and has since then carried out exceptional projects with elementary school students. Urlaß has contributed an essay to this book in which he describes one of his projects, which brings artistic education into an elementary school setting. In addition, this book includes an essay by Christian Wagner describing the opportunities afforded by

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artistic education and artistic projects in a school in a socially and economically troubled area. Nowadays, artistic education plays a significant role in school curricula as well as the university studies of art pedagogues in German-speaking countries. However, the term is still unfamiliar internationally. This is partially due to the fact that there are no English books that treat the subject in depth. This book is an attempt to change this. It lays out research results which I have published in three previous books in German. After the dissertation, I published the books The World as a Game (Die Welt als Spiel, Athena, 2007/2010), and Artistic Education (Künstlerische Bildung, Athena, 2018), which not only expanded on the theory of artistic education but also included descriptions and examples from my classroom teaching. This book Joseph Beuys and the Artistic Education begins by discussing Beuys’ art and what it has to offer for art pedagogy. It continues by expanding on the theory of artistic education and outlining central aspects of its praxis in artistic projects. These central aspects are present in the five project examples present in this book, one of which is described in an entire chapter and analyzed in terms of its goals, structure, methods, process, and educational outcomes. Mario Urlaß and Christan Wagner’s contributions also link together the theory and practice of artistic education, illustrating its potentials and characteristics in different contexts. The book concludes with a description of the requirements, skills, and topics necessary for students of art pedagogy to learn the techniques of artistic education. I thank John Baldacchino for his suggestion and kind offer to publish this book in his series with Brill | Sense. Thanks to Sophie Duvernoy for a careful, productive collaboration on the English text. I thank Julia Lucas and Juliane Mahler for their support during the production of the manuscript. Thank you to my partner Hilde, an exceptional art pedagogue, for her support, encouragement, inspiring conversation, and for her precise review of the manuscript of this book.

Figures 2.1

Evolution, 1974, drawing (Joseph Beuys) (https://fiu-verlag.com/wp-content/ uploads/2013/04/EVOLUTIONSDIAGRAMM). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission. 11 2.2 Beuys’ diagram of artistic communication (Carl-Peter Buschkühle). 24 3.1 The Chief, 1963 (Joseph Beuys) (https://www.google.com/search?q=Beuys+Der+Chef&client=firefox-b-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved= 0ahUKEwix-4SrsZjiAhUB-qQKHfMn-Cx0Q_AUIDigB&biw=1600&bih= 764#imgrc=hRgLDyTgfRLW5M). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission. 30 3.2 La rivoluzione siamo noi, 1972 (Joseph Beuys) (http://www.tate.org.uk/ art/images/work/AR/AR00624_10.jpg). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission. 34 3.3 Chaos – Movement – Form. Beuys’ diagram of the sculptural process of creativity (Carl-Peter Buschkühle). 41 3.4 Eurasian Staff, 1968 (Joseph Beuys) (https://josephbeuysfanclub.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/beuyseurasienstab-1968.jpg). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission. 47 3.5 Cross as symbol of existential creativity (Future – Past, Mind – Matter, the Artist in the center) (Carl-Peter Buschkühle). 48 5.1 Spontaneous drawings by students. 80 5.2 Sketches of typical nose shapes. 81 5.3 Random form: piece of clay. 82 5.4 Random form: accidentally merged colors. 82 5.5 Colorful drawing on random shapes in a sketchbook. 83 5.6 Student’s work on models of a clay. 85 5.7 View of a workspace; sketches and head; clay head. 85 5.8 Taxidermied eagle and skull from the school’s natural history collection. 85 5.9 St. Augustine and the Devil, 1471–75, tempera on wood (Michael Pacher). Imago, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, Humboldt-Universität Berlin. 87 5.10 Orcs from “Lord of the Rings” (https://www.welt.de/img/kultur/kino/ mobile145248346/8722501997-ci102l-w1024/Biblische-Spuren-in-Tolkiens-Herrder-Ringe.jpg). 88 5.11 Darth Vader from “Star Wars” (https://de.pinterest.com/kadeharman/darthvader/). 89 5.12 White head eagle (http://img.webme.com/pic/m/my-mystic-eagle/ adler.jpg). 91

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5.13 Audi (http://www.hdcarwallpapers.com/walls/2014_audi_rs7_ sportback-wide.jpg). 92 5.14 Student’s works: heads made of clay. 95 5.15 Student’s works: heads made of clay. 95 5.16 Student’s works: heads made of clay. 96 5.17 Student’s work: heads made of clay. 97 5.18 Draft drawings of a whole figure. 98 5.19 Figure of clay, colored. 99 5.20 Christ speaks to the Disciples, 1000, book painting (Master of the Reichenau School) (http://www.gwick.ch/Perspe/Pictures/BildDepot/ meister%20RS01.jpg). 101 5.21 The Calling of St. Matthew, 1599–1600, oil on canvas (Caravaggio). HeidlICON – Europäische Kunstgeschichte, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek. 102 5.22 Dramatic pictorial strategies in a comic, Roland Deschain Comic. 104 5.23 Student’s work, painting. 106 5.24 Student’s work, drawing. 106 5.25 Student’s work, digital montage. 109 5.26 Student’s work, digital montage. 110 5.27 Student’s work, digital montage. 110 5.28 Student’s work, digital montage. 112 5.29 Student’s work, digital montage. 113 5.30 Student’s work, digital montage. 113 5.31 Student’s work, painting. 114 5.32 Student’s work, painting. 114 5.33 Student’s work, painting. 115 6.1 Drawings on the topic of “personal identity”. 141 6.2 Photographic self-portraits by students. 142 6.3 Photographic self-portrait by students. 143 6.4 Photos role-play. 144 6.5 Photo role-play. 144 6.6 “Youth serves the Führer. All ten-year-olds in the Hitler Youth”, posters (https://www.dhm.de/fileadmin/medien/lemo/images/628_1.jpg http://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/lebensstationen/bilder_750/ 2_48.gif). 147 6.7 Documentary photos of Hitler Youth (from Grube & Richter, 1982) (https://s-media-cache ak0.pinimg.com/564x/85/8a/79/858a79887e4b7464360105a810862c2.jpg) 147 6.8 Documentary photos of Hitler Youth (from Grube & Richter, 1982). 148 6.9 Young Pioneers (http://nva.4mg.com/97653.jpg). 148

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6.10 Poster Young Pioneers, “For Peace and Socialism Be Prepared!” (http://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/lebensstationen/bilder_750/ 3_69.gif). 149 6.11 Young Pioneers marching with the Red Army (http://www.dra.de/ rundfunkgeschichte/75jahreradio/osten/img/marsch_41.jpg). 149 6.12 “Human Rights for Everyone”, poster, 1999 (Urs Grünig) (http://www.image-identity.eu/artists_images_folder/germany/urs-grunig/ gruenigmenschenrechte.jpg). 151 6.13 “Oppressed women. Easy to overlook. Discrimination in Afghanistan”. 154 6.14 “Nelson Mandela. First he is a freedom fighter … then he is robbed of his freedom … after 27 years he regains his freedom … is elected president of South Africa … a human being with dignity”. 156 6.15 “It’s hard to be nobody …”. 157 6.16 “Empty and depleted. Around 150 million girls are annually forced into prostitution”. 157 6.17 “He wanted to live. But his mother didn’t want him”. 158 6.18 Spontaneous drawings of a leaf. 159 6.19 Ornament pictures. 160 6.20 Worksheet. 161 6.21 Draft drawings. 162 6.22 Wilhelm Wagenfeld lamp (https://media-prediger.de/media/catalog/product/ t/e/tecnolumen-wagenfeld-wg-24-wa-24-1.jpg). 163 6.23 Tiffany lamp (http://warisanlighting.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/tiffanylamps-photo-10.jpg). 164 6.24 Student’s works. 165 6.25 Student’s works. 166 6.26 Student’s works. 167 6.27 Student’s works. 168 6.28 European Central Bank, Frankfurt/Main, 2015 (Coop Himmelb(l)au) (https://boerse.ard.de/europaeische-zentralbank-frankfurt102~_pd1459431797016_v-z-a-par-al.jpg). 169 6.29 National Stadium Beijing, 2008 (Herzog & de Meuron) (http://img.dooyoo.de/ DE_DE/orig/1/4/2/2/7/1422782.jpg90). 169 6.30 Turanor Planet Solar, catamaran, 2010 (http://www.designboom.com/ wp-content/uploads/2013/07/planetsolar-solar-powedboatdesignboom01.jpg). 169 6.31 The Aeromodeller, 1969–1972 (Panamarenko) (http://s3.amazonaws.com/ mhka_ensembles_production/assets/public/000/019/772/large/ Untitled059.jpg?1386156666). 170

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6.32 Movements of the Earth and of the Moon on an Axis, 2003 (Mario Merz) (https://10172-presscdn-0-75-pagely.netdna-ssl.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/ 09/2014_0924_Movements%20of%20the%20Earth%20and%20the%20Moon% 20on%20an%20Axis.jpg). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission. 170 6.33 Umbrellas, 1980–1983 Aims and Procedures of Artistic Learning (Christo and Jean-Claude) (http://christojeanneclaude.net/data/ a6a904e1f27bbfface35068de300d9ed.jpg). 170 6.34 Student’s works, “Transforming paper”. 172 6.35 Student’s work, “Transforming paper”. 173 6.36 “Seductive” (slide from a student PowerPoint presentation on the topic of “Angel”). 174 6.37 “Contemporary representations. Is he the real devil? … Or is he?” (slide from a student PowerPoint presentation on the topic of “Devil”). 174 6.38 Student’s works on the topic of “Kitsch”. 175 8.1 Construction site curiosity. 203 8.2 Observing the construction plan with the expert. 204 8.3 Max and Boris’ construction plan. 205 8.4 Work and play. 206 8.5 The indoor construction site. 206 8.6 Earthwork by Sümeyra and Boris. 207 8.7 The “Construction Site Caterpillar”. 208 8.8 Sarah. 209 8.9 Ensar. 209 8.10 Paul. 209 8.11 Construction site wall drawing. 210 8.12 Improvised construction. 211 8.13 Inspecting the construction site. 212 8.14 Stop-Motion Film on the Lego Construction. 214 8.15 Arina’s Pokémon Temple. 214 8.16 Magnus’ Electrical Installation. 214 9.1 Schönauer Requiem: Masks. (Christian Wagner, May 2012). 220 9.2 Schönauer Requiem: Rifle. (Christian Wagner, June 2012). 222 9.3 Schönauer Requiem: Horse. June 2012 (Wagner, Christian). 225 9.4 Schönauer Requiem: Portraits. (Christian Wagner, June 2012). 227 9.5 Schönauer Requiem: Skull. (Christian Wagner, June 2012). 228

CHAPTER 1

Joseph Beuys and the Artistic Education I am advocating for the awareness that there are increasingly no other options except for giving humans an artistic education. Joseph Beuys1

∵ 1

Freedom and the Challenge to Be an Artist of Living

Education plays a central role in the art of Joseph Beuys, one of the most influential artists of the second half of the twentieth century. Beuys and Andy Warhol are often cited as the two most important artists in determining the path of contemporary art today. While Warhol’s work explored the role of art within a mediatized consumer society, Beuys probed the status of art in an era of materialism. Warhol and Beuys developed two divergent artistic strategies toward capitalism: Warhol’s ambivalent American attitude fluctuated between affirmation and irony, while Beuys combined romantic criticism and a German attitude with utopian visions. What critiques and visions did Beuys introduce into the art world from 1950s to the 1980s? He introduced the programmatic term “social sculpture”,2 and made the radical declaration, “Everyone is an artist”.3 Beuys does not mean that everyone is a talented painter, writer, actor, or musician. Instead, he calls his understanding of art “anthropological”, meaning that every human being is a creative being, regardless of talent or profession. Each human being influences society as an integral member; even if someone refuses to participate in the society, he or she can influence social processes. This view is akin to Jean Paul Sartre’s diagnosis that “the human being is freedom”.4 Sartre’s statement should not be taken as naïve, since it is obvious that not all humans are free: many people are subject to political and religious repression as well as economic and social inequality. But nonetheless, everyone has options specific to their situation. They have “choices”, an important term in Sartre’s philosophy of existence.5 Sartre developed his thought during the German occupation of northern France in the Second World War, when he was a member of the French resistance. There, he understood that a soldier, © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424555_001

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faced with the threat of a death sentence for disobedience, still could choose to follow a command or not. The soldier could assume responsibility and refuse to obey. Paying with one’s life for that decision emphasized the value of one’s moral conviction. To say “I had no choice” is a kind of self-deception, which Sartre calls “mauvaise foi”.6 Yet it is also self-deception to declare “I am free” if this means that we can do whatever we want and have fun. This attitude, not uncommon among privileged members of society, pushes aside the potential political, social, or ecological consequences of self-centered behavior. Sartre’s conception of the basic condition of freedom implies individual responsibility – for one’s own life and values, as well as one’s contributions to society and politics. He argues that in fact, there is no way of escaping this freedom. Rejecting the ability to choose freely, and remaining instead with ideology or religious fundamentalism is a choice in its own right. Even if we are deeply influenced by our educational and cultural traditions, we can think and choose for ourselves. This focus on freedom is the legacy of the Enlightenment in western intellectual history, and produces conflicts on the world stage when it comes into contact with more authoritarian traditions. “We are condemned to be free”7 is Sartre’s radical assessment of the human condition. If this is so, everyone is responsible for the shape of his or her life. Where can we find solid ground to stand on? If we decide not to deny our own personal responsibility, not to flee into religion, politics, consumerism, or escapism, there is only one option left: self-cultivation. The self must be strengthened, particularly its own capacities to shape its way of life. This is why all humans are artists – we are the creators of our convictions and responsible for the consequences of our actions. As Immanuel Kant states, our ability to think allows us to become creators: “Dare to make use of your own understanding”.8 In the Enlightenment, understanding became the means by which to overcome the widespread ignorance of many people who could not read, and were under the thumb of the clergy and aristocrats. Like many Enlightenment thinkers, Kant placed his trust in the force of reason to produce ethically and politically responsible citizens. The writer and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, Kant’s contemporary, criticized this trust of mere reason. He feared that an ethical or political attitude which only followed the guidelines of reason would be cold-hearted, and privilege abstract rules over situational understanding. As one of the earliest theorists of aesthetic education he declared in his “Letters on Aesthetic Education of Man” (1795) that “man is only fully human when he plays”.9

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The Polar Play of Artistic Thinking

Schiller’s idea of play is far from frivolous enjoyment. Instead, play comes about through the deliberate use of two conflicting mental drives: the “material drive” and the “form drive”.10 While the material drive is focused on sensual experiences, the form drive attempts to superimpose structures and rules onto people and things. A person completely under the sway of one of these drives is in danger of falling into extremism. An individual dominated by the material drive may be a savage, while an individual dominated by the form drive may become a barbarian.11 In the one case, the wild man is not controlled by reason, while in the other, ideology leaves no room for compassion. The “play drive” is a synthesis of the material and form drives, in which both interact to produce a higher quality of thought and action.12 Principles of reason are questioned by sensitive emotion, and sensual ecstasy is tamed by rational prudence. This interaction of emotion and reason produces beauty, according to Schiller. This beauty is the beauty which we create and experience in art, but also the beauty of existence – the inner beauty of the educated citizen who combines taste with wisdom. Schiller’s hope is that art can lead the savage and the barbarian to ethical and political prudence, since the perception and creation of art initiates a play between matter and form, empathy and reflection. Other theorists of art similarly stress the dynamic mental process set in motion by art. For Friedrich Nietzsche, two ancient gods represent the interacting forces of artistic thinking: Dionysus, the god of the earth and of ecstasy, and Apollo, the god of light and of reason.13 For John Dewey an original impulsion operates circumspectly with insight to end and method in artistic experiences.14 Here an emotionalized thinking is necessary with feelings whose substance consists of appreciated meanings or ideas.15 For Theodor W. Adorno, an artwork’s creation and reception requires making critical connections between mimesis and rationality: between sensitivity and material and formal expression, as well as rational considerations and decisions on technique, composition, and the relationship between form and content.16 Joseph Beuys, in turn, claimed to be searching for “Element 3”17: a synthesis of intuition and rationality stimulated and produced by art. From Kant to Beuys, many theoreticians and artists have believed in the power of art to educate and expand thought. In the experiential field opened up by an artwork, emotion is counterbalanced by reason. Concrete objects, individuals, and events confront abstract principles and ideological convictions.

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The sheer materialism of economic, technological, or scientific viewpoints is transfigured through the experience of beauty, pain, or the sublime. These theories are all underpinned by the old humanistic project of developing all human abilities in order to give the individual the power for living a self-determined life in a complex, contradictory, and uncertain reality. In his analysis of postmodern culture, the French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard pointed to the “grand narratives” that play significant roles in our sociocultural life.18 Once a grand narrative, whether it be religion or political ideology, requires total loyalty and makes a monopolizing claim on truth, it ends up producing terror, secret police, gulags and concentration camps for its critics. For Lyotard, one characteristic aspect of the postmodern era is that “grand narratives” have lost their universal value and can no longer expect all people to be followers. In the early twentieth century, people still believed in utopian ideologies that wanted to build a future society for all. In nineteenth century western Europe, Christianity succumbed to a crisis of doubt from which it never emerged. Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed his day and age to be an era of nihilism, which called the belief in God and in traditional values into question. Nietzsche predicted at the end of the nineteenth century that Nihilism would bring about wars the likes of which mankind had never seen before.19 In fact, the twentieth century experienced two World Wars. The first one weakened and felled the power of the clergy and aristocracy. The second was fought both in the name of an ideology – National Socialism – and against it. Then, the Cold War began as a rivalry between socialism and capitalism. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall fell, and the peoples of Eastern Europe regained their freedom, the counselor of the American president, Francis Fukuyama, believed that the “end of history” had been reached.20 Capitalism and liberalism had finally triumphed as progressive forces over the failed and barbaric utopia of communism. Yet Fukuyama’s prediction proved short-lived. Religion returned and reasserted its force in opposition to neoliberalism and multinational capitalism, particularly in countries that did not reap the benefit of globalization, where tradition still held a strong pull. In the aftermath of Fukuyama’s optimism, Samuel Huntington spoke of the “clash of civilizations” in the globalized world.21

3

The Decentralized Subject of Postmodernity

One of the main issues in contemporary culture is the question of “identity”. Personal identity is increasingly unstable in an age where grand religious, traditional, and political narratives no longer have the power to provide “metaphysical shelter” from personal doubts, critiques, or multicultural disorientation. Contemporary global capitalism offers two temptations to the individual:

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material wealth, and the promises of digital media. A small percentage of humanity has the opportunity to attain wealth, which in turn fuels the desire for or pressure to pursue a career. The media are the new creators of wishes, values, and hopes. What to own, what to strive for, how to live, what dreams to follow – the omnipresent media machine produces images of desire that compete with traditional values. Even when the mass media purport to merely inform, the consumer cannot be sure whether this information is influenced by political or economic interests and whether its form and content has been aesthetically manipulated. The American literary critic Fredric Jameson has described the contemporary subject as a “decentralized” subject.22 The subject has lost a reliable center, its orientation in traditions and grand narratives. Yet the term also gestures to the fact that people nowadays are confronted with innumerable options. The media produces deeper effects than simply manipulating its customers’ perceptions and wishes. For Jameson, it pushes the individual towards a schizophrenic condition in which it can no longer connect the fragmented particles of its life into a coherent concept of reality and self. Jameson diagnoses that the culture of sensation in late capitalism emphasizes the aesthetic surfaces of persons, things, and events and thus causes a loss of deeper dimensions.23 Goods (even food) are successful because of their design; advertising focuses on coming up with a fantasy for the products. Individuals become “types”, changing their outer appearance according to fashions, trends, and celebrities. In turning reality into a sensational surface, the original is replaced with the “simulacrum”. Jameson defines the simulacrum as something with no original referent.24 History, in particular, exemplifies how the simulacrum cultivates spectacular surfaces while suppressing deeper dimensions meaning. Jameson states that most people in a postmodern society do not learn about history through their own experience, education, or research, but through movies and historic novels. For younger people, one can add computer games to this list. Thus, historical knowledge is shaped by artificial images that transform historical elements into plots designed primarily for the purpose of entertainment. Artificial worlds, such as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, are supplanting religious traditions and old metaphysical explanations. While the Messiah used to live in heaven, his name today is “Luke Skywalker”, while the devil went through fire and became “Darth Vader”. One fights for good, while the other is a contemporary figuration of evil as a black demonic cyborg. God is still powerful, but is diminished to a neutral, transculturally understandable phenomenon called “the Force”. The global economy and media production within multinational capitalism have, as Jameson observes, eliminated the distance required to develop critical perspectives.25 Critical cultural positions are quickly monetized. For example,

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Punk quickly turned from a protest movement into a successful aesthetic for music and fashion. Even places that formerly were regarded as “other” to the logic of exploitation, the unconscious, and nature are now absorbed by capitalism. Media images and advertisements target the unconscious spheres of our mind to influence our desires and irrational actions. Even nature is no longer a refuge. Instead, nature is a natural resource – for scientific research, for industrial production, and a fantasy environment to pursue native living, romantic dreams, or sporting challenges.

4

Identity and the Coherent Self

A subject confronted with the complexity of modern life may barely be able to assemble a coherent context and maintain a critical, self-confident position. The German philosopher Wilhelm Schmid discerns two ways in which the individual may fail to establish a confident self in postmodern society. One he calls the “multiple self”.26 This concept is similar to the diagnosis of Fredric Jameson, who believes that increased, accelerated sensations have caused a loss of coherent experiences. This is combined with a new quality of emotion that Jameson calls “intensities”.27 These are “free floating emotions” that change quickly with every change in perceived stimuli. The multiple self is less an individual than a “dividual”, with its consciousness divided into varying incoherent particles, absorbed by different attractions, changing trends, proclaimed values. The opposite of this uncertain “surfer” of cultural waves is the subject seeking identity. A subject confronted with the complexity of modern life may barely be able to assemble a coherent context and maintain a critical, self-confident position in this complex world. Fredric Jameson believes that increased, accelerated sensations have caused a loss of coherent experiences. This is combined with a new quality of emotions that he calls “intensities”.28 These are “free floating emotions” that change quickly with every change of perceived stimuli. The German philosopher Wilhelm Schmid discerns two extreme ways in which the individual may fail to establish a confident self in postmodern society. One he calls the “multiple self”.29 This is less an individual than a “dividual”, the consciousness divided into varying incoherent particles, absorbed by different attractions, changing trends, proclaimed values. This concept is comparable to the diagnosis of Jameson concerning the decentralized self. The opposite of this uncertain “surfer” on actual waves is the subject that seeks for identity. Schmid does not believe that people should uphold identity as a value at all costs.30 While the multiple self risks losing itself in events, the identical self tends to stick to convictions, viewpoints, and traditions. Both poles of this endangered self can be regarded as reactions to the complexity of

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contemporary life. The identical self seeks to minimize, ignore, or even attack complex aspects of reality. Religious fundamentalism, political nationalism, and populism represent the attempt to pursue stability in times of uncertainty and rapid change. These tendencies are major influences in contemporary social and international conflicts. Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” is an aspect of those conflicts, highlighting the crisis between a secularized, multinational capitalism and traditions that insist upon a heritage of faith, ethics, and customs. Digital media offers different paths for those interested in preserving their identity within a complex, plural world. “Micro-targeting” allows big data companies to supply their customers with information and advertising selected according to their preferences. Algorithms compile interest profiles for users based on surfing data. Whenever a user searches for information online, he or she will see new and opinions that accord with his or her own, creating an information bubble. If no further information is sought, no controversial opinions are admitted, and no different aspects are pondered, algorithms will merely confirm personal viewpoints, and connect the individual to groups of like-minded people. Thus a contradictory, and somewhat absurd situation emerges, in which electronic mass media, which can potentially open up subjects to multiple points of view, become instruments that narrow the world of the subject, and thus its identity. Sticking to convictions, only accepting appropriate information, believing only affirmative news, and corresponding with allies feeds ideology and increases aggression towards others. This aggression is promoted by social media sites, which tend to captivate users’ attention by providing them with increasing spectacular and radical content in their interest sphere.31 Thus, social media and the free flow of information actually contribute to social divisions. Seeking identity in complexity not only reanimates old phenomena such as fundamentalism or nationalism, but also causes new problems by separating people into filter bubbles. Contemporary art critically examines the conflicts within the concept of identity. Yet postmodern art mostly does not examine aggressive and reductive identity, but instead explores means of finding orientation and establishing a self-concept in a globalized, culturally embattled world. This requires the creation of an existential art. In 1998, Wilhelm Schmid published a book on the “art of living”. Within a year, it was translated into eight languages, and it has appeared in many editions since then. The success of this book indicates that the topic has struck a chord in contemporary societies. Schmid points out that the philosophy of the art of living has an old tradition. The problem of how to lead a self-determined life arises especially in times of crisis. For Schmid, Socrates is one of the earliest proponents of such a philosophy. As Plato wrote, Socrates involved the people of Athens, who were suffering under a corrupt regime, in

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discussions about their values. For Wilhelm Schmid, the subject of the art of living is not the identical self but the “coherent self”.32 The “coherent self” is dynamic, and has a firm core and flexible boundaries that are able to integrate new experiences. The core is determined by innate traits, early impressions, customs, and education. At its borders, the coherent self is open to new impulses, and can make the acquaintance of new people, things, values, and events. It is not blindly exposed to these new experiences, but rather reflects upon them and decides whether and to what extent they will influence its life and its personality. By aligning new impulses with the constitutive elements of its subjectivity, the self exercises a critical and self-confident attitude, and tries to maintain coherence between different, even conflicting, parts of its consciousness. Unlike the identical self, the coherent self does not flee from the burden of freedom. Yet the complex self also knows that it cannot achieve an overview of reality, and refuses to get lost in it, unlike the multiple self. Maintaining self-coherence demands lifelong learning, the permanent self-education and self-forming of an aware subject. Wilhelm Schmid highlights three kinds of sensitivity that the cultivation of the art of living demands: sensual, structural, and virtual sensitivity.33 Sensual sensitivity refers to attentive perception and empathy. Structural sensitivity means being aware of the contexts surrounding things and events, and considering the different factors at play. Virtual sensitivity indicates the ability to imagine things, to envision consequences, invent alternatives, and create ideas. In other words, Schmid believes that perception, reflection, and imagination are the basic faculties needed for a creative subject to shape her life and live in a free, self-determined manner.

Notes 1 Volker Harlan, Rainer Rappmann and Peter Schata, Soziale Plastik: Materialien zu Joseph Beuys (Achberg: Achberger Verlag, 1984), 39. 2 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 26. 3 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 102. 4 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (1943. Reprint, London: Methuen & Co, 1972), 439. 5 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, ed. Glyn Hughes, 1945. Squashed version, 5. http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/sartre.htm 6 Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 47. 7 Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, 2. 8 Immanuel Kant, Was ist Aufklärung? 1784 (Hamburg: Philosophische Bibliothek, 1999). English: What is Enlightenment? http://braungardt.trialectics.com/philosophy/ early-modern-philosophy-16th-18th-century-europe/kant/enlightenment/, 1.

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9 Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, 1795 (Stuttgart: Reclam 1979). English: Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, http://public-library.uk/ebooks/55/76.pdf, 20. 10 Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, 15. 11 Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, 6. 12 Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, 22. 13 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1872, ed. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). http://www.russoeconomics.altervista.org/Nietzsche.pdf, 8. 14 John Dewey, Art as Experience, 1943 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 62. 15 Dewey, Art as Experience, 76. 16 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 1970, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Christian Lenhardt (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984). https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/theodor-adorno-aesthetictheory.pdf, 53. 17 See his performance “Manresa”, 1966. 18 Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. A Report on Knowledge, 1979. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), xxiv–xxv. 19 Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachlass der achtziger Jahre (Nachlass of the late period). (München: Carl Hanser, 1994), 634. 20 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1992). 21 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1996). 22 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, Duke University Press, 1991), 85. 23 Jameson, Postmodernism, 30. 24 Jameson, Postmodernism, 32. 25 Jameson, Postmodernism, 38. 26 Wilhelm Schmid, Philosophie der Lebenskunst (Frankfurt/Main, Suhrkamp 1998), 250. 27 Schmid, Philosophie der Lebenskunst, 250. 28 Jameson, Postmodernism, 85. 29 Schmid, Philosophie der Lebenskunst, 250. 30 Schmid, Philosophie der Lebenskunst, 251. 31 Nick Bostrom, “Statement”, in: Die Zeit No. 14, 2018, 39. 32 Schmid, Philosophie der Lebenskunst, 252. 33 Wilhelm Schmid, “Schule der Lebenskunst”, in: Perspektiven künstlerischer Bildung, ed. Carl-Peter Buschkühle (Köln: Salon Verlag, 2003), 48.

CHAPTER 2

Beuys’ Extended Concept of Art 1

Art as Evolution of Mind

Let us now return to Joseph Beuys and his anthropological concept of art. “Everyone is an artist” can be understood as the conviction that everyone has the creative abilities to undertake the “art of living”. “Human, you have the power to determine yourself”, Beuys stated.1 The creative individual should not only form itself but also influence social processes. An existential artist is an effective part of society, and his or her actions help to form the “social sculpture” – Beuys’ term for a society that is continually reshaped by its citizens. Thus, the education of a creative and responsible subject is of major importance. Beuys believes that art has a vital function in educating the existentialist artist; only art can show people how to achieve full personal and societal creativity. His artworks can be understood as provocations and lessons in artistic thinking, a perspective that the following chapters will discuss in more detail. Educating the creative individual to form the social sculpture implies that both art and art education are highly political. To this effect, Beuys claimed: “Art is the only revolutionary power”.2 At this point, we must pause to consider Beuys’ understanding of history, particularly in relation to his idea of art as a revolutionary power. Interestingly enough, Beuys was not particularly interested in placing his art in the context of art history. He did not discuss the relationship of his art to the contemporary art scene of his time, or relate it to specific historical forerunners. Instead, he gave an account of his work in terms of the history of ideas in order to explain his artistic position during his lifetime. During one of his many public presentations and discussions he made a drawing called “Evolution” (1974). “Evolution” sketches out the basic ideas of Beuys’ historical and theoretical understanding of man as an artist and art as social sculpture. He positions the contemporary capitalist era within a panorama between an ancient, mythical age and a future “sun-state” (Sonnenstaat). We will now explore his historical outline and his visions for an artistic future of mankind in order to gain a deeper understanding of Beuys’ theory of art, and ask whether his ideas, which were developed in 1974, are still relevant today. In the lower part of the drawing, Beuys has placed his version of the history of ideas. At the beginning is the mythological age. It is drawn as a circle which is overarched by the “cosmic placenta”, indicating that in the time in which myths © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi: 10.1163/9789004424555_002

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figure 2.1 Evolution, 1974, drawing (Joseph Beuys) (https://fiu-verlag.com/wp-content/ uploads/2013/04/EVOLUTIONSDIAGRAMM). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission

explained the world, man was in close relation to the divine sphere. Gods created the world, and now influence fate, give human life order, and can bestow good fortune to those who pray to them. Beuys then marks a development by means of a vertical line with a cross on top. He writes names on this line: Christ, Plato, Aristotle. The first movement is depicted through two lines which begin at the circle of the mythical age. As they both move to the right, the upper line descends and the lower line rises, creating a drawn-out X. At their meeting-point, the name Christ appears again. At this point, Beuys writes “Christ, cross” (Christus, Kreuz) on top of another vertical line. At the bottom of this line are the words “citizen, artist, worker” (Bürger, Künstler, Arbeiter). The X drawn by the two horizontal lines ends in another circle, whose circumference is marked on either side by the letters S and E. Below this circle are the words, “Sun-state, Jupiter” (Sonnenstaat, Jupiter). The small circle is surrounded by a bigger circle which appears to emit rays, thus symbolizing the sun. Beuys writes the terms “warmth-sleeve” (Wärmehülle) and “warmth-ferry” (Wärmefähre) inside the sun-circle. An upright human figure stands on top of the large, sun-like sphere, flanked by further inscriptions to its right, and an upside-down rose to its left. In this drawing, Beuys broadly outlines the intellectual evolution from a mythical age to a future artistic society of self-determined, creative individuals. This is a long process, taking place over millennia, and we have not yet reached its end. In fact, one cannot foresee whether humankind will ever

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achieve a free and creative society, which Beuys indicates through the “sunstate” of illuminated minds. Beuys marks humankind at the point where the upper and the lower lines cross. If we understand the upper line as the line of mind and the lower one as the line of matter, this crossing point indicates that mind has descended to matter, and matter has moved toward mind. But this does not suffice: the lines continue to move further along the page, diverging in an x-shape. When they reach the sun-circle, they are just as far apart as when they began. But over the course of history, they have reversed position. The mind-line is now below, the matter-line on top.

2

Emancipation of the Mythical Age – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Christ

What does all of this signify? The word Christ, which appears at the end of the mythical age, and once again at the crossing-point of the upper and lower lines, has several names interspersed between its two appearances. Plato and Aristotle lived in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ, and their names allude to a change in the history of philosophy. Socrates, who was the teacher of Plato, who in turn was the teacher of Aristotle, somehow brought the mythical era to an end. The Pre-Socratics, such as Heraclitus or Democritus, believed that the world came from a primal substance. For Heraclitus, life emerged from fire, while Democritus declared that everything consists of tiny particles or atoms.3 Socrates instead claimed that one cannot explain the world by means of things that are already part of it: there must be an origin beyond the material world that is spiritual in nature. Plato developed his theory of “forms”, in which he described the relation between the material and the spiritual world. For him, all material things, which are imperfect and ephemeral, are reflections of eternal and perfect realities: the forms.4 Forms exist in a divine world but man has the ability to grasp them through cognition. Plato understands the human being as a “citizen of two worlds”: on the one hand, the body grounds the human in the material world of ignorance and mortality, while on the other, the soul and its capacity for thought brings humans into the realm of the divine. Through cognition, an individual can perceive the truth by discovering the eternal forms behind the deceptive phenomena of the sensuous world. Centuries later, the philosophy of Neo-Platonism would reformulate forms – which Plato believed to be true existent entities – into ideals, which were understood as products of reason.5 Plato still believed in the reality of the true world of forms, and thus conceived of the relation between physical and metaphysical reality in terms of Greek mythology, where truth was situated in the spheres of the gods.

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Plato’s theory of cognition and learning, which he adopted from Socrates, is well-known. He involved people in discussions about ethics, politics, or metaphysics by asking questions which would cause them to reflect and find the answer within themselves. Everyone is capable of insight; one only has to ask the right questions to bring him or her to the appropriate consideration. In this respect, Socrates wanted to be a kind of “midwife” of thought, a person who helps to bring to light the truth by helping the individual discover it in his or her mind by means of reflection. Again, it is a heritage of the mythological age that Socrates and Plato were convinced that the humans could discover truth by recollecting the forms which their immortal soul had seen in the metaphysical world prior to merging with a material body for its ephemeral existence on earth. Through birth, the soul forgets everything from the world of forms, but through reflection, it can rediscover their sublime character. Thus, Socrates and Plato have a theory of learning as “anamnesis”, remembering the truth of divine forms.6 The teacher must ask the right questions in order to help discover this truth; this is the message of the famous Socratic dialogues. Socrates himself never wrote down his own works, so we know of his thought through Plato, who wrote his texts in the form of dialogues between Socrates, the friend of wisdom (philosophos), and his partners. This relation between the spiritual and the material world, in which the eternal perfection of metaphysical reality creates an accidental reality of sensuous things, is called “idealism”. Here, understanding, which has its origins in a higher, metaphysical sphere, provides a top-down means of gaining insight into divine truth. For Plato, forms are this true, complete, and divine reality, while human understanding involves recollecting these divine forms and using them in the material world. Aristotle moves a step away from this concept, which combines the new spirit of rational reflection with the old mythological belief in the dominance of the divine. For Aristotle, reality is not an invisible entity like an ideal form; for him, truth resides in perceivable phenomena. These consist of actual form and matter. While the form is actuality, matter is potentiality. Only a form can transform the potential of matter into a sensuous object. “Entelechy” is the term with which Aristotle describes the means by which an immanently active form shapes matter’s potentiality into an actualized thing.7 Plato’s “idea”, the metaphysical archetype of which all material things are only ephemeral copies, is transformed into “eidos”: the inherent form, the essence of a perceptible thing. This philosophical attitude, which begins with a bottom-up process of understanding, moving from visible to metaphysical reality, is generally called “realism”. Plato and Aristotle lay out the two basic concepts of understanding through reason – idealism and realism. Since then, no other principles of understanding have ever been

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discovered. Even the deductive and inductive methods used in the empirical sciences still make recourse to the heritage of these two approaches. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle innovated beyond mythology by trusting reason as the primary instrument for gathering knowledge of the world and for explaining its processes. This is the developmental starting point for a self-confident subject that emancipates itself from an uncritical adherence to myth. While critical questioning and individual reflection was suppressed in the Middle Ages in favor of submission to clerical and political powers, Renaissance humanism rediscovered the knowing, self-determined, and responsible subject as the key figure of human progress. As in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, critical thinking became the driving force for this progress. In this sense, Kant invoked each person to make use of their own reason.8 What about Christ, who appears on Beuys’ drawing at the end of the mythical age, along with Plato and Aristotle? He is not a philosopher who suggests using reason as an instrument for human welfare. Instead, he calls for the belief in God, and for love among humans. Shouldn’t he then be a figure of a mythical age in which religion played a central role? For Beuys, Christ is one of the main origins of the free and creative subject. For Jesus Christ, every individual was unique before God. This belief strengthened the recognition of the distinctiveness of each person requiring respect, encouragement, and love. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” demands that the individual make a lifelong effort to shape her own personality. Besides this ambitious ethical practice, Christianity makes two further demands which inspire the emancipation of the human on earth: “Govern the earth”, and “You shall not hide your light under a bushel”. The call to govern the earth provides a strong impulse for labor, research, and cultural development. The call to nurture one’s own talents again focuses on the individual and calls on it to develop its personal powers. These tenets, combined with the demand to transform the world, made Christianity into a religion in which, over the course of the history, ethical and political emancipation as well as science and technology prevailed. That is to some extent why Beuys could say: “Jesus is the inventor of the steam engine”.9

3

Progress of Science – Kant, Newton, Helmholtz, Marx

The next names in the “Evolution” drawing are Newton and Kant. By developing a physical theory of gravity as well as infinitesimal calculus, Isaac Newton was a crucial figure in early modern natural science. Yet this kind of science was not yet well-established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so he was called a philosopher, and called his groundbreaking work Philosophiae

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Naturalis Principia Mathematica.10 Indeed, Newton’s mechanical explanation of the forces and movements in the cosmos remained fundamental until Einstein came up with the theory of relativity at the beginning of the twentieth century. Newton appears in the “Evolution” drawing as a prominent representative of path-breaking natural scientists. To this list, one could also add Nicolaus Copernicus or Galileo Galilei, who demonstrated that the earth circles around the sun, thus contributing to the Renaissance and overcoming the Middle Ages, in which humans regarded themselves as the pinnacle of God’s creation and thus were convinced that they were the center of the universe. Helmholtz, whose name is written next to Newton’s, also belongs to this succession of influential natural scientists. Helmholtz was active in many disciplines: physiology and physics, optics, acoustics, electro-, thermo-, and hydrodynamics. He also maintained a strong interest in aesthetics. He appears in the drawing as a nineteenth-century polymath, reminiscent of Renaissance men such as like Leonardo da Vinci, who had exceptionally broad knowledge and talents. Under the scientists, Newton and Helmholtz, we see the names of two more philosophers, Kant and Marx. They represent two further groundbreaking developments in the history of ideas. Nicolaus Copernicus’ discovery that the earth orbits the sun threw mankind out of the center of a divine cosmos. Immanuel Kant’s contribution to philosophy similarly transformed the history of ideas. Kant explained that the human being is not able to recognize the “thing in itself”.11 Humans can only apprehend the world through two faculties: the senses, which allow for perception, and reason, which allows for definition and interpretation. We cannot access any realities hidden beyond the sensory world, and cannot obtain any scientific insight into them. Thus, religious, mythical, or metaphysical realms cannot be objects of knowledge, but are realms of speculation or imagination. Human beings cannot discover things in themselves or reality in itself, since their cognition is limited to the world of sense and reason, perceptions and concepts. If one of these two elements is missing, no valid insight is possible. Kant puts it this way: “Perception without conception is blind; conception without perception is empty”.12 This “subjective turn” in philosophy binds the spiritual reality to the mental abilities of man. Thus, the “spiritual line” in the drawing begins to slope downward. The Copernican revolution in cosmology and the Kantian revolution in thought increase insights into the conditions of material reality. Thus, the “material line” slopes upward. For Kant, the spiritual reality of ideas only exists in the human mind, whereas for Plato, ideas were still eternal, absolute realities. Kant sees ideas as products of reason; their purpose is to give the subject orientation and values. So the leading value for science is truth; for ethics,

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goodness; for art, beauty. These were guiding values already in Antiquity, but now, they are less rooted in the divine world of ideas, and instead become mental realities as ideals. This subjective turn continues onward from Kant. Two centuries later, the psychology of constructivism asserts that in the act of knowing, the human mind actively gives meaning and order to the reality to which it responds.13 Karl Marx’s name appears close to the meeting point of the rising and falling lines in Beuys’ drawing. While the “material line” moves upward, indexing the increase in scientific knowledge of the perceivable world, the “spiritual line” falls down from metaphysical realms, charting the decline of mythical thinking and its replacement by critical thought, beginning with the Socratic rational turn in philosophy. Marx is the philosopher of historical and dialectical materialism. In his view, no divine spirit rules the world, but material and societal conditions foster religious concepts, which give life meaning and eliminate the fear of death. For Marx, religious ideas are deeply interwoven with the political interests of those in power. Over centuries, the worldly power of the ruler and the established order were justified by divine right. The “king by the grace of God” could not be questioned by social critique or political disobedience; all dissatisfaction and resistance was subdued in the name of God. This is why Marx stated: “Religion is the opiate of the masses”.14

4

Calvary Cross – Materialism

After Marx, the lines cross. The “metaphysical” line touches the “material” line and vice versa. At this point, the name of Christ appears again. Beuys writes: “Christ, cross” at the top of the vertical borderline and “citizen, artist, worker” at the bottom. For Beuys, this point marks the present intellectual situation of mankind. Yet why is “Christ” here again, when the metaphysical realms have collapsed into the material world, and the mythical, religious, spiritual world has apparently lost out to rational philosophy and scientific progress? Beuys said that it is in times of materialism that man experiences the loss of God, just as Jesus Christ had experienced it when he died at the cross on Calvary hill. For Beuys, materialism is the “Calvary experience of man”.15 He regards materialism as a realm of death. “Everything has been reduced to the principle of matter. Thus, materialism has developed the principle of death”.16 There are several reasons for Beuys to have developed this opinion. A contemporary of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, believed that critical thinking would culminate in nihilism. No belief in divine power and eternal values could survive the force of doubt, the decisive instrument for reason in its search for truth. If

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there was any cause for reason to doubt, a matter could not be regarded as true. This was the method of critical rationalism that René Descartes introduced into philosophy17 in the seventeenth century. Descartes’ critical rationalism became the decisive scientific method for evaluating the validity of an observation, an insight, or a theory. In the eighteenth century, Kant demonstrated that it was impossible to prove the existence of God scientifically. Although the concept of “God” was infinitely expansive, it was empty, since no sensuous perception could ever correspond to it. The concept of “God” is eternal, all-powerful, and perfect. But from this, one cannot inevitably draw the conclusion that such a being necessarily exists: just because the idea of God exists does not mean that God exists. Thus, at the end of a long arc of critical philosophy and metaphysics, Nietzsche proclaims: “God is dead”.18 At this point, the falling spiritual line finally touches the material one. At the same time, the material line rises. The nineteenth century, the age of Marx and Nietzsche, and other critical thinkers such as Darwin and Freud, can be regarded as the beginning of modernity. Darwin and Freud contributed to the progress of critical science, which threw metaphysical explanations into crisis. Darwin’s theory of evolution weakened the belief in divine creation, while Freud’s theories undermined the idea of a god-like, eternal soul by explaining mental phenomena through psychological observation. The natural sciences in particular led to deeper, revolutionary insights into the character of perceptible reality. The scientific method is often deconstructive: it destroys the object, however vivid, in order to gather knowledge of elementary processes, and uses these gained insights to construct new products and technologies. In accordance with increased knowledge on material reality, its technological and economic exploitation accelerates. Industrialization, automatization, and digitalization represent this ongoing transformation of the material world. Yet this is not a purely modern phenomenon: this process began with man’s first conscious perceptions of nature, and continued through the long process of cultivating methods and tools to improve human conditions on earth. This is what the rising “material” line in Beuys’ “Evolution” drawing indicates. At the time when he produced the drawing, two materialistically-oriented social systems were in competition: capitalism and socialism. Beuys, who was politically engaged, was searching for a “third way”, a social and economic system that combined invention and production with social justice, and fostered the creative talents of the individual. He was part of a “third way” movement that wanted to overcome the exploitation of nature and “human capital” as resources for economic and political purposes. His ideal society is the “sunstate”, which appears at the far end of the evolutionary drawing. But the three words at the bottom of the border line in the drawing – citizen, artist, worker

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– already indicate the identity of this future society. People at work shape the character of their society, acting as responsible and creative citizens – as artists of life who are tirelessly working on the “social sculpture”. In order to do so, they must receive a full education, which addresses all of their faculties. For Beuys, art can develop these human abilities in the most challenging and comprehensive way. Thus, “human capital” has another meaning for him: it is not sheer manpower, or mere resources. He regards the individual’s capacity to create – in all disciplines and lines of work – as fertile capital for societal development. The figure standing upright next to the downward growing flower on the sun-symbol reveals crucial aspects of Beuys’ understanding of human creative powers and their relationship to an accordingly human society.

5

Christ and Man at Play

Before we turn our attention to this important part of the drawing, we must first return to the words “Christ, cross” appearing above the point at which the two lines cross. For Beuys the “Calvary experience” of man is essential for producing a fundamental change in the “evolution” of thought and man-made reality. Man must suffer the process of crucifixion, of full incarnation into the world of matter through materialism. He must die and be entirely abandoned by God, just as Christ was abandoned by the Father in the Mystery. Only when nothing remains will man discover the Christian substance in his self-perception and will understand it as real. It is extremely precise and must occur as precisely as an experiment in a laboratory.19 What is the “Christian substance” that man can discover when he has completely lost faith in the spiritual world and is left alone in the material realm? This substance is already indicated by Christ’s name at the beginning of the evolutionary process of critical thought – it is each individual’s discovery of the talents that he or she can use in order to “govern the earth”. For Beuys, a state of deep materialism and metaphysical nihilism provides the recognition that man has to assume responsibility for himself and the world he is living in. Fate and God can no longer be vehicles of hope or action. It is this point of realized nihilism that Friedrich Nietzsche describes in his allegory of the three phases of spiritual metamorphosis. The camel spirit obeys the rules of religion and carries the burden of labor and duty. Then, it changes into the spirit of the lion. The lion says “No!” to the rules, he attacks the authorities and gains his freedom. But in order to enjoy this freedom, a positive power is necessary. The

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lion thus turns into the “playing child”. The child is innocent; it represents a new start, as Nietzsche says.20 It explores the world and playfully arranges and changes things. It is not weak, but rather is a metaphor for the “Übermensch”, the “superman”. The playing child has left the state of servitude and the state of revolt behind. It is free to exercise its talents and can create things inspired by its imagination. The playing child is a metaphor of the artist. Similarly to Beuys, for Nietzsche, this art is finally about the art of living. “Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life”, as Nietzsche states.21 Beuys’ trust in the power of art is a heritage of German Idealism and Romanticism. Friedrich Schiller’s letters of the “Aesthetic Education of Man” discuss the possibilities of educating man to live a free, playful existence. Two powers, two “drives” are in conflict inside the human being: sensual powers and rational ones, the “material drive” and the “form drive”.22 If one of the two gains mastery, extreme psychological characters can emerge. Under the dominating influence of sensuality, man is wild, while under the command of rationality, he tends to become a barbarian.23 One is driven by his instincts, the other one is ruled by principles and ideologies. One is ready to kill because of his emotions, the other to enforce values, orders, and ideas. One lacks rational control, and the other emotional empathy. Schiller’s concept of education is to bring emotion into contact with reason, and sensuality into exchange with rationality. Art can enable this point of contact, since an artwork combines sensual reality with intellectual intention. Hegel claims that “the work of art stands in the middle between immediate sensuousness and ideal thought”.24 The beauty of art results when ideas form matter. In the beauty engendered by the twofold nature of the artwork, emotion and reason are inspired to interact so that the wild man begins to reflect, and the barbarian begins to let emotions influence his thoughts. Here, the encounter with art takes the form of a dialectic critique – emotions criticize intellect, and vice versa – and in this relationship, they both perturb and inspire one another, ultimately culminating in a higher state of thought. Schiller describes this state of thought as a playful one, in which neither sensual nor rational powers dominate, but rather interact and influence each other equally. This is a third power, the “play drive”.25 Here, in the interplay of the form drive and the material drive, the spirit of man can develop freely and be creative. Thus Schiller can say: “Man is only fully human when he plays”.26 The rhythmic interaction of sensuous perception and rationality produces holistic thinking in the field of art which is characterized by playfulness, freedom, and creativity. Nietzsche’s comparison of this mode of thought to the explorations and creations of a child is thus understandable. Nevertheless, one must add that the artist uses his or her creative emotional and intellectual powers in a more conscious, deliberate, and reflective way than a child. Why

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should the playful child then be considered an “Übermensch”? This term is misused if it is only taken to mean the superiority of one man or race over another, as the Nazis used it in the Third Reich. For Nietzsche, the superman must conquer his strongest enemy: his own self. The self can abandon itself to its instincts and emotions or can set itself up as a judge over everyone, ruling only through convictions and ideals. It can be driven by vanity or gain strength from the obedience to sacrosanct authorities such as God, the nation, or the “Führer”. At the root of this self-exaltation or self-oblivion lies fear: the fear of death. This threat of ultimate disappearance causes the self to strain toward oblivion or immortality. The self becomes weak when it throws itself into ecstasy or strives for domination on the basis of eternal values. In this manner, contemporary jihadists become fearlessness toward death, since they believe in the promise of eternal life through Allah.

6

Humans as Artists and the Social Sculpture

The collapse of metaphysical explanations and the experience of reality as a purely material phenomenon can be interpreted as death, or the loss of the self in oblivion or ideology. Instead of fleeing into ecstasy or power, the individual at the borderline should reflect on her abilities and talents for developing her own personality, biography, and contributions to society. The future model is the citizen who lives and works as an artist and thus contributes to the “social sculpture”. The “Evolution” drawing shows the interrelation between this “artist of living” and society by means of a human figure and a rose over the sun-state symbol. Curiously enough, the plant is drawn upside-down, while the human figure stands upright. But upon taking a closer look, one realizes that the opposite may be the case. The rose grows in the direction of the sun, as flowers normally do, while the figure stands with its feet on the sun. Its head touches the realm which has sprouted the flower. Usually, this is soil, and we can recognize the roots of the rose. Yet similar tendrils are shooting from the human head, which is also reminiscent of roots. Apparently, the flower emerges from the earth and grows towards the sun, while man begins growing from the sun and ends up with his head rooted in the earth. This constellation of man and flower is laden with symbolic meaning concerning Beuys’ understanding of man as a spiritual-material being. To a certain extent, one can understand the position of the human figure as a metaphor for the spiritual “evolution” Beuys has sketched in the course of the two horizontal lines. In mythical times, the material and metaphysical worlds formed one interwoven reality. The divine was often symbolized through light or the

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sun. From this state, the development led to the point where the spiritual and the material line touch and cross and continue their course in the opposite realm – the spiritual line dives into matter, and the material line rises into the spiritual sphere. In the contemporary moment, we have not yet moved far past this crossing point. However, in the logic of Beuys’ drawing, in the future matter will be increasingly transformed into something mental or spiritual, while metaphysical thoughts and experiences will burrow deeper into matter. This does not mean that they will become lost and buried in the ground. Quite the opposite: it is through an ever deeper dive into matter that the material world may become transformed into a mental or spiritual reality. Indeed, in contemporary globalized capitalism, the transformation of matter into mind is a revolutionary technological process. Artificial intelligence is considered the most promising and the most challenging technological development. Perhaps this indicates a pathway along which the mutual transformation of mind and matter will continue. In Beuys’ time, computers already played an important role, but the ground-breaking digital move towards intelligent machines was not yet a major issue. Nonetheless, we will have to come back to it. How does Beuys envision the future? Certainly, one cannot take his drawing of the human figure based on the “sun-state” as a prediction. Rather, this sketch represents a demand to shape the individual and the society of the future through artistic means, and rooted in a philosophical tradition that considers art to be the fullest expression of human mental activity. Above, we highlighted Schiller and Nietzsche as two major proponents of such a perspective in the nineteenth century. Yet the Anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner is a third major source for Beuys’ theories about man and art. In his writings, Steiner claims that the human organism has a threefold structure, in which physical elements of the body and mental elements are deeply linked. Beuys labels the human figure with Steiner’s three structural terms: in the lower part of the torso, he writes the word “Metabolism” (Stoffwechsel); the middle of the breast contains a heart-symbol, with “Rhythm” (Rhythmus) written to its right; next to the head, Beuys writes “Nerves/Senses” (Nerven/Sinne). In the anthroposophical theory of man, these are the three independently operating parts of the human organism, each with certain cognitive abilities. In the metabolic system, digestion takes place and provides us with necessary nutrients. The beating heart and the lungs rhythmically circulate blood and oxygen through the body. The nervous system leads to the brain, where sensory impressions are processed in mental reactions. In this theory, Steiner codified three constitutive elements of the human organism interacting on the biological as well as on the mental level. In the nervous system, linked most closely to the brain,

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perceptual and intellectual processes are active. The rhythm-system determines emotions. When we are excited, calm, frightened, etc., the rhythm of our breath and our heartbeat change. Steiner believes that the will is located in the metabolic system. There, it is active as an unconscious force that keeps the body in motion – both its limbs and inner organic functions. Only when all three systems interact is the biological organism alive. Comparably, only when all three mental aspects of the three organic elements interact is the human mind in full operation. This means that intellect, emotion, and will cooperate. This is another perspective on the holistic kind of thought that art can inspire. We already saw a similar holistic activity in Schiller’s synthesis of the material and form drive in the play drive. Why is this sketch of the threefold human combined with the rose? Beuys uses the rose as a symbol of the threefold social organism that Rudolf Steiner derives from the structure of the human organism. Steiner suggests organizing society according to the mental and bodily structure of the human. This society would consist of three parts: an economic life corresponding to the metabolic system, a legal life corresponding to the rhythm-system, and an intellectual life corresponding to the nervous system. Just as the metabolic system delivers nutrients to the body, the economic system provides society with the necessary goods for life. The social organism can only function when all parts follow certain rules and agreements. Legal inputs and regulations drive and coordinate the social procedures just as blood distributes oxygen to all parts of the body to keep it alive. Intellectual life provides ideas, inspiration, inventions, and critiques, and influences both the economic and legal systems. In the human figure, the brain crowns this mental and bodily system, thus appearing as the fruit of nutrition and blood circulation. Brain activities involving perception and cognition can thus be considered the highest aim of human life. Yet in order to symbolize this, the flower should have been drawn the other way around. Shown upside-down, the rose complicates this metaphor for the social organism. Its roots are where the head of the figure enters the soil. Its blossom is located at the height of the metabolic system. Its leaves are located where the rhythm-system – the heart and lungs, most importantly – keep blood circulating through the body. Thus, the stem and the leaves represent the flower’s circulatory system. The rose has a twofold meaning. As a symbol of the human organism, it parallels the figure, yet as a symbol of the social organism, it appears that the blossom is the economic system and the roots are in the intellectual realm, while the legal system links both to one another, injecting art and science into the economy. In this manner, human ideas for shaping life can become social reality. The conditions of human life are rooted in thought. The state of intellectual

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life determines the way in which the legal system is organized and economic processes are structured. Finally, the manner in which man transforms nature in processes of production and distribution reveals the degree to which the scientific, ethical, and aesthetic thought of a society have been developed. Once more, there is a reversal in the relation between mind and matter, idea and reality. Originating in mythical times, for centuries metaphysical ideologies determined the interpretation of the material world. At the turning point of materialism, Marx “stood Hegel on his head”. While Hegel, the final figure of idealist philosophy, explained that the material world is an ongoing creation of absolute spirit, Marx asserted that beliefs are determined by the economic and political life conditions of historically-situated humans. While Hegel believed that spirit determined being, Marx declared that social existence determined consciousness. In Beuys’ drawing, which outlines an artistic society of the future, the basic idea is that consciousness determines being – both of the individual and of the society.

7

Exercising Artistic Communication

At this point, the importance of education in Beuys’ theories and actions becomes apparent. The manner in which nature is transformed into culture is revealed by the nature of economic processes. Are human and natural resources being exploited for financial profit? Or are natural and human potential being fostered through technology and production? One of art’s abilities is to foster the potentials of material and the developing work through the engagement of all available mental faculties. Thus art, in a narrower sense, forms a field in which these abilities can be honed. But education through art does not meaning training professional artists, such as painters, actors, or singers. Art should engage all mental capacities so that the subject can use them in the art of living. The decisive moment for developing this attitude is when a subject, educated in such a manner, communicates with an object. This communication can be a conversation between two people, or the crafting of material, a political discussion, or a scientific exploration of a natural phenomenon. The salient feature is not the content of this communication, but the manner in which it takes place. The fashion in which people and things are treated is the decisive element of the social sculpture. This is why Beuys draws his version of the sender – receiver communication model in the center of the sun. However, once again the model has been reversed. In German, the word for “receiver” is “Empfänger”. In Beuys’ sketch, the ‘E’ for “Empfänger” has been turned towards the ‘S’ for “Sender”. This implies that the receiver is not passive but is actively

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figure 2.2 Beuys’ diagram of artistic communication (Carl-Peter Buschkühle)

focused on the sender, indicating the attention an artist brings to her work. In a lecture, Beuys once said that the artist must “listen” to the work’s demands.27 The artist has to immerse himself within the material and the developing form in order to recognize “what the work wants”. If the artist takes charge without respecting the “logic” of the work, he will destroy it by subjecting it arbitrarily to his own ideas. The process of communication, perception, and response is decisive for the artistic process. In the broader concept of art, it is also decisive for the way man treats his fellow humans and his environment, thus creating economy and society. This is why Beuys was engaged in social and political processes: in the seventies, he was among the founders of the German “Green” party, which was formed to fight for an environmentally-conscious society. In the late 1960s, he founded the DSP (Deutsche Studenten Partei – German Party of Students), which attempted to change education politics. With this provocative statement, he drew attention to the ecological and ethical problems of the fair treatment of animals. As we will see, animals play a significant role in both Beuys’ art theory and practice. In order to stress the importance of an artistic education, Beuys opened up his art class at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts to everyone who was interested. Since it was against the rules to accept students to the school who had not passed a qualifying exam, the administration refused to admit such a large number of students to the class. In order to prove his point, Beuys occupied the school’s secretariat together with the applicants. In the first year, he was successful, but in the second he lost his teaching position after he occupied the secretariat with even more students. After his rehabilitation five years later, he did not resume his work as a professor for sculpture, but instead convoked his “Free International University” (FIU) in his rooms at the art academy. The FIU was intended as a university “for creativity and interdisciplinary research”.28 Artists, scientists, and politicians were to collaborate at this university in order to develop ideas for a future society that would provide an alternative to both

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capitalism and communism. During the 1977 documenta, Beuys let the FIU hold workshops on cultural, social, and political topics over the course of the entire hundred days of the exhibition.29

8

Future Perspectives: Artistic or Artificial Thinking

Beuys’ vision for a future society involves educating people so that each individual can live a self-determined creative life in a society where even economic processes are like artworks. But today we face technological innovation that moves the world in another direction. Perhaps matter’s elevation to mind and the merging of mind with matter will be realized in another way. Instead of artistic intelligence, the next step will be artificial intelligence. This would mean the artificial transformation of nature into mind rather than the artistic transformation of nature into culture. In this scenario, human capital will probably not be the crucial motor of development. Instead, human beings will become part of a new cybernetic race, their bodies upgraded with technical devices. This process already began with the invention of the very first tools: the hand axe is an upgrade of the hand, while glasses are an upgrade of the eye. The smartphone already functions like an external organ which links us to the world of digital data, thus extending the function of our brain. Implanting biochips into the brain will boost its capabilities and connect it immediately to the worldwide web. The borders between the individual and a cybernetic organism will be eliminated when Google and other digital media gain direct access to our thoughts. But beyond this upgrade to the human organism, an even farther-reaching development may occur. Intelligent machines will likely overtake biological organisms and will usurp the place of humans in the evolutionary process. In the 1980s, Hans Moravec already warned of this in his book Mind Children, which explored the threat of artificial intelligence for the human race.30 Nowadays, these warnings are increasing, including among prominent scientific and technological experts such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. Indeed, the advantages of artificial intelligence are astonishing. In 1996, the IBM supercomputer “Deep Blue” won a game of chess against the world champion Garry Kasparow. This was already regarded as the downfall of the human mind. But chess is a game that adheres to certain rules. For an extremely fast calculator, it was only a question of time until a machine would beat the champion. It is more interesting to ask whether a computer could win at games such as “Jeopardy!”, in which expertise in different fields is required, as well as the ability to combine facts to produce new meanings outside a closed system. In Jeopardy,

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answers from different categories are presented, and competitors must identify the appropriate question as quickly as possible. They require both interdisciplinary knowledge and logical thinking skills. In 2011, the IBM program “Watson” won in a TV-show against two “Jeopardy!” champions. “Watson” thus understood and processed natural language. The Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom is a prominent contemporary critic of artificial intelligence. He warns that the complex programs that already exist – for instance, financial algorithms used in high-frequency trading – can barely be controlled by humans. Bostrom thinks it possible that we will not even discover whether such a program has already begun to learn by itself and improve itself without the supervision of human beings.31 When this happens, the so-called “singularity” will be reached, the point at which AI will develop independently, and humans will lose control over their technology. Many speculations have been made about the consequences for the human race. Many of them believe mankind is in danger. When asked by the German newspaper Die Zeit about the fate of humans in an AI future, Bostrom answered, “They will be like toys in an amusement park”.32 Considering the speed of technological development, the huge sums that are invested, the cut-throat competition between companies and even nations, the idea that art could play a role seems silly. On the other hand, there is a remarkable aspect to the discussion about this “transhumanist” future. Most of the theories predict an eventual power struggle between human beings and intelligent machines. These visions think in terms of power and efficiency. Bostrom, for instance, imagines that machines will gain the upper hand by controlling data streams, financial transactions, and production processes.33 This prediction stems from the logic of capitalism, which itself leads to the development of high-tech products through market competition. Capitalism’s inherent logic is to improve conditions for successful production – whether it be the improvement of goods, machines, or human capacities to contribute to this permanent progress. Even educational systems worldwide are influenced by this idea of capitalistic competition. PISA, the worldwide test of educational standards, is a project of the OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development). PISA evaluates competences required in order to be competitive in an international market, privileging a “pragmatic” education in which the natural sciences and mathematics play a central role, and languages and social skills are considered useful for improving job efficiency.34 But is it a law of nature that artificial intelligence will eventually compete with human beings? Why should artificial intelligence be beholden to the logic of capitalism? If it seems likely that artificial intelligence could overtake humans, this will be because programmers will have endowed computer

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with capitalist logic. This issue returns us to the point Beuys indicates in the center of the sun-symbol: the relationship between sender and receiver. This relationship addresses the quality of communication, here between humans and machines. The human mind can do more than exhibit the pragmatism of the natural science or jump to market competition. Art is a domain in which “more” can be experienced and educated. Art can take up the challenge of educating the mind and influencing the thought of those developing future technologies. In turn, this could change the nature of artificial intelligence. Why should such an intelligence be an enemy of humanity and attempt to dominate it? Fantasies of this kind can even be found in science fiction films like Terminator, in which intelligent machines fight against a group of humans leading a “resistance”. Why should the intelligent machines not be equipped with all abilities the human mind has to offer? Why shouldn’t they be able to feel and to imagine? Why shouldn’t artificial intelligence become artistic intelligence, full of respect and even love for the “sender”, whether it be nature or human beings? This may be the point where education through art will gain new importance; it will become an ambitious and inspiring education for the authors of new technology. This may be a variant of Beuys’ vision of a future artistic state. Though he said, “Every human is an artist”, perhaps in the future, every thinking being will be an artist.

Notes 1 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 30. 2 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 59. 3 Nikolaos Bakalis, Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics: Analysis and Fragments (Victoria B.C.: Trafford Publishing, 2005). 4 Plato, Republic, Allegory of the Cave, Books VI–VII. 5 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1787), 399. http://strangebeautiful.com/ other-texts/kant-first-critique-cambridge.pdf 6 Plato, Phaidon, 73c7-d1. 7 Aristotle, Metaphysics, book IX. 8 Kant, What is Enlightenment, 1. 9 Joseph Beuys, Jesus ist der Erfinder der Dampfmaschine, 1971. 10 Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1726, ed. Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen with support of Anne Whitman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 11 Kant, Critque of Pure Reason, Prolegomena § 32. 12 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 75.

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13 Jonathan D. Raskin, Constructivism in psychology: personal construct psychology, radical constructivism, and social constructionism (American Communication Journal, 2002). 14 Karl Marx, Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1844. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_ Critique_of_Hegels_Philosophy_of_Right.pdf. 15 Heiner Bastian, Joseph Beuys, Skulpturen und Objekte (Berlin: Katalog of the exhibition in the Martin – Gropius – Bau, 1988), 46. 16 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 49. 17 John Cottingham, ed., Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, revised ed., 1996). 18 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 343. https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Gay-Science-by-Friedrich-Nietzsche.pdf 19 Friedhelm Mennekes, Beuys zu Christus/Beuys on Christ. Eine Position im Gespräch (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1989), 22. 20 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: a Book for Everyone and No-one, The Three Metamorphoses (1883–1885). http://www.lexido.com/EBOOK_TEXTS/THUS_ SPOKE_ZARATHUSTRA_.aspx?S=2 21 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (München: Carl Hanser, 1994), 853. 22 Friedrich Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1979), 15. 23 Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, 6. 24 Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, 22. 25 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 38. 26 Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man, 20. 27 Volker Harlan, Was ist Kunst? Werkstattgespräch mit Beuys (Stuttgart: Urachhaus, 1986), 37. 28 Johannes Stüttgen, Freie Internationale Universität, Free International University, FIU (Wangen: FVA, 1987). 29 Klaus Staeck, ed., Honey is flowing in all directions, Joseph Beuys (Göttingen: Steidl, 1997). 30 Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1988). 31 Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 115 – 120. 32 Nick Bostrom, Die Zeit, No. 15 (March 2018), 37. 33 Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 114. 34 http://www.oecd.org/pisa/

CHAPTER 3

Beuys’ Artworks as Lessons 1

The “Warmth Quality” of Artistic Thought

Beuys’ ideal future society strongly depends on the development of a new form of communication. In the “Evolution” drawing, Beuys writes at the border of the sun-symbol the words “Warmth ferry”, and “layer of warmth” (Wärmefähre, Wärmehülle). This suggests a quality of mind and action, a “warmth quality” (Wärmequalität) of thought and a “warmth of the will”.1 These strange expressions emphasize a particular aspect of artistic communication also stressed in other aesthetic theories, namely, Nietzsche’s “Dionysian” element, which is in dialectic relation to the “Apollonian” in art. Dionysus is the god of the earth and ecstasy, while Apollo is the god of light and moderation. Theodor W. Adorno formulates this dialectic relation in term of “mimesis” and “construction”. For Beuys, this relationship is an interplay between “intuition” and “rationality”, which he calls “Element 3”.2 Element 3 represents integrated, fully developed thinking in which emotion and reason interact. This is necessary in the creation of an artwork, which demands a sensitive perception of form on one hand, and critical reflection on intentions, contents, technique etc. on the other. Here we find Schiller’s “play drive” again as the synthesis of the “material” and the “form drive”. The “warmth” of this thought indicates the importance of perceptual and emotional abilities, and contrasts with a “cool” or “cold” thinking predominantly based on rationality. This is a question of the quality of thought: if I am unwilling to listen to my emotions, I am going to avoid or suppress them; however, if I am willing to let my emotions play a role in the way I perceive and treat persons or things, I can relate to others empathically. Methods, strategies, and decisions in politics, economics, the natural sciences, and technology are required to be rational. Emotional reasoning is rejected because it could result in irrational action, which could cause unforeseeable harm. However, critical guidance from a cultivated sensibility can foster insights and strategies in the sciences, technology, and politics. In this case, neither emotional nor rational reasoning remain the same: they begin to influence each other, and emotions become more reasonable, while reason becomes more empathic. This movement is not harmonious; instead, the two poles relate to one another critically. However, this critical interaction may improve the results of thinking. For Beuys, capitalism deals with man and nature coldly rather than warmly, © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424555_003

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reaping maximum use and profit from human and ecological resources. An ecologically aware economy should combine the exploitation of natural resources with respect for its structures and needs. Socially aware politics should pursue justice and foster the chances of its citizens instead of exploiting them for ideological or economic reasons. In the free and deliberate interplay of both poles of thinking the “play drive” of creative, artistic thought would be active.3

2

“The Chief” – Revolution of Communication through Art

The upside-down position of the figure in “Evolution” indicates Beuys’ strategy for developing holistic thinking in which emotional intelligence gains more influence. He also demonstrated this strategy in his action “The Chief” (Der Chef). This performance, like many others Beuys conducted, is a lesson in artistic perception and thinking. It was performed twice in 1964, first in Copenhagen, then in Berlin. Beuys lay on the bare concrete floor of the Gallery René Block wrapped in a 2.25 meter long felt shroud. Dead hares lay at his head and feet, forming a diagonal constellation in the room. At his head, a copper rod wrapped with a felt bolster pointed to the left, almost – but not quite – touching a longer copper rod wrapped with a small felt bolster leaning against the western wall of the room. To the right side of the artist, between the hares, a cable coiled through the room, leading to a speaker leaning on the right wall close to the right rear corner. In that corner, Beuys affixed a small, 5 × 5 cm piece of fat. In the left rear corner, there was a 30 × 30 cm tetrahedron made of

figure 3.1 The Chief, 1963 (Joseph Beuys) (https://www.google.com/search?q=Beuys+-Der+ Chef&client=firefox-b-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix4SrsZjiAhUB-qQKHfMn-Cx0Q_AUIDigB&biw=1600&bih=764#imgrc= hRgLDyTgfRLW5M). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission

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fat, while the left wall was smeared with a 1.60-meter-long streak of fat. A scrap of hair and some finger nails were pinned to the wall. The public was not allowed to enter the room. Beuys lay on the ground, alone with the hares, illuminated by a naked light bulb. Spectators stood in the neighboring room and could look at the performance through a fenced-off doorway. Sometimes they spoke, sometimes they were silent. People came and people went while Beuys lay in the felt shroud for eight hours. From time to time, he made breathing and wheezing sounds, as well as animal noises. Beuys called it “a primal sound one can relate to both of the dead hares”.4

3

Creating New Flows of Energy

What is happening here; is Joseph Beuys torturing himself by lying inside a stifling felt blanket for eight hours on a concrete floor, unable to move? And why the dead hares and the copper rods? Visitors were challenged to see and listen. Mostly, they heard silence as they watched the invisible man lie motionless in the felt wrap. It is reported that the conversation in the spectators’ room ground to a halt again and again because people were affected by the scene in the neighboring room. So, what was the performance like for an attentive elements in Beuys’ work. In the sculptural installation of the room, the fat corners make an aesthetic impression. Perhaps someone’s first reaction would be, “How ugly, fat on the wall!” However, on closer observation other sensations and thoughts may arise. The fat corners appear to be small sculptures in the room. The soft fat contrasts with the solid walls and the concrete floor. While those have a hard, crystalline structure, the fat is moldable when cool and can become fluid when the temperature rises. Fat is an energy-storing compound. Humans and animals need it for nutrition, while in the digestive process it is burned to release energy. The copper rods are remarkable components of the arrangement as well. They form lines in the room in obvious relation to the diagonal axis of Beuys and the hares. Copper is used to conduct electrical energy. In fact, the speaker cable is made of copper as well, and insulated with plastic. While electrical energy flows through the speaker cable, one could equally imagine an energetic flow moving through the copper rods. Similarly to the insulated cable, the rods are wrapped with felt. Like fat, felt is an organic material. It also stores energy, not by making energy available for organic processes in the body, but by storing warmth, whether derived from electric or organic energy. Organic energy is present and isolated in the center piece of the arrangement, the man in the felt shroud.

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Energy flows here too: the life energy of a human being, which involves organic processes such as burning fat, or the electric impulses of the nerves. But above all, mental energies flow. This arrests the attention of the beholder. How does this man feel, motionless for hours on the hard floor, a hare at his head and feet? He appears to be just as dead as the animals. Their bodies are also insulated with fur – from which felt blankets can be made – but are cold and lifeless. Nevertheless, the man and the animals create a “mental axis”. The beholder imagines that the artist inside the shroud is thinking of the hares that are lying on the floor with him. He experiences their presence as animals, but also as dead animals. Life and death are present in this arrangement, contrasting with each other. The silence and immobility of the animals intensifies the thoughts and feelings related to the live human being in this extraordinary position. What pain he must feel, how claustrophobic he must be, choking on the stuffy air inside the felt blanket!

4

Political Statement and Shamanistic Revolution

This mysterious action is troubling. When the performance took place in Berlin, it happened in a gallery close to the Wall. In 1964, West Berlin was an isolated island surrounded by the territory of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the East German socialist state under Soviet control. Initially, there was a plan that Robert Morris would stage this performance simultaneously in New York, but he did not end up doing so. If Morris had gone through with it, there would have been an energetic bridge between Berlin and New York, East and West. It would have been a mental energy bridge created by the beholders who would have imagined the link between the two simultaneous performances. This link was more than a parallel artwork; it was intended to form a political and spiritual bridge between East and West. Politically, it connected socialism and capitalism. West Berlin was an island of the Western world at the heart of a socialist country. From there, Beuys would send along energy from a free artwork to New York, conceived as the political and cultural capital of the West. If Robert Morris had joined in, this energy would have flown back to the East as well. “The Chief” was, in other words, a political statement which attempted to bridge the gap between the competing systems of the Cold War, emphasizing the power of art over ideological confrontation. Yet for Beuys, East and West were not only geographic regions or political hemispheres, but represented spiritual regions as well. Later on, we will examine the action “Eurasian Staff” (Eurasienstab) from 1967/68. Eurasia is an enormous continent that is politically and culturally divided into two parts, Europe

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and Asia. By using the word “Eurasia”, Beuys refers to the relations across the continent as a whole, which was at the time divided into a communist East (USSR, the People’s Republic of China, etc.) and the capitalist West. Within intellectual history, these hemispheres represent different spiritual traditions. In the European West, the Enlightenment brought forward science, democracy, and individual freedom. In Asia, traditions of contemplative thinking and intuitive experience are still alive, for example in Buddhism. Shamanic traditions are still quite prevalent, for example among Siberian peoples. In some respects, Beuys’ action recalls a shamanistic practice. The title of the action already alludes to tribal societies, since the word “chief” can refer to tribal leaders. Indeed, Beuys admitted that shamanic rituals played a role in his work. Yet he was not interested in copying indigenous traditions, but in using shamanism as a spiritual source worth being rediscovered by modern man. For him, shamanism offered spiritual “sources for the future”.5 The shamanic elements of the installation are talismanic objects such as the fingernails and hair of the performer, which allow him to be present though he is invisible in the felt wrap. They also include materials with a powerful presence, such as fat, copper, and felt. The constellation of the dead hares and the man at the center of the room create a shamanic situation reminiscent of initiation rituals in which the candidate must suffer a mock death. Often, these rituals send the candidate away from the tribe and into isolation. Often, he is buried – in the earth, in caves, or under tree branches. The candidate has to stay there for a long time, enduring hunger, thirst, pain, and fear. In this time, he will be haunted by hallucinations. The animals that appear in these dream-like visions will become the shaman’s helpers in pursuing his duties as a healer and spiritual guide. If the candidate survives his mock death and emerges strong and transformed, he has successfully passed the test, and can become a shaman. In “The Chief”, Beuys creates a performance comparable to such an initiation. In the eight hours he spends wrapped in felt, his thoughts will continually return to the dead animals at his head and feet. These might be meditative thoughts or emotions, or reflections on the biological life or cultural traditions of the hare. Perhaps he will listen to the silent, immobile animals. The felt presence of death may produce feelings of empathy, calming down the live body. From time to time, his thoughts will drift into other regions. Sometimes, the artist will have to struggle with pain and claustrophobia, summoning enough willpower to remain in the darkness of the shroud. Beuys here demonstrates a kind of “incarnation into matter” and into the earth, just as the figure in the “Evolution” drawing grows roots from its head into the soil. It is a movement of mind into matter, as the spiritual line indicates in the drawing. But does the matter-line also rise into spiritual dimensions? In

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an initiation, the subject goes through the experience of suffering and death in order to emerge renewed, transformed, and prepared for new deeds. Beuys himself refers to this point: “It was a parallel to the old initiation of the coffin, a form of mock death. It takes a lot of discipline to avoid panicking in such a condition, floating empty and devoid of emotion and without specific feelings of claustrophobia or pain, for nine hours in the same position. Such an action, and indeed every action changes me radically. In a way it’s a death, a real action and not an interpretation. Theme: How does one become a revolutionary? That’s the problem”.6

figure 3.2  La rivoluzione siamo noi, 1972 (Joseph Beuys) (http://www.tate.org.uk/ art/images/work/AR/ AR00624_10.jpg). © VG BildKunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission

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The shamanic initiate must undergo a revolutionary transformation of spirit. But revolution per se is not a concept within shamanism; instead, it is a political term within modern society. What does it mean to be a revolutionary in such a situation? On a poster for Beuys’ first exhibition in Italy, we see the artist striding towards the beholder. Under his feet are the words, “La rivoluzione siamo noi”.7 Beuys is summoning a revolution to create a future artistic society and find a third way beyond capitalism and communism. However, his revolution is non-violent; he does not have any weapons on the poster. And becoming a revolutionary by lying in a felt shroud does not seem to portend violence either. The revolutionary is obviously the artist, and this artist is not just Beuys; it could be anyone. This explains another of Beuys’ famous statements: “The only revolutionary power is the power of human creativity – the only revolutionary power is art”.8 What kind of revolution takes place in the felt shroud? What kind of revolutionary does this performance produce? It is a mental revolution comparable to the experience of a shamanic initiate. However, important aspects of this performance are different from tribal rituals, in which the candidate does not conduct the initiation himself but is sent into it by his elders. In “The Chief”, Beuys alone determines the content and appearance of the performance. In this piece he refers to old traditions, by recalling shamanism, for example, but transforms them to create an initiation that is also a sculpture, an installation, and a performance. Thus, he combines old and new traditions, mystical heritage and modern art, both of which are thus mutually transformed. Beuys’ performances during this time were part of the “Fluxus” movement. In contrast to other Fluxus artists, Beuys included references to past cultural phenomena in his performances, creating a Gesamtkunstwerk, an artistic synthesis of sculptural and performative elements which generated sensitive aesthetic effects within a situated historical and political context. In this context, the revival of shamanism is not an imitation, but is deliberately used to provoke mental experiences.

5

“The Chief” as Artistic Education

5.1 Learning to “Listen” “The Chief” is not a shamanistic ritual but a Fluxus performance, and as such, a piece of art education. Beuys may be the teacher, but his pedagogy is unusual – he is invisible, mostly silent, sometimes uttering primal sounds, exiling the students into the neighboring room and transforming the “classroom” into an

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aesthetic installation. What can be learned here? “The Chief” is a piece about artistic thought and action. How does an artist act? He plans the performance and the installation, considers the theme and the relevant contexts, and images how he will perform within a certain time and space. Then, he arranges the room accordingly and goes through the torture of a self-induced initiation. Basic elements of artistic creativity are in play: invention, precise preparation, and execution which transforms reality into something new, producing a new event, a new narration. An artistic creation should not rehearse tired routines or produce clichés of beauty. Rather, it should deliver unusual perceptions to its viewer, and intimate unfamiliar meanings. But what can the beholder learn? Puzzlingly, Beuys claimed, “For me, ‘The Chief’ was above all an important sound piece”.9 What sounds could the audience hear? Most of the time, they could hear nothing. Beuys was silent in the felt wrap. The dead hares further reinforced the silent atmosphere through the presence of death. The silence of the performance may have been so deeply felt that it impressed itself upon the audience in the adjacent room, halting their conversation and focusing their attention on the performance. Then, suddenly, Beuys’ animal-like sounds would punctuate the silence, transforming the atmosphere with an even stranger mood. To go one step further, one could even hear the “sounds” of the other things in the room. The hares emitted a deathly, deep silence. This silence sharpened the ears to the sounds of the live body inside the felt. But the fat corners also uttered sounds, as well as the copper rods, the felt bolsters, and the hair and the fingernails at the wall. These were not audible sounds, but mentally perceivable sounds. The pale, moldable fat has a different sound from the cold copper or the warm, insulating felt. This sound is more of an inner resonance, a feeling that corresponds to the objects. In order to “hear” it, focused attention is required, with the eyes “listening” along with the ears and the skin. All senses interact in this contemplative aesthetic perception; in fact, the entire body is actively performing “embodied cognition”.10 Even body parts such as the knee play an important role, as Beuys indicates: “Anyways, I think with my knee!”11 Although this statement sounds funny, it also alludes to the close attention and perception that an artwork demands and that an artist should practice. By bending the knee, one can take a closer look at small things on the ground, or focus one’s attention on people or objects. The bending of the knee is comparable to the crook in a walking stick Beuys sometimes uses to point at something, or to the “Eurasia” staff we will discuss in the next chapter. These sticks curve at one end, pointing back at the person holding them. Beuys’ diagram of artistic perception shows such an inflected line extending between the reversed sender and receiver. The initiator of this communication, the artist,

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turns towards the object. Calling this object a “sender” already indicates that the artist is paying close attention to the signals it is emitting. The artist focuses her attention on the “sender”; from there, the line curves back to the listening “receiver”. The curved line indicates a reflexive relation between the subject and object, in which the “sender” object reflects the attention of the subject, while the “receiver” subject reflects the impressions and signals received from the object. Receiving a signal from the object changes its character; it is not simply there to fulfill a predetermined purpose. In order to treat the object differently, the attitude of the communicating subject must change too. As a “receiver”, the subject is open to perceiving the unique qualities of the object, its unexpected features, and aspects that make the object more than an exemplar of its species. This careful attention can “listen to the sound of the thing”, emotionally experience its presence, and reflect on its nature and context. Artistic perception treats the object as individual, not simply as material or resource. It respects and treats an object as something “non-identical”,12 to use Adorno’s term for the unique character of an object that eludes general classification. Instead of applying a preexistent intellectual concept to an object, the artist is aware of its otherness, an otherness that cannot be grasped through external interests or superficial attention. 5.2

Counter-Images for a Culture of Abstraction, Acceleration, and Animation Beuys’ performance produced a “counter-image”,13 his term for artworks that could not be superficially dismissed but instead were strange and troubling, demanding concentrated perception and reflection in which empathy played an important role. Thus, Beuys’ art demands and demonstrates an artistic attitude distinct from ordinary routines of attention and behavior. Art can thereby emerge as an alternative way to understand and treat people, things, and processes, not only transforming individual attitudes but demonstrating an alternative for social, economic, and cultural behavior. Instead of abstraction, art can deliver immersion; instead of acceleration, it offers deceleration; instead of animation, self-determination. Using an object as a means to an end involves abstracting from its non-identical character. Science, technology, and economics treat objects in an abstract fashion by dismantling them into pieces, analyzing their details, structures, and processes, and constructing new, improved, and more efficient products. Mathematics, the language of figures and formulas, is the most abstract language humans have developed for describing the world around them. Mathematics can not only describe an object but can model it, thus allowing for

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predictions of future behavior and usefulness. This is quite different from the language of art, which is largely mimetic. Mathematics abstracts from the reality it describes and calculates because it is non-mimetic. It communicates without emotion. Yet contrary to artistic representation, mathematics is obviously far more successful in penetrating objective reality, allowing for the discovery of new, invisible aspects of reality. For example, Peter Higgs’ calculations for explaining the phenomenon of gravity postulated the existence of a certain particle, known as a boson. Almost 50 years later, the Higgs boson was discovered in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva. Peter Higgs finally received the Nobel Prize in Physics because he predicted this elementary particle in his calculations decades before it was empirically proven. Within technology and economics, mathematics allows for the planning and implementation of products and processes. The latest, widest-reaching application of mathematical language is in digitalization. Information technology reduces information into small pieces or “bits” (binary digits). Computers calculating in binary code are not only able to gather vast amounts of data representing complex realities but also create new, virtual realities out of them. Bit calculations can meanwhile imitate thought-patterns in artificial intelligence. It is interesting that the most abstract language, mathematics, appears to be the strongest force for transforming natural and social reality. In this context, visual language gains new importance. Hollywood-generated fantasies of new technologies, such as humanoid robots, spur on scientific and industrial endeavors to achieve these ideas with advanced digital technologies. In everyday life, digital technologies exert continual influence over the emotions and ideas of consumers of media images. Whether in films, computer games, or advertising, images influence users’ economic, social or cultural behavior, contribute to their self-understanding, and the values they believe in. For an individual not to fall prey to manipulation by the media, the consumer must be educated to understand images critically, since images do not only manipulate through their content but by playing on emotions. An emancipated citizen should be able to reflect critically on this influence. This is a requirement for a democratic society in which citizens make decisions based on truthful information and critical reflection. Teaching critical image-perception skills to students is a strong argument for Visual Culture Art Education today.14 But Beuys’ art education extends far beyond an emancipated understanding of images. Acceleration and animation are effects connected with scientific, technological and economic abstraction. We experience acceleration in many fields of modern life.15 Over decades, technology has sped up the speed of travel, with high speed trains, souped-up cars on highways (unfortunately, often

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slowed down by traffic jams), and airplanes crisscrossing the globe. Goods are produced and traded at a faster rate driven by continually optimized industrial, logistic, and sales processes. Our rhythm of life has accelerated to allow for increased consumption of products, events, and sensations within ever-shortening periods of time. Again, the media play a significant role. TV productions and films have accelerated their picture sequences over the last decades, while videos and computer games challenge, entertain, and change perceptive abilities through fast actions and image-switching. Consumers of virtual images become adept at quick shifts in attention, whether by zapping through TV channels, scrolling through websites or scanning social media news. On top of this, our attention is often divided. At home, young people sit in the living room watching TV, texting on their smartphone, enjoying fast food, and chatting with their friends at the same time. As we shop, our senses are also beset simultaneously by different stimuli. Upon entering a clothing store, we are immediately confronted with a profusion of clothing, shoes, and accessories arranged in exciting constellations with enticing music, profiling various brands. Interior architecture and music create an immersive atmosphere, while advertisements promise beauty and happiness to the consumers of these products. Next door, the next boutique uses the same techniques to tempt consumers’ desire by stimulating their senses. The acceleration of sensations inevitably causes superficial perception and inhibits reflection. This gives way to animations of the mind. The psychological impact of popular images (in entertainment, films, or advertising, for instance) combined with the speed of changing impressions inhibits our ability to focus. Critical reflection is neutralized by a culture industry intent on serving its consumers brainless entertainment. As attention spans shrink, the individual risks become what Deleuze calls a “dividual”,16 with consciousness fragmenting into separate sensations that Fredric Jameson called “intensities”.17 Digitalization increases the means by which minds can be manipulated and behavior can be animation of behavior. One example is the practice of “micro-targeting”, in which companies or political organizations can feed the user with data addressed to his interests. Living in a “filter-bubble”, the “dividual” cannot distinguish between news and “fake news”, between unadorned information and subtle or obvious manipulation. If people are not aware of opinions different from their own, and are permanently fed a stream of populist, nationalist, or ideological messages, they will not be able to develop qualities necessary for producing a responsible citizen of a democratic society. Instead of forming personal opinions by means of accurate information and public discussion, “dividuals” separate into shared interest groups, leading to social fragmentation and conflict. Societies risk splintering into various interest groups and factions

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unable or unwilling to cooperate with one another, exacerbating conflicts. A society is, to a certain degree, vested in Animation the minds and behavior of its citizens. Laws, rules, conventions, and traditions are supposed to foster attitudes and values that enable the individual to be an active and responsible part of society. The degree to which a society tolerates critical thought, public discourse, and provides opportunities for political participation and pursuing innovative ideas reveals the scope of its democracy. The relationship between social control and personal self-determination comprises the scope of freedom of the subject. In order to gain and shape their freedom, citizens must be educated. In “The Chief”, Beuys stages an artistic education that contrasts with abstraction, acceleration and animation, and their potential to produce superficial perception and disoriented thinking. 5.3

Immersion, Deceleration, Self-Determination – A Lesson in Artistic Thinking and Action Instead of entering into an abstract relationship with objects in the world, the artist immerses himself in them; instead of accelerating, he slows down as he focuses on his work; instead of being subject to external manipulation, the artistic action is self-determined. Beuys is obviously immersed in the situation as he lies on the floor wrapped in the felt blanket. He demonstrates deceleration by extending the length of the performance to eight hours. The entire performance – including the transformation of the room – is a self-determined artistic creation. But the immersion, deceleration, and self-determination present in “The Chief” goes beyond this: the action does not just demonstrate this attitude to the audience but involves the audience in an immersive aesthetic experience. It confronts its beholders with a strange experience, urging them to immerse themselves within the performance, accept the challenge of being confronted with uncertainty, and mobilize all mental efforts to penetrate the staging and meaning of the performance. Thus, “The Chief” is an educational action that incites the beholders to use their own understanding and creativity. 5.4 Mobilizing the “Warmth Quality of Will” The action confronts the visitors with a mystery, an enigmatic process that takes place invisibly between the artist and the hares. The aura of this process elicits challenging questions, but also empathy and imagination in the beholder. Beuys hinted at his own mental state during the performance by saying that he had to remain “empty … devoid of emotion” to sustain the situation. But this is not sufficient to become a “revolutionary”. Becoming a revolution requires a cultivation of willpower: the will to hold on, resist pain and panic, and remain focused. This is an exercise in cultivating the warmth-quality of will, as Beuys

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puts it. This will is not “cold”, indifferent to the object, nor “hot” and obstreperous. Invoking the will’s warmth-quality results in sensitive attention directed at the “senders”, the two hares. This attention becomes contemplation: by emptying his mind of thoughts and emotions, the artist prepares himself to listen to the two senders. He establishes a meditative relationship toward them. To some degree, the beholder can identify with the situation, and remember her own experiences with such mental states or attempt to imagine what is happening here. The beholder, who acts as a “receiver”, must show empathy. But the artist must deliver even more: once inner emptiness is achieved, the meditative identification leads to a merging of the artist’s open mind with the presence of the hares. This is an exercise in perception as described by Rudolf Steiner: “becoming one” with a “spiritual being” by unifying with its “inner nature”. In order to achieve this kind of higher cognition, “the soul must gain control over thoughts, will, and emotions”.18 Steiner’s thought had a major influence on Beuys. Beuys says that it is important for him “to bring in the spirituality of the animal; bring it within what we have lost in terms of – how to put this – culture. When I say: this is the earth, and here is what’s beyond the earth, then of course the animal is physically on earth, but part of the animal is beyond the earth, just as part of the human is beyond the earth. It was important to me to show that animals are involved in the work”.19 When Beuys describes animals not just as physical but also as spiritual beings that are “helpers” and “collaborators” of man, this description is reminiscent of shamanism and the spiritual realities of Anthroposophy. For beholders educated in rational thought and behavior, this seems quite strange; they tend to resist and reject the performance. What kind of esoteric practices and theories does Beuys offer us? Can this guy be taken seriously in our scientific, enlightened age? Can this atavistic performance provide us with anything useful?

figure 3.3 Chaos – Movement – Form. Beuys’ diagram of the sculptural process of creativity (Carl-Peter Buschkühle)

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The beholder may become baffled, helpless, resigned, or even angry. On the other hand – these are exactly the emotions which art as a “counter-image” should provoke. It is not light entertainment. If one dismisses it as a spectacular and bizarre event, which one can easily brush off and mock, its deeper insights will be lost. It is a provocation, but in what sense? By confronting the viewer with such a strange action, Beuys orchestrates a “plastic” thought situation. He is convinced that this plastic situation will challenge and develop creativity, as shown in his famous diagram of the “sculptural process of creativity”. At the beginning, there is chaos; from chaos, a creative movement originates which culminates in a form. The creative, artistic movement (Bewegung) is designated by a heart, which refers to the “warmth-quality of will” with which the artist handles her material and creates the artwork. A similar attitude is demanded of the beholder who perceives and reflects upon the artwork. Beuys’ enigmatic, perhaps even shocking action is calculated to provoke a plastic movement of mental creativity in the beholders. Beuys is convinced that concentration and critical thought can be achieved only through the effects of this strange and fascinating “counter-image”. Theorizing about extended forms of thought or alternative experiences of reality will not produce the intended effect, since theorizing remains merely an intellectual exercise. Watching the action demands more attention, provokes more questions, and forces the audience to “listen”, to activate empathy and imagination in order to sink deeper into the situation. This enigmatic situation, which first appears confusing and chaotic, may allow the mind of the spectator to achieve a form of mimetic and intellectual understanding, or at least spark new questions. 5.5 Extending Thinking - Educating Intuition In “The Chief”, Beuys demonstrates the ability of artistic communication to produce a “culture of questioning” (Kultur der Frage). As his communication diagram indicates, artistic communication is reflective, rather than a “culture of command” in which the object has to serve the intentions and purposes of the subject. Yet the artistic receiver does not only receive the sender’s information through rational channels; instead, Beuys’ concept of artistic thinking privileges the interaction of rationality and intuition. That is what he calls “Element 3”. Element 3 is a synthesis of old traditions of intuitive thought and modern traditions of rational reflection. This is the symbolism of “Eurasia” in Beuys’ work: it represents the connection between East and West, science and spirituality. The hares also represent this relation, and are a recurring motif in Beuys’ actions and drawings. Hares populate the vast landmass of the Eurasian continent. They give birth to their young under bushes or rocks, unlike the European rabbit, which digs a hole in the earth for that purpose. Since ancient

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times, the hare has been a symbol of fertility, vitality, rebirth, and resurrection. Beuys is aware of this symbolism, and the beholder can draw on it in interpreting the action. But these intellectual, rational explanations do not go far enough in making sense of the performance. If Beuys wanted to emphasize these aspects, he could have written a text or drawn an illustration. Instead, he invests a lot of effort in orchestrating a peculiar performance. This engagement aims at fostering intuition, a capacity Beuys believes is in need of strengthening in the “Calvary” times of advanced rationalism. Through art, Beuys wants to break through the limitations of rational cognition. “I did not want to continue addressing logic one-sidedly. I wanted to break open all the residues of the subconscious and bring them into turbulence through a chaotic, dissolving process, because the beginnings of the new are always created in chaos”.20 The intuitive perception and thinking Beuys demonstrates in “The Chief” touches on realms beyond meditative relaxation or contemplative awareness. Beuys does not shy away from claiming that this kind of thinking opens up experiences of transcendent reality, but this does not happen through a revival of old beliefs or traditional religious practices. Beuys instead offers his viewers a modern art performance that can provoke their imagination and intuition. According to Rudolf Steiner, inspiration, imagination, and intuition are necessary thought modes for achieving a higher state of consciousness able to experience transcendental realms.21 Beuys transforms Steiner’s ideas into art by orchestrating a situation in which theoretical explanations do not suffice, and beholders can have their own experience with intuitive thought. For Beuys, this is a kind of therapeutic process which addresses the initial chaos and confusion caused by the encounter with the artwork.22 The suffering of the beholder struggling to find meaning is necessary for mobilizing all efforts of perception and thought. By these means, neglected parts of the mind will be stimulated, and dimensions of human existence ignored by scientific rationalism brought back into awareness. But rather than heralding a return to religious revelation or ideological conviction, the artwork experientially confronts the beholder with something new. The subject must not demonstrate obedience to traditional beliefs, but rather must free up its mental capacities to “listen” and respond to the artwork. For Beuys, opening up the realm of transcendental experience does not mean returning to the past, but setting up a program for the future. In order to open up the mind, the beholder must go through the artwork – dive into its material and immerse himself in its form in order to mobilize his imagination, intuition, and reflection. The beholder must undergo a similar mental process to the felt-wrapped artist, and experience a transformative “incarnation” of sorts, allowing roots grow into matter in

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order to extend the reach of the mind. Through this artistic experience, Beuys creates an educational model for educating artists who shall form the “social sculpture” of the future by means of complex, creative intelligence. To reanimate the intuitive aspects of intelligence, Beuys’ art confronts the beholder with shocking, atavistic realities: death, suffering, silence, and shamanistic animism and initiation. But as Beuys says, “When I do something shamanic … I do so in order to make a statement about future possibilities”. Or: “Through Shamanism, I point to the death-character (Todescharakter) of our present age. But I also show that in the future, the death-character of the present can be overcome. For me, the future is the starting-point”.23 Beuys often created performances with animals, summoning their energy in a shamanic fashion. In reference to his performance “I like America and America likes me” (1974) in which he spent three days with a live coyote in a room of René Block’s New York gallery, he said: “Can one make a statement about a fixed situation? It is very difficult to do so from one’s own fixed situation. It is best to move outside into another realm, identifying with the beings which live in this realm. If one performs it, one can perhaps create a provocation, and people will say that the realm coming towards us is not real. But it remains to be seen whether it is not real, people will not have peace in their souls anymore, they will continue to ask and say, what’s up with the shit Beuys is doing. They will ask every question under the sun, even in the field of simple logic, which will show that their position is wrong, and that a statement is being made here that will force them to give up their fixed position. When I made an action, like the one with the coyote, I did not want to give zoological lectures; I wanted to draw attention to the realm that exists beneath humans, which is a kind of precursor to human evolution, the autonomous animal realm. By means of this realm, I confronted people with a reality that finally provoked the question of whether realms also exist “above” the human being. Humans should reconsider their organs, because they reach deeper into realms we have left behind, from which we have extracted ourselves into a realm of cultural consciousness that is no more. We have a false understanding of man, society, and the world. At any rate, this question must be brought up, and funnily enough, this comes about through the introduction of other worlds. Choosing this method in my practice has proved to be very good, to come from a completely different realm, in which old cultures cooperated with originary powers, but which exists in the present under a totally different consciousness”.24 The beholder is challenged to follow in Beuys’ footsteps and attempt an “incarnation” (as evoked in the “Evolution” drawing) in order to achieve a transformation. “How does one become a revolutionary?” This was the question Beuys raised with his quasi-initiatory sojourn in the felt roll. One becomes

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a revolutionary by emptying oneself of confused emotions and thoughts, and immersing one’s mind and senses within the artwork, “listening” to its “sounds”, and being receptive to the dead hares, the materials, and the felt-wrapped man. When questions and rational interpretations fail and fall silent, a simple act of “listening” may inspire imagination and intuition. This produces a mimetic relationship in which the receiver turns into the being he is “listening” to, as Beuys does when he makes animal noises within the felt blanket. He is “thinking with hare-power”, as Dieter Koepplin states.25 Intuition should not be confused with a non-reflective delusion in which the individual falsely believes that he or she has turned into someone or something else. “The Chief” is not intended to provoke hallucinatory experiences; rather, it expands the mind of the performer as well as the beholder. The intention is to achieve a new state of mental freedom rather than a regression into immaturity. In fact, both Beuys and Rudolf Steiner stress that intuition is an extended, free state of mind. Steiner describes intuition as a holistic practice of thinking that requires the subject’s deliberate focus, as well as in his words, we discover the “warmth quality of will”, or thinking as “warmth sculpture”, as Beuys puts it.26 Steiner distinguishes intuition from two other forms of thinking: sentimental mysticism on one hand, and the utilitarian will to power on the other. He characterizes a thinking which is disconnected to a cultivated willing and feeling as “cold, it seems to drain the spiritual life”. Then Steiner continues: “Yet this is really nothing but the strongly marked shadow of its real nature – warm, luminous, and penetrating deeply into the phenomena of the world. This penetration is brought about by a power flowing through the activity of thinking itself – the power of love in its spiritual form. There are no grounds here for the objection that to discern love in the activity of thinking is to project into thinking a feeling, namely, love. For in truth this objection is but a confirmation of what we have been saying. If we turn towards thinking in its essence, we find in it both feeling and will, and these in the depths of their reality; if we turn away from thinking towards “mere” feeling and will, we lose from these their true reality. If we are ready to experience thinking intuitively, we can also do justice to the experience of feeling and of will; but the mysticism of feeling and the metaphysics of will are not able to do justice to the penetration of reality by intuitive thinking”.27 Here, Steiner pleads for a holistic thinking that does not overemphasize emotion or rationality. In his account, holistic thinking integrates will, emotion, and thought – corresponding to his concept of the tripartite human organism, which Beuys incorporates in the human figure opposite the rose in his “Evolution” sketch. Intuitive thinking mobilizes all three parts. The will is active, and concentrates perception on the “sender”. Emotions are active as

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empathy, but also, merged with the will, provide a form of loving devotion to the object and the process. Both thus influence the nature of thought. Beuys’ and Steiner’s intuition is therefore a liberation of the full sources of thought. Importantly, this must be achieved through individual effort. Intuition does not result from a proclamation or a seduction, but through education. Beuys’ performance aims to educate by mobilizing will and emotion as well as reflection. In fact, the beholder must exert a certain amount of effort to bring will, emotion, and reason into harmony with one another. At first, they are in conflict with one another: reason is upset by the strange situation in the gallery; emotion is disoriented; the will is unmotivated to remain with the performance. After an initial period of chaos and confusion, within the “plasticity” of cognition, the relationship between these three faculties is ambivalent. Once emotion turns into empathy, it struggles against the will, which wants the beholder to leave. The beholder’s will must change into a will to stay and observe. While reason still critically ponders the irrationality of the action, emotion inspires the beholder to imagine what may be happening inside the felt wrap. Insight comes about through dynamic states of mind, in which the will, emotion, and thought clash, critique, and collaborate. When will and emotion succeed in coming together to motivate the thought process with “warmth energy” or love, then the mind is on the right track. The subject experiencing this process can discover its own capacities for free, creative thought. Beuys stresses these aspects of self-determined, reflective intuitive thinking: “Expanded consciousness is intuition. It is thinking, recognizing itself. The moment of creation. Intuition is that which recognizes that man is free”.28 5.6 Existential Creativity under the Sign of the Cross Human freedom is defined by the freedom to be a creative being or artist who can shape his or her own life and society. In the Evolution drawing, the cross plays a particular role in several respects. It is of course a symbol for Christ, but it also represents the intersection of the matter and spirit lines. Beuys locates our current era of materialism at their meeting-point, and characterizes this moment as a turning-point. Spirit penetrates matter, while matter is transformed by human knowledge and creativity. Spirit itself is transformed through deepened knowledge and the transformation of matter, and over the course of history gains access to further insights and creative possibilities. In the action “Eurasian Staff – 82 min fluxorum organum”, which Beuys performed twice – in Vienna (1967) and Antwerp (1968) – he delivered a new, existential interpretation of the cross symbol. During this action, Beuys used a “Eurasian Staff”, a copper rod approximately three meters long with a crook on its end. He moved the crook up and down four felt corners wedged between

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figure 3.4 Eurasian Staff, 1968 (Joseph Beuys) (https://josephbeuysfanclub.files.wordpress.com/ 2018/02/beuys-eurasienstab-1968.jpg). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission

the floor and ceilings of the galleries, which marked out the space of the action. Beuys thus gestured with the staff towards the four cardinal directions, while connecting heaven and earth through the upward and downwards movements of the staff. The title “Eurasian Staff” indicates that Beuys wanted to address the continent of Eurasia in his evocation of East and West. As his action “The Chief” had already made clear, Eurasia was both a geographical and a political space for him. Yet it was also a spiritual space in which Beuys believed various spiritual traditions to be alive: the West was the domain of rationalism and enlightenment, while the East was the cradle of old, intuitive spirituality, such as shamanism, which the West had to rediscover and develop anew. However, North and South also held their own spiritual traditions: the South was marked by Mediterranean culture, which influenced Western culture in particular through Antiquity and the Renaissance. Similarly, Nordic mythology played an important role in Beuys’ work. Thus, pointing the Eurasian Staff in the four cardinal directions alluded to the history of the spiritual hemispheres, while its upward and downward movements connected heaven – the symbolic domain of spirit – with the earth, the domain of matter. At the center of these movements stood Beuys, the artist, initiating this orientation. The crook of his staff pointed back towards him. Depicted as a diagram, these movements produced the form of a cross, which could be interpreted horizontally on a historical level, and vertically on a spiritual one. Historically, humans look back on past traditions and events to glean insights that can help them shape the future. Yet humans can only succeed if they connect spirit and matter together; in other words, if they focus on recognizing material conditions and transforming natural material in new

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figure 3.5 Cross as symbol of existential creativity (Future – Past, Mind – Matter, the Artist in the center) (Carl-Peter Buschkühle)

creations, whether technological, artistic, or cultural. Human creativity springs forth from the connection between these horizontal and vertical movements, resulting both in historical and physical creations. When human spirit recognizes and transforms material conditions, it creates new narratives, informed by historical sources and spiritual and bodily actions. Central aspects of “The Chief” are again evoked by the cross in “Evolution”. The lines of matter and spirit do not only cross one another within the evolution of spirit, but they intersect concretely in every creative act. The extent to which an individual spirit can penetrate history and discover relevant connections, and the complexity of spiritual activities employed in this effort depends on education. Thus, the shape of the equal-armed cross, which appears frequently in Beuys’ work, is a sign for existential creativity. It is therefore no coincidence that the movement of the staff with its crook begins by pointing to the future – existential interest in the past is motivated by care for the future. Yet every present moment is different: it depends on the shaping of given conditions. Thus, spirit is continually challenged to delve into matter, to “hear” its call and bring about various changes in resonance with it. The sign of the cross thus becomes the sign of creative action and the sign of artistic living. The curved lines show that this involves a reflexive relationship in several aspects, a relationship within a “culture of questioning” in which the artist human is the author and active receiver. Thus, the cross as a sign of existential creativity depicts human freedom and alludes to provisions and guidelines for artistic education. To what extent is existential creativity able to move into the past and discover manifold connections? To what extent is it able to induce complex mental activity which critically and productively harnesses the creative powers of both intuitive and rational thought? These questions can also serve as benchmarks for the quality

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of artworks. In the following chapters, they will be a guiding theme for the theory and praxis of artistic education in the context of an existential understanding of art.

Notes 1 Harlan, Was ist Kunst? Werkstattgespräch mit Beuys, 23. 2 For these aspects of thinking (Nietzsche, Adorno, Beuys and others) see Chapter 1, Section 1.2, The Polar Play of Artistic Thinking. 3 For these questions compare: Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Dennis Atkinson and Raphael Vella, Art – Ethics – Education (Leiden: Brill Sense, 2020). 4 Götz Adriani, Wilfried Konnertz and Karin Thomas, Joseph Beuys. Leben und Werk (Köln: Dumont, 1986), 141. 5 Joseph Beuys, Zeichnungen, Tekeningen, Drawings (Rotterdam, Berlin, Bielefeld, Bonn, 1979/80), 30. 6 Carolin Tisdall, ed., Joseph Beuys (New York: Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1979), 95. 7 Poster by Joseph Beuys, 1972. 8 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 59. 9 Tisdall, Joseph Beuys, 95. 10 Kaz R. Brandt, Aleksandar Aksentijevic, Elias Tsakanikos and Michael J. A. Thorpe, “It takes me back: The mnemonic time-travel effect”, Cognition, No. 182 (2019), 242– 250. 11 Postcard by Joseph Beuys, 1977. 12 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Seaburg Press, 1973), 146. https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/theodor-adorno-negativedialectics.pdf 13 Jacquelin Burckhardt, ed., Ein Gespräch – Una Discussione. Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Anselm Kiefer, Enzo Gucchi (Zürich: Parkett, 1988), 146. 14 Kerry Freedman, Teaching Visual Culture. Curriculum, Aesthetics, and the Social Life of Art (New York, London: Teachers College Press, 2003). 15 Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration. A New Theory of Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015). 16 Gilles Deleuze, Postscript of the Society of Control (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 5. 17 Jameson, Postmodernism, 85. 18 Rudolf Steiner, Outline of Esoteric Science (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1997), 310. https://steiner.presswarehouse.com/sites/steiner/research/archive/ outline_of_esoteric_science/outline_of_esoteric_science.pdf 19 Uwe M. Schneede, Joseph Beuys. Die Aktionen (Ostfildern-Ruit: G. Hatje, 1994), 71.

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20 Adriani, Konnertz and Thomas, Joseph Beuys. Leben und Werk, 84. 21 Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 2011), 129. https://www.rsarchive.org/Books/Download/Philosophy_of_Freedom-Rudolf_ Steiner-4.pdf 22 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 56. 23 Beuys, Zeichnungen, Tekeningen, Drawings, 32. 24 Beuys, Zeichnungen, Tekeningen, Drawings, 35, 36. 25 Joseph Beuys, The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland (Basel: Kunstmuseum, 1977), 12. 26 Joseph Beuys, I am Searching for Field Character, in: Carin Kuoni, ed., Energy Plan for the Western Man: Joseph Beuys in America (1973, New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990), 21–23. 27 Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, 79, 80. 28 Robert Filliou, Lehren und Lernen als Aufführungskünste. Teaching and Learning as Performance Arts,(Köln, New York: Gebr. Koenig, 1970), 165.

CHAPTER 4

Artistic Learning through Artistic Projects 1

The River Metaphor

How should artistic education be realized? Obviously, it requires an alternative curriculum; gathering knowledge and gauging success with tests is pedagogically insufficient and inappropriate. Artistic education requires the development of manual skills and artistic techniques, but testing students by giving them practical tasks to solve is hardly in the spirit of art. However, the project method contains many aspects that are closely related to artistic practice. The project method fosters students by allowing them to learn through discovery. Students must take control of their own learning process and use their creativity to approach the problem or project theme. Often, they must make use of interdisciplinary approaches to find solutions. The teacher becomes a facilitator who accompanies the pupils’ journey of discovery and creative learning process John Dewey has shown close parallels between the project method and artistic practice. In Art as Experience, Dewey describes a learning process comparable in many aspects to the one Beuys demonstrates in his work and theory. In the project method, according to Dewey, learning begins with an initial approach to the material, which develops step by step into further insights and experiences, until students identify more connections between immediate perception, research, and production. Going further with the project also means delving deeper into the topic or problem. Thus, students gain knowledge as they experience a process of inner coherence and growth. Dewey uses the metaphor of a river to describe this process: “[…] we have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment”.1 Dewey stresses the importance of closely linking each phase of the project to the next, so that the insights, questions, and experiments stemming from one part can feed into perceptions, research, and results. Each project phase is not in complete harmony with the others; instead, there are tensions, unresolved problems, and contradictions between multiple aspects. The rhythmic tension between particularity and contextuality drives the project forward, allowing its course to become “wider and deeper”. Nonetheless, the project proceeds on a course: there is a direction, and a goal, whether the aim is to generate research results, develop technical products, or create artworks. This aim provides motivation and connects all efforts within the project, bringing coherence to the learning experience. © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424555_004

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The project method, as conceived by Dewey, links closely to Beuys’ extension of time in artistic actions and the “horizontal” line of history on the existential symbol of the cross which connects past and future through creative thought and action. Beuys’ actions are similarly complex, coherent experiences which combine interdisciplinary knowledge with the sensitive transformation of matter into drawings, objects and performances. Beuys’ demonstration of art’s ability to deeply engage with topics and material can also be discovered in Dewey’s descriptions of the project experience. Like Dewey, Beuys stresses the fact that communication and action can be in conflict with one another. But it is precisely this conflict that moves the project forward, allowing a deeper engagement with the topic, and significantly affecting the students’ (self-)education. Confronting new ideas, urgent questions, and difficult problems fuels creativity. Moments of failure and confusion are important, even motivating for the ongoing process. “Struggle and conflict may be themselves enjoyed, although they are painful, when they are experienced as means of developing an experience”.2 Struggle and conflict are elements of the creative process. In Beuys’ theory, initial chaos stimulates research, reflection, and experiments until a form is reached, whether an insight, a solution, or an artwork. Struggle and conflict challenge the student to mobilize her willpower and other abilities to delve deeper into the matter. Thus, struggle is helpful for self-education. According to Dewey, “Individuality itself is originally a potentiality and is realized only in interaction with surrounding conditions. In this process of intercourse, native capacities which contain an element of uniqueness, are transformed and become a self. Moreover, through resistances encountered, the nature of the self is discovered. The self is both formed and brought to consciousness through interaction with environment. The individuality of an artist is no exception. If his activities remained mere play and merely spontaneous, if free activities were not brought against the resistance offered by actual conditions, no work of art would ever be produced”.3 Dewey stresses not only the contextuality and the productive tensions of the project experience but also the quality of the resulting work, which resembles Beuys’ idea of “listening” to an object and bringing intuitive attention to the demands of the artwork. Dewey describes inquiry as an essential part of the artistic process: “[t]he artist embodies in himself the attitude of the perceiver while he works”.4 The artist must carefully perceive the demands of the artwork, just as Beuys expressed. The quality of the work depends on the author’s ability to “listen” to the needs of the work – the requisite knowledge, skills, treatment, or form for making the work become lively and expressive. Dewey continues, “[t]he doing or making is artistic when the perceived result is of such a nature

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that its qualities as perceived have controlled the question of production”.5 Dewey describes the attitude of the artist towards the work as one of empathy and responsibility, which is reminiscent of Beuys’ “warmth-quality” of will or his sign of the heart that characterizes the sculptural movement of creativity between chaos and form. Dewey asserts, “Craftsmanship to be artistic in the final sense must be ‘loving’; it must care deeply for the subject matter upon which skill is exercised”.6

2

Pedagogy in Artistic Projects

Artistic education is realized through artistic projects. The aim of this education and of these projects is to train the mind to think artistically. As we saw, this thinking is understood as creative thought which is not only available to specialized artists, but to “everyone as an artist” practicing the “art of living” in the heterogeneous cultural and societal conditions of postmodernity. From the polarity of Beuys’ artistic thought – poised between intuition and rationality (Element 3) – we differentiated at least five core elements: willpower, personal imagination, critical reflection, empathic perception, and developed skills. When these elements interact, they form a powerhouse of creativity. We will refer to this interaction with the acronym W – I – R – E – S: will, imagination, reflection, empathy, and skills. But what pedagogic qualities does an artistic project evidence? To work out a theory, I drew on experience from two realms: my research on the educational aspects of Beuys’ art, and my work as an art educator in schools. When I was a young teacher, and was researching Beuys, my school curriculum was rather traditional at first. Although Reimar Stielow, who was then a professor for art education at the Braunschweig University of Art and interested in Beuys’ influences on art education, repeatedly asked me to apply insights from my research to my work as an art educator, for quite some time I was at a loss how to do so. A chapter in my dissertation on Beuys discussed my first theoretical findings,7 but at the time I did not yet know how to bring them into the classroom. I began to experiment. During my art studies, I came into contact with Daniel Spoerri, who let his students in Cologne create and organize “eat-art” projects. This gave me some ideas about how an artistic project might practically function in educational contexts. I began to realize artistic projects in schools. I worked at the Gymnasium of the Benedictines in Meschede (a small town in the rural area of Sauerland, east of Dortmund and Cologne), where I still teach today. The projects were carried out in different grades, from the fifth to the thirteenth grade, with pupils between the ages of ten and nineteen. I considered crucial aspects of Beuys’ art and education and

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what practical consequences they might have, then brought my ideas into the classroom and reflected on their results, considering how they linked up with my interpretation of Beuys’ artistic theories. Thus, I developed a pedagogical praxis out of the critical interplay of theory and practice. Finally, I worked out the theoretical elements of the pedagogy of the artistic project and created practical examples of such projects. The structural and operational elements of the project elaborated in this chapter are the result of this interaction between pedagogic theory and practice.

3

Structural Elements of the Artistic Project

3.1 Induction 3.1.1 How to Destroy Creativity: Follow the Rules, or, Do What You Want The beginning of an artistic project is decisive in setting the terms for further learning, experiences, and the development of creative processes. At this point, it is pedagogically important to formulate the task in such a way to give the students a point of orientation, challenge them, and open up spaces for individual research and creation. This can be done through an inductive assignment, which operates ground-up, in contrast to a deductive assignment, which functions top-down. Art lessons often include deductive assignments. For example, a work of art (or a media production) is analyzed, leading to an analysis of form and content, which then delivers criteria for the students’ own work. When, for instance, the style and intentions of an Expressionist work are analyzed, pupils continue their work with an analytic framework which guides their own creation process. Lively and contrasting colors in dynamic brushwork, forms that express emotions through graphic shapes and colors, the composition of figures in the pictorial space – these elements, which are perceived and reflected in the reception of an Expressionist artwork, can be criteria for the students’ creations. Through their own work, students can show that they understood these artistic traits, apply them in their own practice, thus solidifying what they have learned, and vary them, thus creatively modifying the gained knowledge through individual application and learning. For the teacher, this method offers the opportunity to support pupils in the creative process according to the elaborated criteria, and evaluate the results of their work in this respect. This method represents a sensible learning process, but it is more in the spirit of school than the spirit of art. It provides the students with orientation, but the question remains as to whether an artistic encounter with a theme can

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provide new challenges and opportunities for creative learning. Taken to the extreme, a deductive method of this kind can excessively restrict the creativity of the pupils. If they are asked only to follow the teacher’s precise instructions, the freedom to pursue their own ideas and experiments will vanish. My colleague Mario Urlaß, who has contributed a chapter on art education in primary schools, provided an example of a restrictive, top-down assignment: in a primary school in Heidelberg, he encountered an exhibition of around twenty pictures of sunflowers, painted and collaged on blue paperboard by thirdgrade pupils. All of the pictures looked very similar; obviously, the students were not given much freedom to make individual discoveries. Every single picture fulfilled the prescribed criteria, which were derived from the analysis of a sunflower painting by Vincent van Gogh. Instead of encouraging individual creativity, the results look as though they fostered an attitude of obedience. The spirit of this task was hardly in the spirit of art, but more in the spirit of an output- and assessment-oriented curriculum. By contrast, giving students absolute freedom in their projects does not foster creativity either. In this situation, they lack orientation or a challenge. In consequence, learning barely takes place, and the pupils will mostly rely on their preexisting knowledge and skills. Once, I was invited to observe an art lesson in the seventh grade of a secondary school (Gymnasium). The pupils were given complete freedom to create anything they wanted. Two girls next to me drew mice which looked like the popular cartoon “Diddl”. A group of three students – two boys, one girl – cut out a piece of foam, double the size of a shoebox, with small scissors. Shortly before the end of the ninety-minute lesson they carved out a hollow in the middle of the foam block. Then they hastily poured light blue paint into the hollow, and put a piece of plastic foil over it. At the end of the lesson, their classmates selected this work for discussion in the last ten minutes. The class admired the creative solution of making a “lake” out of these materials. Indeed, it was a creative solution. But almost everything went wrong, and the teacher gave no advice during the lesson at all. Does a lake have a blue bottom, like a swimming pool? Does a lake have air under its surface? Do lakes occur on soil as porous as foam? Is a small pair of scissors the right tool for carving into the foam piece? Isn’t it a waste of material to pour half a liter of blue paint into the hollow as a quick solution? If one were to do this in reality, wouldn’t this pollute the lake? Thus, many questions arise concerning the appropriate choice of materials, tools, the resultant form and its relation to the reality of a lake. The admired product was very much an unreflected, simulated object created within the short span of sixty minutes. There was

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no time to gather information and think about lakes, consider materials and tools, and define any representational intentions. In fact, it is a sculptural challenge to create a lake-like vessel which can hold water. The topic of “lake” extends beyond aesthetic, formal, and technical questions of representation. Using materials such as foam, plastic, and industrial paint to represent a lake may provoke reflections on more appropriate, natural materials. This could lead to discussions of ecology and water pollution, which could be a more far-reaching topic to deal with artistically. But seventh-grade pupils should not be expected to discover these questions and contexts by themselves. Here, a teacher is needed to raise questions and give students tasks for research, reflection, and experimentation – the teacher must orchestrate a confrontation that challenges students’ efforts and abilities. Without any sense of direction, creativity may not develop at all (see the habitual drawing of the “Diddl” mice by the two pupils), or risks resulting in accidental dabbling where learning barely takes place or problematic aspects remain unaddressed, as in the example of the “lake”. 3.1.2 Balancing Direction and Discovery Project work should maintain a balance between the two extremes – rigid prescriptions and absolute freedom – which fail in fostering creativity. Inductive assignments should be planned with a mind to the learning conditions of the pupils. They address crucial aspects of the topic. If the students are unable to decide on tasks, the teacher must do so, decide how far they will address the theme, and what pedagogical and creative perspectives they will open up. When students gather experience within projects and tasks, they may increasingly be able to participate in decisions about topics and assignments, and eventually graduate to working independently. In fact, Mario Urlaß’ primary school students reached this point after four years of artistic project work. In the last six months of the collaboration, pupils chose their own themes and successfully developed research and creative strategies.8 Until the students develop this much experience, teachers must decide on tasks, which already determine the framework for possible discoveries, insights, and creative processes concerning the theme. Determined from the bottom up, an inductive assignment begins with the pupils’ conditions and seeks to generate individual approaches as well as common learning concerning crucial aspects of the theme. The inductive task includes theme-related criteria to orient the pupils, is introduced and formulated in a manner that stimulates individual approaches, discoveries, and developments. The example projects in the following chapters will discuss various forms of inductive assignments.

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Experiment

4.1 Learning Processes around the Artistic Work A task that gives the students orientation while challenging them is balanced between freedom and restrictions. This assignment contains enough tension to provoke creativity and give it a setting in which to develop. Certainly, a setting of this kind requires forms of learning different from traditional instruction. Creative learning processes strongly emphasize student activities. The experiment plays a central role in artistic processes which include exercises, research, reflection, and production. This is the case for the learning process in artistic projects as well. The artistic process is centered around the work that has to be created. Similarly, learning in artistic projects is significantly work-related. All activities are centered on the process of creation. This does not mean that learning in artistic projects only happens in the creative process. Artistic projects require incorporating relevant knowledge, such as the reception of works of contemporary or historical art, the analysis of media forms, research into cultural, social, or other fields connected to the given theme. In fact, as the problematic example of the simulated lake showed, artistic work must combine knowledge with creation. The gathered and reflected knowledge is transformed in the creation process. Thus, the students are forced to delve deeper into the theme and to transfer relevant knowledge into pictorial language, since the image is the communicative unit of artistic learning. The following chapter about “contextuality” will outline those aspects further. 4.2 The Quartet of Artistic Learning Experiments shift the engagement onto the pupils. The trial and error process brings about learning completely different from following step-by-step instructions, and gives the students freedom to observe, experience, and develop solutions. On the other hand, some outside support may be necessary if we want to avoid ending up with the same problems we had in the “lake” example. Experiments should be supervised by the teacher who will also initiate them. Thus, we have at least three participants in an experimental artistic learning process: the student, the teacher, and the work. The fourth is the content or theme. These constitute the “quartet” of artistic learning: work, content, student, and teacher. All aspects of Beuys’ art education can be observed in the interrelation of these four elements. Experimental learning in the creative process requires sensitivity towards and responsibility for the work, not only on behalf of the pupils, but also of the teachers accompanying the work process. As students perceive the work’s development, anticipate and confront problems, and offer possible solutions,

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they exercise a questioning attitude “culture of questioning” (Kultur der Frage). Pupils will experience that they cannot do what they want in their work. If they follow their intentions, they risk ruining it. As Beuys said, “the work says what it wants”. So at certain stages, the work may demand an improvement in technique, exhibiting opportunities to use new handcraft skills and media techniques. This could take place through experiments as well. The teacher, as an advocate of the work, may give tasks for such a learning phase. Since in an artistic project, students will want to independently determine their sub-topic and likely also their medium (depending on their skills with certain media), tasks for practical exercise may be necessary for one student, a group of students, or the whole class. The central experiment of the creation process is to express a content in an image. The content may be formal, as in an abstract composition, or it might be a cultural or social theme, as in the two following documented projects, “Head with a Story” and “Kitsch as Art”. As the work begins and develops, the result is uncertain. The creation process challenges all mental faculties: sensitive perception of the form, its aesthetic effect, and its content expression; imagination as pictorial memory and a tool for envisioning possible solutions; critical reflection on the work’s expression, relevant (interdisciplinary) contexts, attitudes towards the form and the meaning it holds; mobilizing the efforts of the will in phases of chaos, uncertainty, and failure, and maintaining the motivation and responsibility to finish the work. The experimental character of the creative learning process in artistic projects demands, provokes, and mobilizes the sculptural movement and interplay of the various elements of artistic thinking. 4.3 Mistakes as Blessings The experimental character of the creation process leads to many “sculptural movements of creativity”, which Beuys summed up with the formula: chaos – movement – form. Without phases of chaos and uncertainty, no creative effort will be made. When everything is clear and the student has only to follow instructions and set plans, there will be no individual research or attempts at problem-solving. Chaos challenges students’ abilities and efforts. It poses a risk if used in school instruction, since solutions are often not found immediately, and there is no advance guarantee that the chosen direction will be successful. In order to initiate a movement in which the pupils are motivated and assume responsibility for their work, perhaps even develop a “loving” attitude towards it and the process of its creation (to cite Dewey), creative learning with its chaotic phases requires a trusting, safe, and supportive classroom atmosphere. Contrary to test-based learning processes, mistakes are not failures in the

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artistic process. Rather, they represent perfect opportunities to learn. Discovering a mistake causes a moment of chaos. At the same time, it challenges students to try again, improve, and change their creation. This is why Beuys once said: “We must learn to understand the mistake as a blessing for the matter at hand”.9 Mistakes are not just learning opportunities for individual students, but also for the teacher and the classmates. The teacher can give support by providing tasks for technical experiments or relevant knowledge, for example, while classmates can give advice or collaborate in a group, especially when some of them are facing similar problems. Unlike the competitive behavior engendered by testing, creative learning processes can foster social learning. 4.4 The Teacher’s Role The role of the teacher in the plastic movement of the work-process can be characterized by at least four terms: initiator, affirmator, confrontator, terminator. When the students are not yet experienced enough to decide on themes and methods on their own, the teachers have to do it. Whenever possible, they allow the pupils to participate in those decisions so that they can gradually learn to make thoughtful and responsible decisions on their own. At first, teachers mostly initiate the project and many of the learning processes. As they accompany the students in their work and research processes, they should affirm positive developments. When problems arise, solutions must be found; if the efforts are not ambitious enough, the teacher has to “confront the pupil with the new”. As Beuys indicated in the example with the “nose” or as the example of the “lake” has shown, quick, thoughtless, or habitual solutions are starting points for research and experiments. This should encourage students to engage more deeply with the topic and the context of their own work. Finally, the teacher must terminate the project by giving out deadlines for certain tasks or the whole work-process. Searching for solutions to one’s work, perceiving, judging, and changing its expression, gathering, reflecting on, and transforming knowledge – those activities initiate creative movements corresponding to the existential sign of the cross: between idea and matter, between history and future possibilities. Those movements lead to the third structural element of artistic projects: contextuality.

5

Contextuality

Artistic projects need time to develop. Following John Dewey’s metaphor of the river which grows as it runs its course, artistic projects require time for

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students to deepen the work-process and widely explore the contexts of the theme. The projects I conduct in school run over the course of half a year, with two hours of art class a week. 5.1 Against “Theme-Hopping” Contextuality has a twofold meaning for the artistic project. On the one hand, it refers to the context of each student’s artwork, and on the other, it refers to the contextuality of the phases in which the project evolves. Art curriculums in schools often follow a peculiar rhythm. Topics are discussed only for a short span of time. In this time, a picture is analyzed, a work realized, and then the next topic follows. Often, the time for the creation process is too short to produce satisfying results. This kind of “theme-hopping” is problematic for an artistic learning process. The time is too short for developing the qualities a work on the given subject matter requires, and the contexts a theme addresses cannot be pursued. Finally, the curriculum exhibits no didactic logic when themes succeeding one another do not relate to each another. After a few lessons of painting, there will be a few lessons on sculpture, and then print-making. After some lessons on comics, students produce a clay figure of an animal, and finally print Christmas cards. How does this curriculum foster coherent learning? Imagine if mathematics were taught in the same way. A few lessons in basic arithmetic operations would be followed by a few classes on algebra and a smattering of geometry. In fact, learning may occur differently in art or mathematics or languages. It is impossible to do higher-level mathematics without solid skills in basic arithmetic. One cannot read literature in a foreign language before having learned enough vocabulary and grammar. Similarly, it is clear that it will not be possible to create complex works of painting without having learned basic skills in color work and painting techniques. On the other hand, there is a certain freedom in the sequence of the topics and fields in art education. Sculpture can follow comics under the condition that students were given enough time to develop the necessary skills and relevant contextual knowledge within each theme. Even then, it makes pedagogical sense to connect succeeding themes in order to develop a broad learning process over years in which skills and knowledge are used in new contexts, transferred, applied, varied, and deepened in new situations. 5.2 Contextuality I: Individual Creation and Inquiries Artistic projects provide enough time to explore relevant aspects of a theme. Learning to “think in contexts”, as Beuys demanded, is one crucial element of artistic learning. While artistic learning is centered on the work-process, it continually requires entering other fields and disciplines in order to be able to

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develop the work to its own satisfaction. From time to time, pupils may need to do individual research into relevant contexts. These issues may be formal or technical problems. Then experiments may help in finding appropriate ways of handling color or improving the expression of a figure. If the theme of the project is a cultural, social, or scientific question, gathering information on certain aspects will be necessary. Within the framework of the inductive assignment, students are asked to come up with individual sub-themes for their work. The challenge of the working process is to transform the acquired knowledge and critical reflection into pictorial language. In fact, there is a constant back-andforth between work and research. Questions, problems, and ideas within the creative process demand research. The results of the research must be analyzed in order to construct relations between different aspects, and develop a personal approach which may inspire further steps in the work-process. Once a solution is found and the process of creation continues, new questions, problems, and ideas may arise and the cycle of research, construction, and transformation begins again. 5.3

Operational Elements of an Artistic Project: Research, Construction, Transformation Research, construction, and transformation are the operational elements of the artistic project. They are crucial elements in the sculptural movement of creation between chaos and form. Each new problem or idea causes chaos, which is an essential starting point for creative endeavors. Research involves gathering information, either online, in books, or through observation of reallife phenomena or processes. Research can also involve experiments with formal issues or problems within a given medium. This kind of a research can be done by one pupil alone if she is investigating a problem within the work-process concerning content or form (often both). It can be done by a group of students who share similar questions or intentions, or it can be a task for the whole class when questions or formal problems arise which demand a sequence of common study. Construction is a necessary step between research and transformation. It involves constructing relationships between different aspects of the inquiry, in which students “think in relations”, as Beuys demanded. Often information from different epochs of art history must be gathered and synthesized, for instance, in investigating influences and changes from older periods to contemporary art or media productions. Perhaps questions must be answered which require scientific knowledge, for instance, on the anatomy of the nose (which Beuys mentioned in the interview on art education), for producing a portrait or a sculpture. A student might need to link together knowledge on

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Baroque portraits, pop culture portraits, and anatomical observation and reflect on these connections with regard to the demands of the own work. But this objective consideration of facts is not enough. The artwork demands a culture of questioning in which the author of such a movement is the active receiver who reflects upon the incoming information, ponders it, forms an opinion, and develops a position on the problem. The artistic articulation is neither objective nor subjective, but rather, balanced between these two poles. Unlike scientific documentation, artistic expression depicts the position of the creative subject towards a theme. This is the specific existential perspective art provides. Nonetheless, an artistic position also depends on the depicted content. The originality of the subject’s position is appreciated, but it is disappointing when it becomes obvious that relevant contexts have not sufficiently been taken into account. Then originality quickly appears superficial, naïve, or arrogant.10 The crucial challenge for the artist is the process of transformation. While research involves observation, gathering knowledge and experience, and construction involves forming relationships between facts and between the author and the facts, these two processes mostly deal with language and words. The process of transformation means transforming ideas, intentions, and content into the language of a picture. The transformation process thus mobilizes all efforts of artistic thinking, calling on the artist to use her perception and reflection, as well as her empathy and imagination. Perception must be sensitive as the work’s developing form comes into focus. Then, the form must be assessed in a complex judgement. On one hand, it is aesthetic, regarding the effects of the form. On the other hand, it is intellectual, regarding the content the form of the work depicts. It becomes obvious that it is always the form that expresses the content. Thus, problems in content arise through problems in form, for example, when the form is unclear, weak, or misleading concerning the content. On the other hand, the peculiarity of the form may suddenly inspire unforeseen thoughts on the theme. The interplay of sensitive perception and critical reflection discovers problems as well as perspectives with regard to the form. But without imagination the form will not develop. Imagination is activated in at least two ways. Reproductive imagination recalls along memories of familiar things, details, and events. Productive imagination generates visions of unknown things, inner images of things to come, future developments of the form. Often, these visions may be vague at first. This demands experiments in form, or for further inquiry into related facts. For instance, if the artist can only vaguely imagine a remembered or an envisioned nose, this can give an impulse for anatomical research. An example of a nose can become a fitting model for the portrait, or it can provide the artist with an impulse to elaborate

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the vision of a specific nose more precisely. Thus, the imagination is of crucial importance for the creation process, but can clearly interact fruitfully with sensitive perception and critical reflection. The sculptural movement of creative learning between chaos and form permanently challenges the will. Getting a good grade doubtlessly also plays a role when students are working on their artistic creations. But the aim of an artistic learning process should be to assume responsibility for one’s own work, develop an intrinsic motivation to elaborate it to a point where it is “satisfied with itself”, where the form is precisely worked out, and where form and content are in a convincing or even inspiring relationship. Students will inevitably lose motivation from time to time, especially in chaos situations. One task of the teacher is to support the pupils to continue their work during these times. As Beuys said: the teacher must look closely at what is going on, and identify problems and needs. Confronting students with the new by giving them certain tasks for experiment, research, or observation may deliver new impulses. The teacher’s individual support can also help, since he can also demonstrate something if useful. Working within groups to solve shared problems can help, as does independent creative project-work in which students take personal responsibility for their work. Practicing personal responsibility provides a good opportunity for strengthening the pupils’ self-determination and will-power. Experiences of success support this and foster students’ motivation. The teacher must be careful that the given tasks can be solved, based on the students’ preconditions, yet also challenge them to make new discoveries. One aspect of maintaining and fostering motivation is to provide enough time for elaborating the work, but not overextend the time invested in one work and one topic. Initiation, affirmation and confrontation are not the only aspects of the teacher’s behavior; work processes must also be terminated. 5.4 Social Learning Social learning can also mobilize the will. When all students work on their own creations, they are challenged to participate and move forward. It can be encouraging to discover that making a mistake or being unable to solve a problem is not a failure but may stimulate the help of the teacher and classmates. Solving problems in groups, undertaking experiments and inquiries together, even occasionally working together on one project in groups can be a motivating experience that encourages each student to feel responsible for his or her contribution to the project. A joyful, confident learning atmosphere fosters motivation for a self-determined engagement. A special question is how to deal with inspiration from others in the classroom. Even if students are given useful advice, they must individually decide

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how to integrate it into their own work. Following instructions is not appropriate if the aim of the learning process is to foster individual creativity and responsibility for the work. The teacher must stimulate the reflection and imagination of the student so that he or she can apply and vary the advice in a personal way, fitting for the own work. Being inspired by others’ solutions is not forbidden in this common creative learning process. But simply copying others’ ideas can be a problem, raising questions of respect and self-responsibility. Transferring helpful, inspiring ideas into one’s own work should happen through personal variation, fitting to one’s own intentions. This issue sheds light on the fact that social learning in artistic projects has an ethical side. One must learn to exercise an attitude of respect towards the efforts and contributions of others, and offer cooperation and help. 5.5 Exercising Critical Faculties Discussions of willpower and social learning lead to the question of the role of critique in artistic projects. Critique is the driving force of creativity.The different components of artistic thought do not only harmonize with one another holistically, but also relate to one another by means of critique. As we saw, empathy can contradict principles of reason; imagination provokes familiar knowledge; empathy, reason, and imagination can be at odds with a reluctant will. Creative solutions emerge from these conflicts and chaotic situations. In social learning processes, critique does not only happen on the personal but also the interpersonal level. In this case, goodwill is challenged in at least two ways: students must prepare to voice critique as well as accept critique. Accepting critique concerning one’s own creations is not so easy. The artist has invested some efforts and is to some degrees showing something of himself in the artwork: manual skills, ideas, fantasies, attitudes. The critic must deliver his comments in a respectful, constructive way, with the intention of supporting the artist. On the other side, the artist receiving the critique must be confident that the critic wants to be helpful, which facilitates productive acceptance. Since critique causes a moment of chaos, it can stimulate mental activities. The critical aspects have to be considered and related to the problem at hand. The critique also requires critical reflection in order to determine whether it is truly helpful and to what extent it should be integrated into the work. Giving and receiving constructive criticism must also be taught in common artistic learning projects. Critique is a crucial stimulus for creativity, but also for developing an ethical attitude of the students by educating the will to respect, trust, and support others. Thus, it fruitfully contributes to the education of a creative democratic citizen, since productive critique is a major means for societal development. Looking back, one can see that an artistic

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project which includes research, construction, and transformation mobilizes and educates the faculties of artistic thought: sensitive perception, critical reflection, personal imagination, and a motivated will. In addition, manual and technical skills provide a necessary bridge between the artist’s emotions, intentions, and imaginings, and their realization in a work of art. The contextuality of the individual work-process gives the students a creative rhythm: the permanent exchange between self-movement into the realms around the work through inquiry and construction, and self-locating in the transformation of the information, experiences, insights, inspirations into the developing form of the artwork. 5.6

Contextuality II: Project Phases and Connections Learning to Build Existential Narratives The contextuality of each pupil’s individual creation process is embedded in the contextuality of the project as a whole. Creating one work on a given subject matter may not constitute a sufficient exploration of the theme. It may well be that one work stimulates students to follow up on their inquiries and make further work. As in Dewey’s river metaphor, students experience that serious engagement with a subject leads to deeper discoveries and a broader framework, in which a quick overview and a random creation are insufficient. Going through consecutive phases of the project exercises a culture of questioning, which is not satisfied with superficial responses, and one’s own narrative abilities. Narration is an existential term, since it refers to the ability of an individual to make sense of various factors that influence and constitute a reality. According to the psychology of constructivism, what we take for real is a construction of many details composed in our minds. Our brain synthesizes sensory stimuli into coherent impressions. Visual, aural, and tactile senses are involved, while emotional, cognitive, and imaginative impulses are activated.11 All of these faculties do not only construct a momentary impression. Memories play an important part as well as desires, curiosity, and the attempt to connect current impressions with elements on the “horizontal line” of history. Connecting the present with the past in order to derive impulses for shaping the future is a form of existential narrative. This narrative is made up of facts and fictions, rationality and emotion. As the existential narration of the individual, it criss-crosses narratives within certain domains and disciplines, as Jean Francois Lyotard notes.12 In fact, we draw on various domains and disciplines to construct meaning and plan our actions. Nature and technology, social habits and rules, cultural heritage, personal experience, actual perceptions – all of these fields come together within personal narratives. For instance, when one observes young people sitting

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together without talking to each other but on their smartphones, one may consider new technology, changes in communicative habits, and the cultural consequences of new media. This spontaneous thought-association already brings together issues from several different fields. If we want to deepen these considerations, discover more connections, or pursue certain problems we have to deepen and widen our understanding through inquiry, gathering knowledge, thinking about relationships, building visions, considering emotions, developing attitudes. Existential narrations are always interdisciplinary, and they mobilize all constitutive elements of thinking – emotion, reason, imagination, and willpower. 5.7 Sequencing Works In artistic creation, narrative activities are enhanced through the goal of producing developed, expressive work on the theme. As Dewey emphasized, the goal provides the project with a direction to flow in and energy to move forward. While a single artistic project takes the artwork as its goal, it may take more than one artwork to explore a project dealing with a certain topic. This topic may challenge the artist to deepen and widen the scope of inquiry and creation, and the first work may provide the artist with inspiration for the next creative process. If we return to Beuys’ example of the nose, we can imagine such a consecutive development of a project. If a student needed to research the anatomy and expression of a nose for a portrait or sculpture, the final product does not necessarily represent the end of the research and transformation processes of the project. This portrait can engender further developments, which drive the narrative forward in related directions. A portrait may inspire the creation of an entire whole figure, which then creates new distinctions in the thoughts and visions concerning the character. This following work involves further research, for example into the history, habits, environment, and life of the depicted person. If the face inspires the creation of a fictional figure, similar questions arise regarding the anatomy of the body, the fashion or function of the clothing, or a certain action the figure performs in specific surroundings that develop the story the picture tells. All of these aspects, which require information from different disciplines such as political, social, and cultural history, biography, and psychology, are crucial and demand new research, reflection, and transformation. A finished portrait may also inspire other efforts. Depending on the character depicted, the following work may not focus on the entire figure but instead examine aspects of this person’s life or personality, or make inquiries into his or her specific social, political, or cultural circumstances. For example, working on portraits of individual migrants or refugees may inspire investigations

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into the reasons for their flight, or into problems of exclusion, integration, and identity in new living conditions. This following work phase may require the use of a different medium. There may have been pedagogical reasons for the entire class to paint or sculpt in the preceding phrase, but once students delve deeper into the history of the figure, other media may be more appropriate. For instance, when dealing with social or cultural problems which are connected with the refugee crisis, photography, videos, political posters, public performances or curated exhibitions are often the media of choice. The project may even expand beyond images or representations and involve collaborations and activities with migrants. 5.8 Deciding on the Course of a Project No project can deal with all aspects of a given theme. Decisions must be made regarding one’s priorities from the very beginning. As mentioned above, the teacher may initiate the first working phase and decide on how the project should develop. Once the students are able to participate in decision-making, they should be allowed to do so. This gives them the freedom to influence the proceedings, but also gives them responsibility for the scope of the project. These common decisions should be discussed between teacher and students, and the students must exercise their own pedagogical abilities. Pedagogical reflection and decision-making not only fosters learning processes, but also increases students’ abilities to deploy self-directed learning procedures. Thus, students can become (co-)creators in project development, and exercise social creativity. Learning does not only occur by means of a curriculum predetermined by the teacher, but instead through a process which can be invented, formed, influenced, and causes certain consequences in aims, methods, processes, and learning outcomes. Participating in this kind of social sculpture is an exercise in democratic responsibility and creativity as well. In addition, the students’ own ability to influence the learning process will foster their motivation. This “quartet” of artistic learning must be considered when deciding how to proceed in the contextuality of a project. The direction depends on the remaining questions and inspirations engendered by the finished work. Here the teacher and the students can discover clues and impulses for the contents and the media which will play an important role in the next phases. The teacher can evaluate the needs of the pupils after the first project phrase phase, and take into consideration what they learned, what problems they had in working with their medium, the extent of their manual skills, and decide on which aspects require further development. The skills and situations of the students thus importantly influence the further direction of the project. Finally, the teachers are an important part of this pedagogic process. They are

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not robots executing set programs which contain all necessary facts concerning the subject matter. The teachers can contribute their knowledge of certain artistic media or techniques, which the students can learn from. However, the teacher’s specific skills should not dictate which medium or techniques should be used in the lessons. The art educator must strike a balance between specialization and teaching a variety of skills which can apply across different media, according to the needs of a given topic and the interests and talents of the students. The final chapter of this book will discuss the requirements for the studies of teachers in artistic education processes. The fact that the art educator is an individual with special interests, abilities, and a unique personality is a strength on one hand. On the other, the art teacher must have a broad set of interdisciplinary knowledge and media skills in order to be able to initiate and accompany a complex project, to make pedagogical decisions within the context of project work, give students new and challenging impulses, and support them as they work within a given medium. The art teachers will choose topics for students they are able to accompany, but they must have a wide field of interests and strong flexibility in order to offer a variety of relevant topics in artistic, cultural, social and other fields, while supporting their students with interdisciplinary knowledge and advice.

6

Polarities as Tensions and Tools of the Artistic Learning Process

The artistic project grows and develops within the interactions among the quartet of artistic learning – work, content, student, teacher. This learning takes place in a continuous movement between chaos and form, where the form may be a research insight, an experience in the process of construction, or a finished artwork. Artistic learning challenges both the students and the teacher. Teachers must demonstrate a variety of skills as well as great flexibility in crafting this complex process. In fact, they must be artists. Leading a class or a group of students through an artistic project is a work of social sculpture. Its complexity gives the teacher opportunities to shape the process. Art as a plastic process takes place through tensions, as does the artistic project as a social performance. There are tensions between various poles of the artistic process, many of which we have seen in Beuys’ artworks: The polarities between the artist, the work, and the (imaginary) beholder, thinking and acting, image and concept, rationality and intuition, listening to the object and focused work, self-movement into the contexts of the work and self-locating in the transformation process. All of these polarities appear in the artistic project as well,

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representing both challenges and opportunities to form the project as it progresses. Teachers, in turn, must be aware of them and have the ability to work with these polarities. 6.1 Open and Structured Projects One particular opposition within artistic projects is the difference between open and structured processes. An open project requires experienced participants with developed skills. In such a project, it is largely up to the participants to decide on the treatment of the subject matter and the use of the medium. Advanced students can perform such a project with less support from a teacher, and professional artists can conduct such a project individually or in groups. In school, or other art groups, open projects will likely be less successful since too many decisions are left to inexperienced participants, and the lack of teacherly support will not help things move forward. As the example of the “foam-lake” shows, leaving the pupils alone to pursue creative processes may not really lead to reasonable results concerning form and content. Structured projects are necessary in which the teacher must strike a balance between individual, independent, experimental learning, and common learning in groups. Necessary skills or knowledge may have to be acquired by all participants in order to proceed to the next phase of the project. This is a further opposition which is an important “tool” for shaping the creative learning process: the opposition between individual work and group learning. 6.2 Artistic Learning between the Language of Words and Images The tension between words and images lies at the center of artistic learning, and is the driving force behind it. Since words and pictures are never congruent, the tension between both is an almost inexhaustible source of conflict and inspiration. The old adage is that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. But the words can never fully encompass the meaning of a picture, while a picture cannot express the same content as words can. Nevertheless, if we want to discuss images, we must use verbal language. Yet the incommensurability of artwork and language has no resolution. Kant describes this incommensurability as an aesthetic idea, which is “a representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking, though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it”.13 While an artwork may call forth many words of description and interpretation, there will always be an “aesthetic difference”14 (to use a term from Bazon Brock), which is grounded in the different language that a picture “speaks”. This aesthetic difference also applies to natural phenomena. We can call a rose a rose but the word designates a flower as an exemplar of a species, rather than pointing to the uniqueness of an individual

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rose before our eyes. That is what Adorno calls the “non-identity” of a thing, which cannot be captured by a term. But our verbal language can build a “constellation” of terms around the thing in order to try to get closer to it, and bring its essential traits into conversation.15 The tension between these two languages, words and images, makes the learning process of art unique. Teachers and students have to switch between the two realms often. Setting assignments, explaining and discussing their criteria; class discussion on given subject matters, individual talks between teacher and students about the developing artworks; asking questions, reflecting on and discussing observations, experiences, information, constructing links between disciplines, research, and the content of the artwork – in all of these situations, the tension between images and words is the driving force of the learning process. 6.3 Distance and Immersion, Movement and Location In this dynamic space, a productive rhythm develops between distance and immersion, self-movement and self-locating. The relationship between operational elements of an artistic project is activated here: the movement between the artwork and its context, research and building connections, which mostly use verbal language, and transformation, which takes place in pictorial language. Not only the contextuality connected with an artwork in production provides polar elements but also the contextuality of the project as a whole. There is a contrast between individual phases on one hand and several interrelated phases which open up different perspectives on the theme on the other. The art teacher must pedagogically shape the process to balance specific activities and emergent questions with the deepening involvement with the work process. 6.4 Certainty and Uncertainty Polarities between work and context, between production and reception, creation and reflection evoke further ones. Students must navigate uncertainty and certainty during the experimental creation of an individual artwork and the inquiry into its contexts. Experimental work requires uncertainty in order to overcome routines, clichés, or prescribed formats. The teachers must initiate situations in which students’ creative powers are challenged, yet also provide the possibility of “rescue” by supporting the pupils through common observations and discussions of the work-progress, through special tasks by confronting them with new knowledge, or through group lessons on aspects of the subject matter with shared relevance. Dennis Atkinson stresses the importance of uncertainty in artistic learning processes. This uncertainty gives the students the chance to develop an attitude of “disobedience” against

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established bodies of knowledge and solutions.16 The experience of (successful) disobedience will foster their confidence in their own creative abilities. In contrast, certainty provides solid ground on which to stand and start new experimental efforts. Researching and reflecting on inspiring facts, practicing technical and manual skills are areas in which certainty can be gained from preexistent knowledge and skills. But in the artistic process, this certainty lasts only for a moment, because the compiled knowledge, observations, and skills must then be transformed into the language of an image, and into the expressive form of the artwork. Artistic learning thrives on the tension between certainty and uncertainty, and the teacher’s job is to handle these oppositions in order to shape the choreography of the artistic learning process. When is independent experimental work necessary and possible? When does the need for individual or group research arise? When is a demonstration helpful, and when and how should a student make a discovery alone? When is it useful to discuss historical artworks or current media images, and when is an intellectual discussion with a group or the whole class necessary? 6.5 Production and Reception The relationship between production and reception – producing work and analyzing artworks – provides a good example for handling polarities effectively to influence the learning process. If an artwork is analyzed at the beginning of a project, it will provide students with many aesthetic and content-related impulses. But how will this influence the students’ independent creative thought and action? It will be difficult not to follow the example of the professional artwork if it exerts a strong influence over the beginning of the own creation process. But perhaps the teacher has certain pedagogic intentions in analyzing an artwork, for instance, understanding a specific artistic position for the topic of the project. If not, beginning with an experiment may be the better choice, while art historical analysis can follow when the students have already developed their work to some degree. Then, they may give more of their attention and curiosity to this unknown piece of art, since they are already dealing with similar aspects of form and content in their works. The artwork will exert some influence, but it will also provide a new challenge for students to reflect on their own creation, modify their intentions, and introduce new impulse. 6.6 Against One-sided Concepts of Art Education The question of whether to start with an analysis or an experiment touches on the difference of deductive and inductive assignments. As already discussed,

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artistic education tends towards induction, in order to promote individual creative thinking and acting. But the different modes of artistic learning do not exclude one another. Rather, they open up a sculptural space for the art of art pedagogy, the sculptural field of pedagogic formation and artistic learning. Preferring and defending one side and ignoring or attacking the other does not lead to fruitful results. Nevertheless, the history of art education and art pedagogy reveals that one method often enjoyed periods of prevalence over the other. In Germany, there was a strong preference for allowing pupils to create art without outside interference after World War II, since the Nazis had used art education as a means of exerting ideological influence over children. The “Musische Bildung” of the 1950s was replaced by the “Kunstunterricht” of the 1960s, which emphasized a systematic curriculum, in which the perception and interpretation of art works became a central pedagogical strategy for guiding student work. While in the 1950s, the emotional well-being and the roaming fantasy of the pupils were highly appreciated, the rise of “Visual Communication” in the 1960s and the 1970s placed a high importance on understanding the inner logic of pictures, and rationally discussing them in perception and production. In the last decade, this tradition, which emphasizes art and media analyses, remains influential and is in conflict with the movement of “Artistic Education” (Künstlerische Bildung). The main objection was that Artistic Education is mainly about creation, and neglects to teach students how to perceive and critically understand images.17 This worldview plays out one mode of artistic learning against the other. This is one-sided thinking; instead, dialectical thinking is required in order to look at the facts more closely and discover interconnections between different aspects. This form of dialectical thinking is necessary to further the public discussion on art education. In the accounts of artistic projects in the chapters that follow, readers will discover that artistic education tries to integrate production and perception, critical knowledge and envisioning creation. However, this is only one – albeit a decisive – polarity of education in the artistic field one should be aware of. 6.7

Educating Existential Creativity through Critical Polarities in Artistic Projects Creative learning must maintain a tension between polar relations. Beuys’ formula – Chaos – movement – form – describes learning processes which challenge students’ abilities to find solutions. Through production and perception, work-progress and contextual inquiries, experiments and group lessons, “individual work and social learning, verbal language and pictorial

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language, the polar interplay of the elements of artistic thought is activated. Perceiving and producing images demands mimesis as well as rationality; pictorial expression mobilizes empathy as well as reflection, imagination, and will power to develop the project skillfully. The tensions between the poles of an artistic project open up energetic fields in which decisions must be made, priorities set, connections and combinations of the poles determined. The polar tensions provide a space between certainty and uncertainty, in which creative learning can occur. Critique is the driving force of creative learning, since critique determines one’s position between these poles and which interrelations to establish between them. Critical choices are choices of self-determination and self-responsibility. The teacher must maintain a critical attitude, acting and reacting sensitively, to let creative learning within the artistic project develop fruitfully. However, throughout the course of their education, the students should increasingly take on a critical attitude themselves – concerning their work in progress, theme-related contexts, their own learning, and the curriculum of the projects as such. This critical attitude, which depends on and develops through the critical relationship between the different elements of artistic thought, reaches beyond the realm of artistic education to inform a creative and responsible existence. As we have seen in Beuys’ idea of art, “every human is an artist” refers to a self-determined subject practicing the art of living in a complex world. Artistic projects foster the artistic education of this existential artist. In the dynamic tension, the sculptural field between various poles, these projects allow students to exercise existential narration, lead independent inquiries, and create meaning and values. The following chapter will give examples of artistic projects to provide insight into the practice of artistic education.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Dewey, Art as Experience, 36. Dewey, Art as Experience, 42. Dewey, Art as Experience, 293. Dewey, Art as Experience, 50. Dewey, Art as Experience, 50. Dewey, Art as Experience, 49. Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Wärmezeit: Zur Kunst als Kunstpädagogik bei Joseph Beuys (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1997). 281–289.

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8 Mario Urlaß, “Teilhaberschaft und Eigenes. Künstlerische Bildung in der Grundschule”, in: MitEinAnder. Zur Praxis einer partizipatorischen Kunstpädagogik in der Grundschule, ed. Andreas Brenne, Christina Griebel and Mario Urlaß (München: Kopaed, 2013). https://www.ph-heidelberg.de/fileadmin/ms-faecher/kunst/ PROJEKTE_GS/Eigenes.pdf 9 Beuys, Harlan, Was ist Kunst? Werkstattgespräche mit Beuys, 37. 10 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, “Dürer as Machine. Transhumanism and Artistic Thinking”, in Art – Ethics – Education, eds. Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Dennis Atkinson and Raphael Vella (Leiden: Brill Sense, 2020). 11 Jonathan D. Raskin, Constructivism in Psychology: Personal Construct Psychology, Radical Constructivism, and Social Constructionism (American Communication Journal, 2002). 12 Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, 18. 13 Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgement, 314. 14 Bazon Brock, Die Re-Dekade, Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre (München: Klinkhard, 1990), 173. 15 Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 132. 16 Atkinson, “Meditation on a Glow Stick: Slow Pegagogy and Ontogenetic Ethics”, in: Art – Ethics – Education, (Leiden: Brill Sense, 2020b). 17 Dietrich Grünwald and Hubert Sowa, “Künstlerische Basiskompetenzen und ästhetisches Surplus. Zum Problem der Standardisierung ästhetisch-künstlerischer Bildung”, in: Kunstpädagogik im Projekt allgemeiner Bildung, eds. Johannes Kirschenmann, Frank Schulz and Hubert Sowa (München: Kopaed, 2006), 286–313.

CHAPTER 5

Artistic Projects as Practice of Artistic Education The projects discussed in this chapter are examples from my teaching in the Gymnasium of the Benedictines in Meschede, a small town in rural Sauerland, east of Cologne and Dortmund. This mountainous region is a popular destination for day-trippers, but it is also a region home to many of the successful midsized industrial companies that fuel Germany’s economy. Most of the pupils of the gymnasium are Germans from middle-class families, with a handful of first- and second-generation immigrant students, mostly Turkish or Tamil. During a school semester I teach two classes, each of which are two lessons totaling 90 minutes a week. Usually, the classes I teach vary from one semester to the next, because in the first year of secondary school, music and art classes are taught in alternation throughout the school year. This means that continuous artistic learning is not possible for the students. The projects often remain single learning units, except when I can teach the same group of students again half a year later. But even then, students must be reminded of what they learned in previous semesters, and review important content in case it is not as fresh in their memory. As a result the projects are structured such that a new class will learn many new things, and a familiar class will need to review crucial aspects alongside learning new ones.

1

Research Aspects

Since I plan and lead the projects, I am an embedded observer as well as a researcher. I use qualitative research methods to seize the lively processes of artistic learning. Bringing together the empirical observations of the practice with theoretical reflections of artistic education requires a grounded theory. I use several different means of gathering and evaluating information. Before the beginning of the project or a lesson, I will sit down with my personal notes and write down intentions, learning goals, relevant contents and contexts, useful methods, and possible ways for developing the project based on the students’ aptitudes and skills. During and after lessons, I note down observations which not only document the processes, but aid in the preparation of the following lesson. An important source of information is communicating with the students. With its goals of personal development, artistic education provides unique opportunities for talking to pupils individually about their learning, © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424555_005

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particularly in relation to the creation process. But we will also have group discussions in class on artworks, media, and texts, and I often talk with groups of students about problems and questions that come up. This provides both me and the students with useful observations and reflections on the learning processes. Occasionally, I discuss learning difficulties and opportunities as well as pedagogical goals and alternatives with the pupils. This gives them the opportunity to think about their own learning process and enhances their understanding of the opportunities and possible outcomes of artistic learning. This also provides me with a good opportunity to hear students’ opinions, get an impression of their learning process and problems, and plan the following steps of the project together with them. In my notes, I can keep track of these discussions. But the sources and references produced by the students are equally, if not more important. Students create a portfolio throughout the course of the project. They have sketchbooks in which they draft their planned or ongoing work, but also collect theme-related images and texts they have gathered through individual research or in class. The sketchbooks also provide a place for reflection – on issues and developments in the work, or questions concerning form, media, and content. This gives students a good opportunity to reflect on observations and experiments, or relate different pieces of information to one another, and make notes on their own problems, opinions, and expressive intentions. These written reflections provide me with useful information about each students’ learning process, and, if necessary, give me suggestions on how to support individual students, groups, or the whole class. Finally, the works the students create are very important in evaluating their learning. Sometimes, one encounters the view that in school, artistic outcomes are not as important as the engagement and effort students made, the joy they felt in exercising their creativity, and the pride they took in what they achieved. This is not entirely wrong, but it also sounds somewhat like an excuse for justifying unsuccessful creative outcomes. Since creating a work is at the core of an artistic project, teachers and students must make a serious effort to develop artworks expressive in form and content. “The work says what it needs”, as Beuys puts it. Artistic learning procedures present the challenges of creating a work, elaborating its form, researching and bringing it into relation with relevant contexts. Artistic learning evolves in the quartet between work, content, student, and teacher. Here the cross movements of existential narration take place: the mind dives deeply into matter in the process of transformation, and moves between past and future in its research and reflections. Not taking the work seriously means not facing the challenges and the opportunities of artistic learning. The resultant works are therefore crucial for evaluating these learning processes. Their form reveals the efforts, knowledge, and skills of the

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students, showing which problems were solved, and which position the students developed towards the subject matter. Thus, the students’ final works are a major source for my pedagogical research on learning in artistic projects. In this chapter, I will describe and analyze two artistic projects of my own design, which I taught in the Gymnasium. The discussion of these projects will be complemented by a project conducted by Mario Urlaß in a primary school class and by an extracurricular project by Christian Wagner. Wagner’s project gathered together pupils in a problem school and had them create a project centered on a crime committed in their circle of acquaintances. I will begin by describing the course of the project, discuss its phases, and then reflect on the project’s structural and operational elements, and where those foster artistic thought. Already during the description in this chapter, I will begin to address these aspects in short comments.

2

“Head with a Story”

This project was conducted in the eighth grade, in a class with thirteen girls and twelve boys, including one Tamil girl and boy. It was the first time I worked with this class. In order to learn about their existing knowledge and skills, I asked the pupils to tell me about their previous art classes. They had attended the Gymnasium since grade five, and had mostly learned basic skills in painting and sculpture. In developing this project, I could to some extent rely on their knowledge of color contrasts, color mixing, drawing comic-like figures, and forming basic animal figures with clay. 2.1 Determining Topic Choice I decided that the topic of the project would be “Head with a Story”. Why? Since it was my first time teaching this group of students, I felt that this topic was general enough to include students without much prior artistic experience. In addition, “the head” is a topic which opens up many possible associations and creative paths. This subject matter allows for immediate observations and creations since the “object” is familiar, and exists in many variations in the classroom. Students can also make many new connections to this theme, for instance, explore portraits of people and characters, or reflect on questions of identity. The head is an object that can speak to many teenage students’ interests and concerns. Choosing a topic relevant to the participants is one pedagogical aspect of an artistic project. But it can also make educational sense to do the opposite and choose a topic which is not closely linked to the students’ experiences and

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interests. It can be very instructive to choose an art historical topic of which the students have no prior knowledge, such as “portraits of heroes in earlier epochs”. Though this historical topic may seem rather distant from the students, it can offer them new insights into the depictions of heroes today, for instance in mass media, sharpen their understanding of a representational tradition, and allow them to discern differences between past and present. Even a seemingly remote art historical topic can have contemporary relevance, and delving deeply into history gives students a greater context in which to understand cultural influences. However, there are themes that may barely connect to pupils’ lives. The teacher must decide on topics in light of their pedagogical impact on pupils who have to be educated for living in a complex world. One condition for failure is to choose topics that are either too specific or remote; another is to set up a topic too superficially. “Head with a Story” is therefore not an accidental title. Rather, it alludes to the fact that there are always many stories circling around the head. As thinking, self-aware, expressive beings, we have a close and complex relationship to our heads. While our personality and individuality is expressed throughout the whole body, the head is the center of attention. We use our brains for thinking, and we use our heads to look at ourselves or others. We are strongly attracted to faces and their ability to express emotion; we say that the eyes are a “mirror of the soul”; and we communicate with our mouths when we smile, cry, and talk. The whole appearance of a head is marked by the experiences and adventures of its owner. Some of the different aspects connected with this theme are the idea of personal or fake identity, heads as symbols, fictional heads or authentic portraits and representations. Drawing or painting a head is an insufficient response to the theme, and calling the topic just “Head” does not preserve enough complexity. The title of the project must already outline and gesture towards the complexity and breadth of the subject matter. Themes can have different modes, of course. The head may serve as an object for formal learning, focused on anatomy and its resemblance to a model. “Head with a Story” puts the head within a wider context and carries suggestions of cultural, social, or political themes. There are topics such as “Abstract Painting”, which place a clear emphasis on formal aspects. The topic of another project I will discuss, “Kitsch as Art”, strongly shifts the emphasis onto content aspects, since kitsch is a cultural, social, and economic phenomenon. Depending on the nature of the theme, the project can begin in a more experimental manner, or begin with preliminary research in which students gather enough knowledge to begin the creation process. The head is a subject matter that invites an initial approach through experiments and perceptions. Engaging with kitsch,

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however, requires research and building new connections between facts in order to reflect on relevant aspects. Framed correctly, all aspects of human life and the world are potential topics for artistic inquiry and transformation. Thus, the fields I work on with pupils in school from ages ten to nineteen and with university students vary. A few examples of projects I have led illustrate the range and various challenges of topics. “Paper as Sculpture” (grade ten), for example, was focused on material and form, whereas “Freedom and Dignity” (grade ten, also outlined in this book) dealt with politics and ethics. Many variations are possible within a thematic field. The project “The Leaf Principle – Bionics” focused on technology and function, while “Fantastic Vehicles on a Journey” emphasized technology and fantasy.1 2.2 An Open-ended Beginning How did “Head with a Story” begin? It began with an open-ended prompt that led to an inductive assignment. In the first lesson I invited the students to draw a head. Nothing more. I gave them no specific criteria or directions. I only said, “Draw a head. You have time, about 45 minutes, so make some effort”. Mostly, the pupils used pencils and color pencils, though some used felt pens too. Everyone drew the head from a frontal perspective, and almost everyone drew faces and heads that resembled themselves. In doing so, they used a number of clichés. All the girls drew heads with long hair. If the mouth was not just a curved “smiling” line, it had lower and upper lips, mostly painted red, as did the boys’ drawings. The students drew the eyes in the most detail, giving them colored irises and pupils, almond-shaped outlines framed with lines, while the girls put particular emphasis on eyelashes. In any case, all the drawings failed at depicting the nose. Obviously, it is not easy to draw a nose from a frontal perspective, so several strategies were used repeatedly. Notably, no one had the idea of using a classmate as a model in order to observe anatomic details; all of the students executed their drawings from memory. After forty-five minutes, the drawings were done. I let the pupils select a few, which I pinned up on the board, and we discussed them. We began by talking about what pleased the students, and then focused in on detailed observations of the faces. For instance, the students discovered that most of the drawings of female heads were rather alike, with their long hair and big eyes. The female students noted that almost all of the girls in the class wore their hair like this. They noticed it was typical for their drawings to emphasis eyelashes and big lips. Both the girls and boys then proceeded to discuss the influence of the media on beauty ideals (say, through TV casting shows), and concluded that this was why these mainstream ideas of beauty played a significant role in the drawings.

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figure 5.1 Spontaneous drawings by students

I invited the students to observe whether the facial details in the drawings resembled reality. The eyes and mouths drawn with the most detail provided opportunities for naming anatomical elements and connecting them to the drawn forms. The completely failed noses caused some laughter, but the students also discovered other divergences from anatomical reality. Almost all had drawn the eyes wide open, with the iris fully visible. We attempted to mimic the eye in this state and found that it was not possible. The eyes open wide when we are astonished or afraid, we discovered when we combined our mimicry with the simulation of these emotions. Usually, the eyelids cover the iris slightly, which led to the observation that eyelids were a detail that some of the drawings lacked. Another astonishing and somehow funny discovery was that the eyes are not located immediately below the hairline, as in almost all of the drawings. We compared the drawings to actual heads using a classmate’s head as a model, and used our fingers to measure the distance between the chin, the eyes, and the top of the skull, in order to find out that the eyes are located in the middle of the head, and not in the upper half. But why didn’t we notice this before? Besides the eyes, all the main elements of the face lie below; above the eyes, there is nothing except for hair. The forehead possesses no striking details, so we tend to disregard it. Nevertheless, it is an important part of the head – behind it lies the brain. But the biggest problem was the nose. I sketched commonly used nose forms on the blackboard and asked the students what the forms reminded them of. Using their imaginative memory, they found better-fitting descriptions: one was like a fishhook, the other like a paper clip, the third like the foot of an elephant. After laughing about these compelling interpretations, we studied the nose closely in order to discover the anatomical details we see in our faces and those of others, but don’t think to notice. It was astonishing how many details the nose reveals upon closer observation: the students identified the nasal wings, nasal bridge, nostrils, and the tip of the nose as different elements.

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Since most of the pupils had intended to show some similarity to real life in their sketches, the many differences between their drawings and the reality of a human head could be understood as mistakes. But in this case, their mistakes were a “blessing” in regard to the subject matter, to use Beuys’ terms. As Beuys explained in his interview on art education in schools, “the little nose drawn by the pupil provides an opportunity for confronting him with something new”, such as anatomical research. It is legitimate to wonder about the pedagogical goal of a spontaneous drawing of a head without any further criteria or requests. A teacher cannot grade these sketches, after all. Students are accustomed for all tasks to be graded. This deeply ingrained notion produces ambivalent results. On the one hand it mobilizes efforts, but the other, this is often a secondary motivation because students’ efforts are primarily mobilized by personal ambition or fear of failure. This fosters an attitude of obedience which is not fruitful if the general aim of a learning process is to develop responsible, independent creativity. I discussed with the students whether the drawings should be graded. They came to the conclusion that it would not be fair, since they had not learned anything which could be evaluated before executing these drawings. The second question was whether this had been a pointless exercise, or whether they had learned something. Since we had gathered new insights concerning the anatomy of the head and face in our discussion, and also about the motifs, which mostly resembled the authors, it became clear that some new knowledge had been gathered through this spontaneous work.

figure 5.2 Sketches of typical nose shapes

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2.3 Random Forms The inductive preparations for the first project phase began in a very openended manner. What could I, as the teacher, now do with the results? The drawings opened up several different avenues for continuing exploration. We could pursue portraiture, or address questions of personal identity and self-presentation through images. I chose something else. Since there were many readily available clichéd and schematic forms, I wondered how to get the children away from them, and engage their imagination in order to discover and develop new, differentiated, and unexpected forms. A rather radical but effective method for shedding habitual concepts is to provoke chaos. In the next lesson, I therefore initiated a chaos – movement – form process that began with the production of random forms. “Make random forms!” was the initial task for the lesson. Again, I gave no special criteria. I asked the pupils whether they already knew methods of producing such forms or structures. They had already practiced some, including “frottage”, drawing with a pencil over a sheet of paper lying on a structured surface, like wood grain, or “decalcomania”, in which one splashes color on paper or a glass plate and presses another surface on it to merge the colors accidentally. They were allowed to use these methods, but were also asked to invent at least one more way to produce random forms. Some dribbled color across a page by blowing through a straw, others discovered structures and shapes on dirty walls or in the schoolyard which they photographed with their smartphones. Some grabbed pieces from a chunk of clay I had put on a desk, and I demonstrated the possibility of throwing a wet sponge against the blackboard, which at first caused accidental water splashes and then, after drying, streaked chalk lines.

figure 5.3 Random form: piece of clay

figure 5.4 Random form: accidentally merged colors

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For half an hour, these experiments were fun, but then the students began to ask questions such as, “Why are we doing this?”, and “What are we going to do with it?” Indeed, what did it have to do with the drawings from the previous lesson? And what did it have do with the “Head” theme, which the students did not know yet? Now we had a series of forms that were completely different from the schemas produced a week earlier. The next task was, “Try to find and make heads or faces out of the random forms!”. We are accustomed to seeing faces or heads in vague structures such as clouds or old tree trunks. Biology and anthropology teach us that this is a heritage of our ancestors whose survival depended on discovering animals or enemies in the wild. Once the pupils discovered facial features, a face, or a head in the random structures, they were to work it out more precisely. They could do so by drawing and painting on the structures, or by making pencil or watercolor drawings in their sketchbooks. At first, it was not easy for the students to find and develop the shapes. Drawing within the structures sometimes led to even more schematic forms, for instance eyes that were circles, or lines that were mouths. We then photographed some structures and showed them on a projector so the entire class could observe them. We highlighted more complex forms by projecting the image on the blackboard and outlining the discovered forms in chalk. We attempted to draw elements on the blackboard beneath the projection, with students alternating the drawing. These demonstrations gave the students new inspiration to continue working on their forms in more detail. The students did so individually but also shared discoveries, gave suggestions, and discussed variations.

figure 5.5  Colorful drawing on random shapes in a sketchbook

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2.4

First Work Phase: Sculpture of a Hybrid Head Pedagogic Decisions Concerning the Task The heads and faces that the students developed from the structures mostly had a hybrid character, with both human and animalistic elements. Thus, the next step in the following creation process was already determined to some extent. The task was: “As precisely as possible, work out the heads you had drawn within the random forms in three dimensions using clay”. This task comprises several pedagogic decisions. The two-dimensional sketches formed the basis for the next task. The students now switched to clay as a working medium because of the three-dimensional sculptural process. This transformation followed the logic of the learning process: the often fantastical heads developed from accidental structures supplanted the previous schematic forms, and replaced them with visions, creatures, and details that could not have been previously envisaged. But as sketches, these heads not yet reached their full creative potential. Turning them into sculptures raised new problems and challenges that led deeper into the subject matter. What had been a more or less roughly executed drawing up to this point now had to be determined more precisely. Each detail presented new challenges, since the form had to become spatial. On top of this, separate details had to be combined within one organic figure, and the junctures between them presented further problems that had to be solved. Since making this sculpture well required further observations, reflections, and experiments, as well as elaborated skills, I decided that all students should use the same material. The class had no experience with other sculptural materials such as wood, stone, or papier-mâché, but they had basic experience with clay. In addition, clay is very flexible, and permits corrections, whereas wood and stone do not. Papier-mâché is not flexible either, and it takes too much time to achieve a differentiated three-dimensional form; wood and stone present the same problem. Since the pupils did not have much experience with three-dimensional work, using the same material made it much easier to solve technical problems together and exercise necessary skills. 2.5 Three-Dimensional Work and Studies of Nature This was now the first work-phase that really counted. The task was explained as precisely as possible to initiate an immersive, far-reaching creative process. Since the details and the whole form of the head were to be realized as precisely as possible, further research and construction of connections was necessary. The rhythm of self-movement and self-locating began since the work demanded closer observation and information which had to be worked into the growing form. The quartet of artistic learning between

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work – content – student – teacher was the central pedagogic constellation in the following lessons. I had many discussions with individual students concerning their developing work, its strengths, its problems, its demands, and possibilities. The sketch was a reliable and challenging jumping-off point for those talks. Students often needed to confront new ideas; for example, by observing natural forms in order to realize details in an appropriate way; performing technical experiments with clay and discovering possible ways of shaping it; finding information on certain anatomic, functional or expressive elements on the internet. What had been a vague or a precise drawing now demanded further perception, reflection, imagination, and skilled work in the process of sculptural transformation. The elements of the two-dimensional hybrid head inspired students to gain new insights in real life, biological studies, and aesthetic representation. This working phase lasted two months, with two lessons totaling 90 minutes a week. This time was necessary for the work, which developed in the rhythm between creation and researching necessary contexts. The pupils could undertake anatomical studies by observing each other’s heads and faces. They could also study emotional expressions if necessary. I also brought in taxidermied animals or skulls from the school’s natural history collection into

figure 5.6 Student’s work on models of a clay

figure 5.7 View of a workspace; sketches and head; clay head

figure 5.8  Taxidermied eagle and skull from the school’s natural history collection

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the art-room. This allowed the students to study certain details. For instance, simply creating a clay roll and putting it on a sphere to represent a horned skull was not an adequate solution for representing this anatomical phenomenon. Natural models allowed us to observe how horns are formed and how they grow out of a skull, or how the “evil eyes” of a predator or a sharp beak can be studied by looking at a bird of prey. These studies of natural forms were not intended for simple copying, but were supposed to inspire and enhance the organic details that the students still had to work out. Occasionally, these anatomic observations led students to conduct further research on the internet, for instance concerning the growth of a stag’s antlers, or the functions of an elephant’s trunk. 2.6

Perception and Production I – Hybrid Heads in Art, Media, and Design The hybrid heads spurred on students to conduct individual inquiries based on the particular demands of the different heads. The creation process fostered each student’s individual creativity, since all the pupils worked out their own ideas on the basis of their sketches. After the heads had already been somewhat developed, I introduced artworks, movie images, and designs into class discussions. I chose to discuss a painting by Michael Pacher from around 1480, “The Devil Shows the Book of Vices to Saint Augustine”, a poster of Orcs from the “Lord of the Rings” film, Darth Vader’s mask, and an advertisement for an Audi. These different images all contained hybrid figures, heads, or faces, with a mixture of human, animal, and machine elements. At the beginning of a double, 90-minute lesson, we spent around half an hour discussing these images. First, we compared Pacher’s painting with the orcs. One week later, I showed students the images of Darth Vader and the Audi. This perceptual and interpretive sequence was introduced at this point in the project because the pupils had already developed their own head-creations to a certain extent, and it was now time to widen our discussions of the topic. Since they had already begun their creative work, the students were not in danger of being overwhelmed by their impressions of paintings and media images. On the other hand, they could now discover that their own efforts were embedded within a larger cultural realm in which hybrid beings play a major role. By comparing these examples, they could identify connections between the history of art and contemporary blockbuster movies and car designs. This gave them new awareness of the role of cultural tradition and history in contemporary life. The pupils realized that images and industrial products have historical forerunners and take inspiration from the past, and that historical art can influence contemporary culture.

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They also noticed similarities and differences between these images and their own hybrid figurations. Thus, not only did they increase their knowledge of the cultural aspects of the theme, but were also inspired in their own work by the images we discussed. However, this inspiration applied to a work that had already developed to a certain degree, so the risk of it exerting total influence was low. Instead, it presented the students with an opportunity and a challenge to adopt certain aspects of their choosing, but transform them according to the logic and the intention of their own process.

figure 5.9 St. Augustine and the Devil, 1471–75, tempera on wood (Michael Pacher). Imago, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, Humboldt-Universität Berlin

We interpreted the scene in Michael Pacher’s painting according to its title. The devil is showing the bishop the book of vices. I gave the students information on Augustine of Hippo, the era of late antiquity, and the role he played in the Christian religion as a philosopher and teacher. I supplied only biographical notes, and we did not delve deeper into these aspects, since our main interest here was the figure of the devil. This we analyzed in detail. The devil appears as a being composed of animal and human elements. It has the horns

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of a ram, large, evil, red eyes, a boar’s tusk protruding from a large mouth, hooves, and dragon wings. In addition, the devil figure is green, has curiouslyshaped ears and – as the class was quick to note – a head on his behind. What were his human aspects? The devil walks upright, and he has hands with which he holds the book. One can see by the devil’s behavior that he is intelligent. He is turning his attention towards the bishop, who appears to be defending himself with a gesture of blessing. The devil presents the bishop with a holy book, showing his knowledge of its relevance to the bishop. The students – who after all, were in a Benedictine Gymnasium – knew the devil as the protagonist of evil, the adversary of God. Why is he shown here as a hybrid being with animal and human elements? We observed that all of the animal parts seemed aggressive, designed to hurt. In addition, dragon wings derive from a mystical creature that is known as a dangerous and unpredictable beast. I added that in East Asian cultures, the dragon has a more ambivalent meaning, and is also a symbol of fortune and power. But Michael Pacher created this painting in the late thirteenth century, at the end of the Middle Ages, when Christianity was the dominant religion in Europe. Obviously, the dragon wings here signify the devil’s ferocity. But the devil is not a dragon; he is more than a mysterious wild animal. If he were only a beast, dragon slayers would try to kill him. The devil is the ultimate symbol of evil because his ferocity is combined with intelligence; wild, untamed nature is connected with spirit. He is not a wild animal, but an evil mind that is unpredictable, devious, and malicious. The devil’s dual character – positioned between wild nature and an evil mind – is expressed in the upright, demonic figure.

figure 5.10 Orcs from “Lord of the Rings” (https://www.welt.de/img/kultur/kino/ mobile145248346/8722501997-ci102l-w1024/Biblische-Spuren-in-TolkiensHerr-der-Ringe.jpg)

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figure 5.11 Darth Vader from “Star Wars” (https://de.pinterest.com/kadeharman/darth-vader/)

The devil is a being that straddles human and divine worlds. It is an ancient tradition, dating back to the beginnings of human civilization, to depict these figures as a mixture of animal and human elements. Totemic figures, for example, bridge the gap between tribal life and the spiritual realm of natural powers and godlike animals. In our lesson, we touched on the Minotaur, a hybrid creature that can be regarded as a precursor for the devil in ancient Greek mythology, a man-eating demon who is a cross between a bull and a human living in the labyrinthian caves of Crete. The students knew about this figure from their Latin and history lessons. But the devil has also successors. We analyzed an image of Orcs from “Lord of the Rings”. Orcs also have animal and human elements, including ugly faces with flat noses, sharp, menacing teeth, evil eyes set back in deep, dark sockets, long, pointy ears, and pale skin. They look like a mixture of men, rats, and the grim reaper. Just like the devil in hell or the Minotaur in his cave, the orcs live under the earth. We discussed similarities between these demonic figures, and what makes them a symbol of evil. The underground habitat of these creatures closely links them to the wilderness and the darkness from where they appear with no warning, attacking the orderly human world. Their combination of aggressive animal and human parts makes them appear frightening and uncontrollable, threatening the fortunes and lives of human beings. Yet these hybrid demons do not exist in reality; they are products of the human mind. Or is there such a being on earth, both wild and intelligent, and possibly threatening? We

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concluded that it is the human being itself who has this dual, contradictory character, both good and evil. These hybrid demonic beings, then, obviously symbolize the contradictory nature of man himself, who can be a villain as well as a saint. The next week, we began the lesson by looking at the mask of Darth Vader, the dark lord of the Star Wars saga. The pupils knew this popular figure, though not all girls in the class had seen a Star Wars film. Some boys quickly summed up crucial facts about the figure, who was at first to the dark side of the force and serving as the leading commander of the Galactic Empire. We analyzed the elements of the head which is black, just like the figure’s body. No face or eyes can be seen. The mask underneath the shiny helmet is reminiscent of a skull because of the big dark eye sockets and the barred “mouth” piece. Oddly enough, the mask is shaped like a heart. All of these elements give the figure a frightening appearance. Because Anakin Skywalker sustains severe injuries in a battle, his body is repaired with machine parts. The mask and technical devices on the breast are technological elements which make Darth Vader into a cybernetic organism or cyborg. His distorted voice, the hidden human face, the black uniform with the boots, the gloves, the long coat and the big helmet, the skull-like mask – all of these elements hide the human body and transform the character into a hybrid creature with a vicious appearance. We discussed his appearance in even more detail. In addition to alluding to darkness and death, Darth Vader’s uniform is reminiscent of a warrior or emperor. The long coat resembles cloaks worn by ancient heroes, priests, or kings. We had a closer look at the helmet. Some boys observed that it was similar to the helmet of a samurai, which they knew from computer games they played. However, they also knew some information about the samurai as old Japanese warriors. We had a look at samurai helmets on the internet and also at the helmets of the German Wehrmacht in the Second World War, which have a similar form. I then added that Hitler’s feared SS troops had black uniforms, black helmets, and that their sign was the skull. Obviously, the creators of the Darth Vader figure had calculated the effect of its appearance rather precisely. In addition to mixing natural and technical elements, the designers referenced Japanese and German war history to create a figure that provoked an immediate emotional reaction and alluded to warriors, emperors, and violence. The figure’s hybrid character thus consists in a mixture of historical fragments – occasionally transformed – and technical and human elements. Animal elements are present too, visible in the skull-like mask, and audible as the villain’s heavy breathing. But these elements remain predominantly technical, given the black shiny metal of the mask, and the sounds of the breathing machine. Darth Vader therefore led us to another, new hybrid figure: the combination of man and machine.

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One week later, we began our lesson with an inquiry into hybrid creatures of a different type. After looking at art history (devil) and pop culture (Orcs, Darth Vader), we analyzed a car design. The front of an Audi does not only evince a functional design, in which all necessary technical elements are in their appropriate place and are harmonically coordinated – instead, the front looks somewhat aggressive. We compared it with the front of a VW Lupo, which has big round headlights and a grill that looks like a smiling mouth. This car looks friendly. Why is that so? For the small car, the designers obviously decided on a friendly look with a smiling “mouth”, for which they copied the pattern of a small child’s face with its big eyes. For the big, fast car they chose the face of a predator as a model. To compare these visual relationships, I showed a small child’s face next to an image of the VW Lupo, and a picture of an eagle next to a picture of the Audi. It is striking to see that the headlights of this fast car are comparable to the eyes of a bird of prey. We imitated this expression by furrowing the eyebrows, and discovered that it appeared and felt aggressive. We found that the Audi’s front radiator grill looked like the bared teeth of a big cat. We also thought that the grill had a broad, mean smile, which explained the headlights’ somewhat evil expression. We discovered why the large car had a different effect on us from the small car. The tiny, underpowered vehicle appeared friendly, while the big one seemed dangerous. We wondered how we would react on a highway if those cars were to appear in the rearview mirror while we are driving in the fast lane.

figure 5.12 White head eagle (http://img.webme.com/pic/m/my-mystic-eagle/adler.jpg)

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figure 5.13 Audi (http://www.hdcarwallpapers.com/walls/2014_audi_rs7_sportback-wide.jpg)

We would smile at the Lupo, not believing that this childish car could overtake us. But the Audi may cause us to change lanes, not just because we know it is a fast car, but because it looks aggressive, like a predator. Car designers obviously use the psychological effect of the car’s front face to express the vehicle’s character. This psychologically impacts other drivers as well as the buyers and owners of these cars. The students laughed when I suggested that one could give the Audi the front face of the Lupo. It was too unusual to imagine such a car, revealing the extent to which we are influenced by product designs which condition our perceptions and expectations. A car is not only a functional thing but an object of emotion, and design strongly influences the feeling we have towards it. We considered for whom these different looking cars were produced. The students quickly suggested that young women would prefer the friendly, childish Lupo, and men the aggressive, big Audi. This brought up the question of prejudices and gender clichés. Girls in the class stated that they would prefer the Audi too because they would like to drive quickly, it was more spacious and comfortable, and they felt it was safer. But none of the boys seriously wanted to consider the Lupo. 2.7 Cultural Embeddedness In these three ninety-minute lessons, the students learned about hybrid beings in art history, pop culture, and car design. They thereby discovered that their own artistic work on hybrid heads was embedded in wider cultural contexts. They learned both about their historical heritage and their relevance to

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present cultural phenomena. When they see that fantastic creatures in movies or industrial products like cars consist of elements with natural and historical origins, they gain deeper insight into the historical conditions of everyday cultural realities. Artistic projects can teach students about cultural history, and ground them in historical and cultural contexts. This allows them to become more conscious of historic influences, and reflect on the development of their own personality through the encounter with cultural phenomena and their historical heritage. In these lessons on cultural history, we did not only learn about the subject matters at hand but also considered different media and pursued interdisciplinary paths. We looked at an historical painting, photographs of movie figures, and industrial product designs to observe the hybrid figurations of man and animal or man and machine. We recognized different motives for these figurations – symbols of evil appeared in religious and fantastic or pseudo-mythological contexts, or were used to produce emotional effects to enhance a product’s appeal. Thus, these lessons did not only delve into the topic’s history, but also revealed how different media portray the topic differently and relate to one another, thus working both historically and across media.2 The disciplines we touched upon were art history, religion, mythology, pop culture, design, economics, psychology, and philosophy. We went as far into these disciplines as necessary to illuminate the traits, meanings, traditions, or intentions embodied within a given object. For the teacher, this involves balancing different polarities. Providing too little background information on the pictures carries the risk of producing superficial observations and insights. Delving too deeply into the art historical, mythological, or psychological implications risks diverting focus from the main direction of the artistic project, which is “Head with Story”. These inquiries into art, media, and design were intended to widen the pupils understanding of the context of the topic, and contribute to their artistic process. 2.8 Visual Analysis and Philosophy Philosophy also played a role in our reflections and talks. In general, visual analysis provides an excellent occasion for having philosophical conversations with younger students. There is no need for them to read abstract philosophical texts which they are still too young to comprehend at this age. But a picture can provide material for developing reflections on the depicted subject matter. In the case of the devil, the orcs, and Darth Vader, observing the figure’s character and the emotional effects of its features inspires reflections that begin with what is visible and develop from there. These reflections do not only involve art history, or the religious or mythological origins of the figure. They can expand into the symbolic realm, and touch on the tension between nature and mind,

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between animalistic, untamed wildness and intelligence. When we reflect on how these fantastic figures relate to ourselves and our own lives, it becomes clear that they are symbols of the contradictory and uncertain character of the human being itself. When the pupils discover that the devil or the orcs show wild, untamed nature combined with intelligence, it is not difficult for them to recognize that man himself is such a being. We can easily see that man can act in wild, violent ways on one hand, and yet develop ethical attitudes on the other. In this discussion, we can draw on individual experience to conclude that these polar parts of our character are not in a stable relationship. Going a bit further in our reflections, we might consider the possibility that each of us could turn into a devil, though we may think ourselves more angelic. Thus, analyzing hybrid beings in art history and pop culture is also a philosophical reflection on symbols, and the ways in which they illustrate human and personal traits. In such a discussion we touch on philosophical disciplines as psychology (functions of the mind), anthropology (the nature of the human being), and ethics (what is good, what is evil, how can the good be achieved and why is the human being can fail or threaten it). A figure like Darth Vader adds more complexity to these questions, touching on the issue of cybernetic organisms, one’s duty under oppressive political regimes, and the betrayal of personal individuality and moral behavior. These aspects can lead to a deeper discussion of the tension between free individuals and political, ideological, economic or technological powers. But in the lesson, we only brought up these aspects briefly in order not to lose focus on our main topic. The Audi and its use of predatory elements also reveals the complexity and contradictory character of human nature, which vacillates between wildness and reason, since the car design is intended to sway the emotions and instincts of the customers. On the other hand, the Lupo’s childlike appearance shows how form can have a mimetic effect and aim at evoking reactions of care and sympathy. In this context, our classroom discussion brought up the point that commerce and advertising always address humans both as creatures of emotion and reason. The design emotionally sways us to buy a strong, big and expensive car, regardless of the reasons against it. Transferring the question of economic intentions to the orcs and Darth Vader, we wondered why they are popular and successful evil figures. They appear spectacular and threatening, but one can observe them from a safe remove, and thus enjoy their appearance, mostly sure of the fact that the forces of good will soon restore order again. 2.9 Second Worh Phase: From the Head to Figures in a Story The three classroom discussions on hybrid figures in art history, pop culture, and car design lasted around thirty minutes at the beginning of the ninety-minute lessons, after which the pupils continued working on their heads. After two

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months of one ninety-minute lesson a week, the students had produced detailed and differentiated clay sculptures of fantastic heads. The organic details were worked out individually, connected to one another, and incorporated into the whole form. The two-dimensional sketches were transformed into rather complex sculptures that developed ideas still nascent within the drawings.

figure 5.14 Student’s works: heads made of clay

figure 5.15 Student’s works: heads made of clay

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figure 5.16 Student’s works: heads made of clay

Students were also inspired to change and adapt the form while searching for solutions for anatomic details or technical problems, researching models on the internet, or in classroom discussions. In total, we devoted six lessons to the clay heads, including the three lessons in which we discussed hybrid figures in art, pop culture, and design. This time is necessary for delving into the subject, confronting practical challenges in the work, and open it up within a wider context. The pupils learned to concentrate on a topic, and became aware that this concentration can lead to a nuanced and developed understanding of the subject matter. During the time working on the clay heads, each lesson supplied students with new problems, observations, inquiries, and solutions. The students had to be sensitive toward the developing form, incorporate necessary knowledge on biological or technical aspects and use their imagination to integrate new information or observations into the form and envision possible ways of enhancing it. The project did not end with these head sculptures; instead, they pointed the way to future developments. These characters only existed as heads, so it was obvious that they demanded a body. But why should these entire figures remain static and inactive? The figures could appear in action, and the context of the action could become apparent through a story. This story would allow certain traits of the characters to emerge, teaching us more about the

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figure 5.17 Student’s work: heads made of clay

conditions of their lives. It became clear how to continue the project. The heads were to generate entire figures, which would act in a story related to their character. When discussing possible ways to continue the project, the students quickly suggested creating bodies for their heads. At first, they drew sketches in their sketchbooks, outlining ideas. These drawings became more precise as the students researched clothing, anatomic elements, and other attributes online. We spent one lesson on the first drawings. In the following lesson, I asked the students to write a short story about their figure, which was to reveal crucial aspects of the character. These aspects should be reflected in the figure’s head, body, and clothes, as well as reveal themselves in the figure’s actions within a dramatic situation. The students had to produce creative writing, again demanding a change of media in the project. A further pedagogical decision had to be made in this case. On one hand, the written story was very important in inspiring the next work phase, but on the other, we did not have much time to devote to the writing. We therefore had a short introduction to story-writing, and used one lesson to develop the stories. At the beginning, we talked about the dramatic arc of the story: the introduction should outline crucial aspects of the characters and their situation, the climax should describe the dramatic action, and the end should reveal the consequences of the action. The students already knew about these aspects of storytelling from their German and foreign language lessons, so we could rely on this shared knowledge.

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We did not have enough time to develop the stories in more detail, and doing so would make for a good interdisciplinary learning opportunity. But school timetables and curricula currently do not allow more time for art lessons or for interdisciplinary collaborations with subjects such as German or English. The pedagogical reason for the story-writing was to create a more precise background for the figures and their action. The students were challenged to imagine the characters in more detail, find reasons for their behavior, and come up with a dramatic situation to explain their action. This gave the students impulses to revise their drawings of the figures, and created the imaginative horizon for the second work phase, in which the figures were to appear in a dramatic action. A character can act alone in a dramatic situation. But it was obvious that this presented a good opportunity for allowing several participants to interact. There was the option to collaborate, and many pupils chose to work in pairs or small groups. They had to negotiate between figures, determine their appropriate roles, their relationships, and the actions in which they would be involved. The stories often benefitted from collaboration because they led to lively group discussions about central aspects of the figures. In order to prevent one person from dominating the group, or another from slacking off, each member had to describe their own figure before the story was outlined, so that the character of their figure could be discerned in the plot.

figure 5.18 Draft drawings of a whole figure

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figure 5.19  Figure of clay, colored

The task of the second work phase was to let the figures appear in action within the story’s dramatic climax. This involved several new challenges which advanced the hybrid heads: the task required not only the development of an entire, detailed figure, but this figure had to be in movement, which required the study of physical anatomy and posture. When several figures interacted, they had to be related to one another, using various props if necessary, and the action had to take place in a particular location in the story. The students had to do research on the internet regarding the body, clothing, props, and the setting. The students used the internet as a source for movement studies, but also used each other as models. For this work phase, the students could choose between several different media for the action scene: painting, digital montage, or animation. The class had already experience with painting and montage. I suggested animation as a possible alternative, in which students could create clay figures and produce a stop-motion film. But because they expected that the moving clay figures or paper cuts would be too complicated to achieve satisfying results, the pupils did not choose this medium. Painting and digital montage offered rich possibilities for creating action scenes, and only a certain amount of research and experimentation was necessary to develop the skills and techniques needed for the intended works. At this point in the project, it was possible to work in different media because the students already had some working knowledge of them, and the choice of medium made pedagogical sense for fostering individual creativity because it allowed each pupil to make an individual choice

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according to his or her preferences, abilities, and ideas. The teacher should be able to easily support students working in two or three media in which they have foreknowledge. Before the work on the paintings and digital montages began, I asked the students to draw sketches of the action scene in their sketchbooks. This allowed the students to gather ideas and to reflect critically on possible solutions. It also allowed me, as a teacher, to obtain an impression of the students’ abilities to create a picture which shows a dramatic action. Surprisingly, almost all failed in their first attempts. Most of the drawings had simple backgrounds, in which the figures stood rather passively, seen from the front, often standing on a ground line, looking like small shapes in front of a large, empty background. There was no action at all. Although the students were used to seeing dramatic action on television, smartphones, or computer games, they were not able to reproduce action in their own creations. They were accustomed to seeing these images, but had no awareness or knowledge of how they function. Confronting this problem required another analytical sequence. 2.10 Lessons on Dramaturgy of Pictures Once again, we began two lessons by analyzing pictures. The first analysis took longer, around 45 minutes, because we discussed two paintings. One week later, we discussed the dramatic strategies of images in popular media. The aim of this sequence was to learn how pictures can portray dramatic action. Without this knowledge, the students would have had great difficulty in finding satisfying solutions to the new task. An alternative would have been to experiment with different means of showing dramatic action. However, visual analysis not only allowed the students to learn about aesthetic strategies of dramatization, but also connected art history with contemporary visual culture. Since the students’ draft concepts differed substantially from the works analyzed, the students needed to transform their observations before being able to integrate them into their projects. We began by examining an image from an illuminated manuscript, “Christ Speaks to the Disciples”. I chose this image because it depicts the protagonists in similar groupings to the figures in the students’ drawings. Obviously, this image did not display the figures naturalistically. On the left side of the image, the artist depicted the group of disciples in two lines, one on top of the other. Christ, who is to the right, is noticeably larger than the other people. I confirmed the pupils’ guess that this was because Christ was the most important person in the scene. There is barely any action in this scene. One can see that the figures are related to each other, because the disciples and Jesus are turned towards one another. The first three disciples lift their hands

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towards Jesus, while he blesses the group with his right arm. The most lively element of the image is Christ’s red cloak, which appears to be blown by a gust of air towards the disciples. Perhaps this indicates the movement of the Holy Spirit. We identified the halo, a common symbol among the pupils of the Benedictine school, as a religious symbol highlighting Christ. In the image, the figures appear as if they are standing on stage. Students noticed that the eye-catching golden background gives the picture a ceremonial atmosphere. I explained that this precious color was used in medieval paintings to symbolize divine space.

figure 5.20 Christ speaks to the Disciples, 1000, book painting (Master of the Reichenau School) (http://www.gwick.ch/Perspe/Pictures/BildDepot/meister%20RS01.jpg)

We compared this image with Caravaggio’s painting, “The Calling of St. Matthew” (1599–1600) (Figure 5.21). This Baroque painting also depicts a Christian scene, but in a completely different manner. It is painted with oil on a large canvas measuring 322 × 340 cm. Two men on the right point at a group of men sitting at a table. We discovered that the pointing man closest to the rear was Jesus, since this was the only person in the painting with a

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halo. But this halo was painted only as a mere line, in contrast to the distinct, rounded halo in the illuminated manuscript. Caravaggio’s painting appeared much more “realistic” than the Medieval image. How was this done? All of the figures were painted in a “naturalistic” manner. Elements that are naturalistic include the color of the faces, hands, and clothes, the facial expressions and postures of the bodies, the room and the things in it, the light and the shadows that create a certain atmosphere in the room. Caravaggio’s painting portrays much more action than the grouping of figures in the medieval image. How is this action achieved? The movements, gestures, and expressions of each person, as well as their relationship to each other, play a major role. Each person is an individual, and each one is depicted with a different gesture. The combined constellation of figures, gestures, and expressions depicts a decisive moment

figure 5.21 The Calling of St. Matthew, 1599–1600, oil on canvas (Caravaggio). HeidlICON – Europäische Kunstgeschichte, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek

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in the appointment of St. Matthew. Jesus and his companion are pointing at the group, their hands emerging from dark shadow, highlighted by bright light falling into the room from the right. This light shines in from where Jesus and the disciple Peter (who is his companion) have entered the room, illuminating their figures and the group at the table like a spotlight sweeping through the dark tavern. A drama is occurring at the table. Three people are looking at the men who have entered. The eldest points at a man sitting at the head of the table, on the painting’s left side. This man is staring down at the table, where coins lie in front of his fingers. He either doesn’t notice or purposefully ignores the guests’ arrival, as well as their pointing gesture. We assumed that this figure is Matthew, since he appears to be playing a special role among the men at the table. He is sitting at the left end of the group of figures. The eye of the beholder follows Jesus and Peter’s pointing gesture, together with the beam of light slanting in, and rests on the sitting man, who is intent on ignoring the scene. We are witness to a dramatic moment in which Christ points at Matthew, choosing him as a disciple, and Matthew, perhaps anticipating that this will change his life forever, pretends not to see the gesture, or refuses to react. We are witnesses to this very moment. In contrast to the manuscript image, in which the figures appeared distant and formally grouped in a stage-like setting, Caravaggio depicts the event from the potential perspective of a tavern guest. When we behold the picture, we stand in its room, close to the figures and the action, looking over the back of a young man at the table. This is how the painter moves the scene close to the beholders and lets them experience the action in a lively manner. We summarized the elements with which Caravaggio dramatized the action in the picture: proximity to action, figures in movement, interconnected actions, facial expressions, atmosphere created through chiaroscuro. In their sketches of the action picture, the students were to use at least two of these aspects, namely, proximity to action, and the related movement of the figures. These were crucial for creating a dramatic action. Depicting facial expressions and using of chiaroscuro were optional since the digital montages used photos of the clay heads, and the students mostly found background elements online. The pupils could work on these details by changing the expression of the clay face digitally or searching for backgrounds with a certain light atmosphere. But the other two elements were indispensable, since disregarding them would result in an unsuccessful attempt to portray action effectively. A week later, we began the lesson by analyzing the dramatic strategies in a comic strip. Once again, the viewer looks at the scene from a perspective in proximity to the protagonists, this time in even greater close-up than in Caravaggio’s painting. Here, we could look into faces or at details, such as a figure’s .

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figure 5.22 Dramatic pictorial strategies in a comic, Roland Deschain Comic

eyes, or a box of cigars lying on the table. The panels did not contain much overt action; primarily, the faces created an emotional effect. We could barely see one man’s eyes because he wore his hat pulled over his face. Only in one close-up could we see one of his eyes glinting beneath the brim of his hat. The other man was also shown at close range, baring his teeth while biting on a cigar. The cartoonist used contrasting light and dark shadows on their faces to emphasize the cool, tough nature of the characters and give them a dramatic appearance. The scene in which the two talk to each other spans seven panels. They used only a few words in their subtly aggressive conversation which appeared in balloons: “Cut the crap, Fury! What’s it all about?” Only the third frame opened up a larger perspective, showing that the two men were sitting in big leather chairs opposite each other at a large table. The setting was a dim hall, with light coming in through many small windows in the walls. In the rear, one could make out “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch. We observed that the cartoonist used similar elements to Caravaggio to create drama. The action was portrayed in even greater close-up, the action was

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even more stressed, while movement was not so important – in fact, except for the one biting on the cigar, the men did not move at all. But this increased the tension between them. They remained quiet, cool, with motionless faces in the twilight, barely speaking. The relationship between the protagonists clearly played a central role in this dramatic plot. The decisive difference between the action in the Baroque painting and the comic strip is that the comic tells its story in several successive frames. This allows for a change in images and emphasis, and switching from very close details or portraits to a view of the whole room in which the situation happens. What Caravaggio put into one painting, the comic outlines in a sequence of images, directing our attention step by step. Nevertheless, the Baroque painting and the comic used similar dramatic strategies. It is clear that the visual means Caravaggio used in the early seventeenth century are still successful today and found in popular media like comics. We looked briefly at film stills and scenes in computer games, and found that they also used proximity to action, facial expressions, and figures in related movements to create a dramatic situation. I told the pupils that Baroque art perfected the art of dramatizing a depiction in order to impress religious issues on people. Baroque art served as religious propaganda in the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants. While the Protestants did not appreciate pictures of saints, the Catholic church did, and promoted art in order to attract the common people, who were mostly illiterate. The strategies of dramatization developed by Baroque artists have exerted a major influence on Western art and visual culture. 2.11 Images of Dramatic Actions The students did not spend much time making sketches for the pictures which would show characters engaged in a dramatic action. Already in the second lesson, after analyzing the comic and looking at other media images, they began to create their works, either in painting or digital montage. Again, the quartet of artistic learning was activated: the work, the content, the student, and the teacher. As a teacher, I observed and supervised the creative process by discussing issues with individual students and groups. We observed the form as it developed, seeing whether it could embody the intention within the drafts. I affirmed ideas and solutions and confronted the students when necessary with new aspects concerning all elements of the work: the bodies and their details, the clothes and props, the movements of the figures and their relations towards each other, the proximity of the action, for which we sometimes used the word “zoom”, and the composition and placement of the figures. Again, the students began to engage in the rhythms of self-movement

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figure 5.23 Student’s work, painting

figure 5.24 Student’s work, drawing

and self-positioning. They had to research missing elements of the work. They mostly used the internet, including the painters, who looked for details which they wanted to include in their pictures. The students also continued to do life studies with their classmates, asking them to pose to show a certain movement or facial expression. They also had to examine objects or natural elements

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which could be used for the picture. The students also needed to research technical aspects of the chosen medium. When several students had to solve similar problems, this sometimes led to group exercises and experiments. They had to learn how to combine different aspects: the figures and their surroundings, parts of the body, clothing, or show the figures’ behavior towards each other. The students had to constructively reflect on the work to combine their intentions, imagined content, and researched details into a coherent narrative and an expressive form. This process gradually transformed ideas, visions, knowledge, and observations into an image. 2.12 Painting Although the painters had some experience in this medium, some aspects had to be relearned. In any case, the pupils all intended to produce a somehow “realistic” painting without “naturalistically” copying reality. First of all, the figures and surrounding elements had to be drawn on the image ground. For this, the students used firm pieces of cardboard ranging from 50 × 70 cm to 90 × 120 cm. While larger figures are more striking than smaller ones, this also allowed the students to work in groups of two to four (the group of four used the largest piece of cardboard). Before the drawing began, the boards had to be prepared with white primer in order to create the ground. Then, the preliminary drawing process already involved certain observations, decisions, and knowledge. To produce a “zoom” effect and show action up close, the figures had to be drawn on the cardboard at a large scale. This required deciding on the size and position of the figures and background elements. The students not only needed to study anatomy, movement, and details of objects, but also construct appropriate spatial proportions and perspectives. The pupils already knew how to do this, so we only practiced this through quick sketches. According to the way we perceive things in space, background elements should appear smaller, while the ones in the foreground could be bigger. The foreground elements could partially cover what was behind them. Geometric elements such as walls or furniture had to obey the rules of three-dimensional perspective. Using color provided different challenges. The students had to create color contrasts in order to produce a picture in which figures could be clearly distinguished from the background, and details could be portrayed in a clear, lively fashion. We recalled that color contrasts can oppose bright and dark, pure and mixed, strong and weak, or complementary colors. We reviewed techniques for applying color: smooth or with visible brushwork, pure or modulated between dark and light, or merging one color into another. The brushstrokes were important for expressing movement within the depicted object. One could use them to characterize the object to be depicted, for instance the

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flowing of water or the growing of grass and other plants. We noted that black contour lines turned the painting into a comic, a mostly unintentional effect. We worked on the contrast of forms and colors to make the elements clearly visible. If contours were necessary, they were often most successful when they were rendered as thin lines in a similar color to that of the figure or form. Surfaces of landscapes, figures, clothes, and objects could appear more expressive if the color was dynamically spread through brushwork and modulated. Adding structures like felt hairs or grass stalks, or adding blossoms to a meadow or patterns to clothing also made surfaces appear livelier. Some elements, such as the sky, demanded further observations. Some of the pupils wanted to paint blue skies in their pictures, yet they did not realize that the sky cannot be rendered as a flat plane. I told the pupils that an actual blue sky is both blue and white, and asked them whether they thought it appeared bright and pale above the head and blue towards the horizon, or the other way around. Many assumed that it was brighter overhead. I asked why, and they said, because the sun is in the sky. I anticipated this because I always ask students when this problem arises, and many give this answer. When they are young and have not yet learned to make art through observations, pupils tend to paint a yellow sun in a blue sky, often positioning the sun in the top left corner of the picture. This naïve habit is one likely reason for their assumption that the sky is brighter overhead. When we go outside on a sunny day or have a look at photographs, many are surprised to discover that the opposite is true. This is a useful insight for their painting, and it is a good opportunity for learning about the physical phenomenon behind this. The haze makes the horizon appear brighter, while there is less scattered light above our heads, so the darkness of space shines through and allows the sky to appear blue on sunny days. 2.13 Digital Montage The painters had to learn to apply color in appropriate ways. These technical challenges were not present for the students making digital montages. However, digital montage presented the students with other problems that required solutions. Most of the students who chose this medium were not particularly familiar with Photoshop Elements. They worked in a computer room located in between the two studio art rooms, which was convenient since they could easily move from one room to another, to gather information, look up things on the internet, or make observations for their work. The students who chose to make digital work began creating their dramatic image in the computer room, located next to the studio room. I began by giving a short introduction to the program in which we tried out useful tools. They learned how to use the magnetic lasso tool and the copy and paste function to cut elements out of a picture and place it into a new one. They often had to change the size

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and position of these elements to integrate them into the new image. For this we used the move and the free transformation tools. The edges of the cut-out elements had to be rendered precisely in order to create the illusion that this detail was a “natural” part of the scene. We used the quick mask tool to cut out elements precisely, and the eraser tool to rework the edges. The clone stamp tool, the dodge tool, and layering translucent colors helped to blend the junctures between details and surfaces. The following lessons were completely dedicated to working on the dramatic scenes. As the teacher, I gave students individual support, advice, suggestions for undertaking practical experiments, and helped them make inquiries regarding content aspects. We had many discussions about the developing works in which we continued to elaborate the story behind the actions and discuss necessary elements for dramatizing a picture. The students often worked together in groups and discussed problems, ideas, and potential solutions together, but they also walked around, looking at the work of their classmates, and occasionally had separate discussions. They were curious as to what their classmates were making and showed respect towards the developing works; often, there was laughter, not because they were making fun of a work but because they had come up with a funny idea concerning the figures or their behavior.

figure 5.25 Student’s work, digital montage

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figure 5.26 Student’s work, digital montage

figure 5.27 Student’s work, digital montage

2.14 Examples of Student Works While the painters brought their figures together in one picture, the digital creators sometimes used a two-picture sequence to depict the action, producing before and after images which showed the peak of an action and its immediate

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consequences. Two boys, for example, created a sequence featuring a tiger, who pounces from behind on armed villain threatening an anxious cephalopod. In the following picture, the tiger has turned the villain into a heap of minced meat, which is being sold for 3,49 €. In order to create this scene, the students had to solve several problems. They had to find two pictures of tigers – one jumping, the other slowly moving away. In addition, they had to portray the figures in appropriate proportions and from the correct perspective. The tiger jumping from behind had to be positioned correctly with regard to villain, and it had to appear smaller at first since it was the most distant figure in the picture. After the struggle, the tiger appeared in the foreground, now large, as it left the picture to the left. The rescued cephalopod turned around to follow the tiger with his gaze. Two girls created an image showing their figures fighting. They photographed their clay heads in the position they required for the opponents to face each other. Then they found different elements to compose their figures: they positioned legs and arms appropriately, dressed them in clothes like leather and vinyl boots, hot pants, bikini tops, and added mechanical elements to the right-hand figure to give it the appearance of a robot. The left figure held a club topped with a purple balloon and wore a headscarf, while the right one sported earphones, a gun, and a backpack that shot up flames. Here, the details of the action were important and required precise work, especially in rendering the hands of the left figure, which clutched the club and grasped at the rival’s throat. The fight between the characters took place in front of a burning forest. The students found many different solutions for showing the climax of an action, each with different qualities. A large painting created by four girls was divided into four parts, each part made by one girl. A tree trunk at the picture’s center gave the story and the image visual coherence. There is a big hole in the trunk through which one can see a city at night. The story goes like this: the protagonists crawl through this hole at night to reach a “wonderland” in which they change appearance and become different beings. The characters appeared in the four parts of the picture but did not interact. Instead, they were depicted in parts of the story, mostly with little action. Three of the figures were shown from the front: one bending the bars of a cage, another breathing fire as a dragon. Only the motorcycle driver flew through the air, clinging to the handlebars of his vehicle. Although the painting did not depict much action or interaction between the figures, its surroundings and coloring were executed with many details. Two girls created a painting with two dragons – good and evil – locked in a struggle, achieving a different overall quality. This painting was full of details,

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the figures were interacting, and colors were used with remarkable variety. The friendly-looking green dragon on the left faced an angry opponent who had flown into the scene from the right. A small fisherman in a wooden boat tried to capture the threatening dragon with a hook on a rope. The spatial construction of the surroundings was rendered with great care. The green dragon was in the foreground, in water. One could see further action underwater: two fish, a shark and a large, green, sharp-toothed fish, faced each other on the right. Two small fish swam on the left, close to the green dragon. Plants and rocks could be seen on the sea bed, while a trident, which had perhaps been dropped by accident, was floating in front of the friendly dragon. The dark and light zones of the brown seabed and the blue ocean and sky were well-modulated. A spiral of a swirl stimulates the dark part of the sea on the right, while a red ringed planet on the left side of the sky counterbalances the swirl. The figures are interacting with each other. The green dragon has turned towards its rival and looks at it, raising its arms in a defensive gesture. The students chose to depict the evil dragon flying into the scene with widely outstretched arms, as if attempting to grab the green dragon. Both dragon figures were worked out in detail. The evil one had bared teeth, red eyes, a black suit, and burning wings. The green one had bright wings and scales, and was wearing trousers, boots, and belts. The girls reimagined their clay heads as lively, colorful drawings in these figures.

figure 5.28 Student’s work, digital montage

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figure 5.29  Student’s work, digital montage

figure 5.30  Student’s work, digital montage

These dramatic scenes were the culmination of the “Head with a Story” project. It was the second intensive creation phase after the creation of the clay heads. The project took place over half a schoolyear, from early September

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figure 5.31 Student’s work, painting

figure 5.32 Student’s work, painting

until the end of January. It was interrupted by two holidays, two weeks in autumn and two weeks over Christmas. At the end, we exhibited the clay heads and the action pictures in the school’s entrance hall.

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figure 5.33 Student’s work, painting

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Aspects of Artistic Education

To what extent did this project contain elements and further the aims of artistic education? The aspects outlined in the theory of artistic projects3 can be clearly discerned in all steps of the project. 3.1 Qualities of the Artistic Project The project is an appropriate method for learning with art. “Head with a Story” contains elements of a structured project, in which group learning and independent learning processes alternate depending on pedagogic needs. The “Head with a Story” project proceeded like a flowing river, growing deeper and wider in its course – a metaphor John Dewey uses to describe the lively and complex quality of project learning. The learning process proceeded through different phases, moving from initial random drawings to detailed pictures of imagined figures caught in action. In so doing, the students accumulated perceptions, knowledge, experiences, reflections, and imagined ideas, and transformed them into original creations. We did not work through the topic in planned, step-by-step lessons, in which the teacher determined the pupils’ progress. The artistic project is centered around the creation of works, integrating all of the activities of inquiry, experimentation, and practice. Since the goal was to foster the students’ creativity, they had to take charge and be responsible for their own independent learning. The role of the teacher accordingly

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changes as the teacher becomes an observer and a helper, who remains aware of the unexpected, and is ready to shape the learning process by encouraging students or by confronting them with something new when necessary. 3.2 Structural Elements 3.2.1 Induction Head with a Story also has the structural elements of an artistic project. It began with an inductive start, in which students began working on the topic by making spontaneous drawings of heads without any prescribed criteria. But examining these drawings already provided the class with clues concerning crucial anatomical aspects of the face and head. The kick-off for the first creation phase was the production and interpretation of random forms. This exercise caused the students to imagine unusual or fantastic hybrid heads. This kind of experimental beginning fulfills the requirements of an inductive assignment. The random forms and the first experimental head drawings shaped the development of the ensuing creation process. They provided the students with inspiration for their hybrid heads, and also gave insight into important aspects, such as anatomic details or human and animal elements. The beginning of this work process allowed for a shared discovery of criteria which subsequently provided the students with orientation and challenges, as well as leading them to pursue individual inquiries and creations, since everyone developed different head sketches from their random forms, which then led to varied hybrid heads. The second work phase, depicting a dramatic scene of a story, was part of the development of the project and the contextuality of its phases. The different heads created by the students inspired the creation of an entire figure. Therefore, the framework for the second work phase was determined by the character of the heads and figures, as well as the features of a dramatic picture. Dramatic elements were necessary for accomplishing the task. Analyzing Baroque paintings and comic strips helped the students understand how a dramatic picture functions. Furthermore, analyzing these pictures provided the students with the opportunity to learn more about art history and its relationship to pop culture. 3.3 Experiment The artistic project contained many experimental phases. The first spontaneous head drawings were already free, open-ended experiments, in which the pupils had to find their own ways of depicting their visions. Creating random forms and reinterpreting them in sketches represented a more targeted series of experiments, since certain intentions influenced these attempts, perceptions, and variations. Creating the clay heads fully launched the students

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into the rhythms of experimental work. This was a task the students had not faced before, and demanded sculptural work that most were unfamiliar with. Since everyone pursued own ideas and intentions, individual solutions had to be developed for various challenges. However, we also worked on shared issues such as anatomic accuracy or technical skills, helping everyone forward. The ensuing creation phases also contained experimental work in the sketches of figures inspired by the heads, the stories inspired by the figures, and finally, within the second intensive work phase on the dramatic scene. In all of these cases, the pupils had to come up with individual ways of creating their work, since they were given no prescriptions, models, or fixed methods to follow. Here, we can discern what Dennis Atkinson calls “an aesthetic of becoming” in regard to artistic work. Atkinson makes a case for “cultivating ‘vectors of risk and creative experimentation’ in pedagogic work that might surpass present constraints in a bid to lure such work to ‘unforeseen possibilities’”.4 In the process of becoming, students were challenged to realize their own works independently. Both the students and the teacher, had to be aware of the unforeseen and the unplannable in the creation process. This awareness was necessary for perceiving and appreciating the unpredictable, immediate outcomes of the student’s artistic practice. This involves the “confrontation with the new” which Beuys claimed would foster the learner’s mental flexibility and liveliness. In order to react productively in situations where something new occurs in the work, students and teacher must learn to accept uncertainty and appreciate the unknown. This attitude is disobedient towards established forms of practice and inherited habits and patterns, according to Atkinson.5 Disobedience is necessary for allowing new inventions and developments to happen, and for adapting one’s practice to as yet unknown, but potentially significant developments. On the other hand, knowledge of established forms of practice and the traditions of art and media history provides the artists with insights and experiences that can inspire new individual developments in experimental work processes. In this case, disobedience involves a critical stance towards traditions in order to develop one’s own creative path departing from manual skills or historical issues. Once again, artistic learning exhibits a polarity: the creation process comprises both the immediate appearance of new, unforeseen elements, as well as the critical consideration and transformation of traditions, knowledge, and experiences. The clay heads were shaped by many spontaneous discoveries during the work process which modified the ideas contained in the sketches and transformed the sculpture’s form. On the other hand, they also involved the direct observation of live models, and information researched online. The dramatic pictures also generated many new ideas during the working process:

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the students followed spontaneous inspirations that arose from the growing form, and took note of its unplanned appearance, its demands, and new avenues of development. On the other hand, they also variously integrated their studies of anatomy, clothing, tools, nature, architecture, and their knowledge of dramatic aesthetics into their individual creations. The experimental artworks involved the students in artistic behavior and communication present in Beuys’ actions as lessons on artistic thought and action. Many polarities are involved in these processes: the aforementioned contrast between the unforeseen and tradition, between inquires and spontaneous attempts, between having the courage to try something new and trusting in existent strategies, between following one’s own intentions and listening to the demands of the growing work, to name but a few. The challenge to work independently provided by experimental work repeatedly caused the sculptural movement of creativity between chaos and form, as in Beuys’ diagram on “chaos – movement – form”. Moments of crisis are normal within the creation process. Suddenly, the artist will not know how to continue with the sculpture or image. Something is missing, but it is not clear what. The form is not satisfying, but why? I may not know how to handle this technical problem or lack knowledge of a crucial aspect. These moments cause chaos at first by confronting the artist with a lack of orientation or a problem. This challenges the artist to find solutions out of this situation. At first, this is a question of motivation and mobilizing the will (the “warmth quality of will”) to carry on. Different solutions must be found and attempted. Experiments concerning the form may help. The artist can undertake technical experiments concerning the media and technique, make sketches of alternative form-aspects, or create chaotic forms that may inspire unexpected visions. The artist can also undertake systematic research in books or online, make natural observations, or ask the teacher or classmates for support. At the end of these individual and shared efforts (of social learning), the artist may find new ways to develop the form. This dynamic movement stimulated by situations of crisis, chaos, not knowing and searching for solutions develops the students’ creative agility, “kneading them out” (Beuys), and activates their mental abilities. This represents an alternative learning path that contrasts with formalized methods with input – output orientation and operationalized learning steps that seek to provide success in test-based assessments. 3.4 On Assessment The assessment of an artistic project should take into account all of the aspects of the work process. However, all efforts, insights, imaginations and realizations flow into the final work. It is unacceptable for a teacher to say that the

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final work doesn’t matter so much, but that the engagement of the pupil is decisive. In fact, their efforts will be revealed in the final work. In order to achieve a satisfying result, the quartet of artistic learning must be fully activated: the artwork must be developed according to its demands (Beuys: “The work says what it needs”); students must make contextual inquiries on the content; they must be engaged; and the teacher must demonstrate engagement and competence. There are clear requirements for art teachers who accompany artistic learning processes. The final chapter will discuss this further and consider the path of study and qualifications for becoming an art teacher. The qualifications of the teacher determine to a large extent the quality of learning concerning the development of the work’s form and the theme’s content. The art teacher must do advance research on the theme for the artistic project, and must be an artist in his or her own right. Without experiences in artistic issues, the teacher will be unable to provide adequate support for creative processes. This applies not only to technical skills in certain media, but also supporting the students in the experience of artistic creation with its phases of chaos and flow, inspiration and effort. The outcome of these artistic projects should be subject to a differentiated assessment. One aspect that must be assessed is student engagement in group lessons and classroom discussions. The portfolio, with its sketches, written inquiries, and reflections, documents the student’s working process and is thus a source of assessing this process. Finally, the work or works mirror these efforts and are a crucial factor in assessment, since the procedures of the project are centered around the students’ artworks. The criteria elaborated in experimental drafts or group study represent a challenge as well as a point of orientation for the students and the teacher during the process, and thus they are part of the final framework for assessment. This allow the students to participate in their own assessment, whether by reflecting on their work individually, in classroom discussions about the work process, or in discussions with the teacher. Once a project is finished, students are often eager for feedback on their work. They deserve fair and nuanced feedback which touches on all aspects of the project. It is not fair, then, to give only good marks at the end, since this would not adequately reflect the various works, nor the students’ varying levels of engagement and achievement. Equally, no one should be punished because of a lack of artistic talent, though it is obvious that talent does often produce good artistic results. This is why it is important to evaluate each student’s engagement with research, his or her reflections on questions and content, and his or her efforts to create the best possible work. Students are largely able to

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determine the quality of their work. If a teacher gives only good grades for fear of hurting the feelings of pupils – who have, after all, invested themselves in their artworks – they risk devaluing the evaluation process: good pupils will not feel appropriately acknowledged, and less sucessful pupils may be happy but will know that they did not deserve their grade. In both cases, the teachers risks lowering the motivation of their students and losing their respect. It is a ritual in school to give final grades. But these grades are only the final expression of a complex process in which the aforementioned aspects of assessment play a role and in which the teacher and the students can openly and transparently discuss the results achieved by the artistic project. 3.5 Contextuality I – Around the Work The experimental creation of the heads and the dramatic pictures can yield situations of intense communication between the student and the work. This takes place when the pupils are concentrated on their work, and delve into the developing form, its expression, and demands. This kind of artistic communication is akin to that of Beuys’ attitude in “The Chief”, where he lay between the two hares wrapped in felt, immersed within the situation, stretching out time through empathy and concentration. The work – its matter, form, colors, and expression – becomes the sender, and the student becomes an active receiver who “listens” to the work to stimulate empathy, imagination, and reflection. Perception slows down; superficial impressions yield to slow, considered observations. This process overcomes the distance engendered by superficial sensations and theoretical encounters. Perceptions, thoughts, and actions are no longer externally stimulated by rapid-fire sensory stimuli, mental habits, or media products, and become sites of self-determined activity and attention. While this deepening into the work is a process in which the students selfposition themselves, it also occasionally demands the opposite: moving out of oneself into realms of inquiry. The rhythmic movement between experiment and contextuality is significant for the creative work – whether this involves working with a particular material, experimenting with a formal problem, or working on cultural topics such as “Head with a Story”. The contextuality elaborated by the work can be represented by the symbol of the cross. As we saw in “Eurasian Staff”, Beuys used the cross to mark the movements of artistic narrative. He used the copper staff to point to the existential dimensions of human existence: past and future, mind and matter, with the artist (or every man as existential artist) at the center. The work on the hybrid heads and the dramatic pictures demanded these contextual movements too. Beginning with the work, its formal demands, and the questions, problems, and ideas it raised, students conducted research and integrated new

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observations and information into the pictorial language of the artwork. The head, as we saw, demanded research into the anatomy of the face and head, as well as various animals. In order to situate the heads within wider cultural and artistic contexts, we had classroom discussions about paintings (the devil in the painting of Michael Pacher), pop-cultural images (Orcs, Darth Vader), and design (the Audi in comparison with a bird of prey). As we discussed the hybrid beings and their imagery, we discovered aspects of the human character symbolized in those beings, representing fear and power, evil, animalistic instincts, thus addressing aspects of psychology and ethics. In the dramatic pictures, the students had to study human movement and landscape elements. Psychological, emotional, and ethical aspects had to be studied to create the characters, imagine their behavior, and produce vivid facial and bodily expressions on the figures. Some historical research was also helpful for setting the story in certain times and places. In group lessons, we looked once again at art history in order to get impressions and gather information on dramatic strategies of pictures (Ottonian book painting and baroque scenes in Caravaggio). Looking across media, we rediscovered baroque visual strategies in comics and video games, thus recognizing the contemporary relevance of this heritage. The questions, demands, and inspirations engendered by each work allowed students to delve into and develop the context. This process was undertaken both personally by students doing individual research, and in group classroom inquiries led by the teacher. It allowed students to encounter both the present and the past. Analyzing art historical paintings clearly involves diving into history, but discussing comics and computer games also involves knowledge of the contemporary relevance and use of older visual traditions. In this case, existential narration can build bridges across centuries of visual culture, thus introducing students to the history within contemporary media culture. Historical research thus contributes to the pupils’ understanding of contemporary cultural identity. It is also an encounter with the past when students study nature, whether by looking at human heads and faces or animal details for their hybrid heads, or examining a landscape to create the environments for their dramatic pictures. Researching architectural elements also introduces them to the history and the construction of various buildings. In the context of the individual artworks which are at the center of the artistic project, student research, whether undertaken individually, in small groups, or in shared lessons, moves into different disciplines: art history, popular media, biology, anatomy, psychology, and ethics (or philosophy), to name a few of the dimensions of the “Head with a Story” project. This interdisciplinary research considering the history of nature and culture is undertaken with a mind to the future: a future marked by the artworks which are to be produced. The

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artworks deliver impulses for research and for constructing relations between information, impressions, and observations. Just as with Beuys’ Eurasian Staff, the movement of the staff comes from the future and reaches into the past where its curved peak links the movement back to the artist and receiver, who listens to what past phenomena have to say at present. Perceptions and knowledge must be reflected, judged, and selected with regard to the needs of the ongoing work. 3.6 Contextuality II – Phases of the Project As can be observed in the “Head with a Story” project, contextuality in artistic projects also refers to the succession of project phases. The rhythm of creation and contextual inquiries continues over the course of the project, deepening the pupils’ understanding of the theme. From the first spontaneous drawings of random forms to initial head drawings, analyzing hybrid creatures in art history, pop culture, and design, to envisioning an entire figure according to the head, writing a story with characters in it, depicting a dramatic scene from this story in painting or digital montage, and applying dramatic visual strategies derived from Baroque painting and comics – these project phases pedagogically built on one another by addressing different aspects of the theme and by using different media. One phase logically followed from the preceding one, producing a narrative logic to the project. This is not a logic imposed by the teacher. A project in artistic education is an artwork as well; to paraphrase Beuys, “the theme says what it needs”. The inherent logical progression of hybrid heads to entire figures and dramatic sequences inspires the development of the creation process. Hybrid beings in historical and contemporary art and media allow for the observation of historical and current images. The need for knowledge of dramatic aesthetics led to the analysis of Baroque painting, and engendered knowledge which then could be transformed and used by students individually. This form of contextuality reveals that the encounter with a theme opens up different aspects, reveals different layers of meaning, and is related to various disciplines. Students also learn that they must exercise responsibility in order to remain engaged. They require motivation and willpower to go on and discover further relations connected to the development of the work at hand. Beuys wanted artistic education to teach students to “think in connections”. This occurs in the contextual movements of an artistic project, which are both fed by each work’s individual development and by the phases of the project, which, in Dewey’s vision, should flow and develop like a widening, deepening river. It is worth recalling that the contextuality of project phases always relates back to the dimensions of existential narration. A constant exchange

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between mind and matter occurs within the creation processes. The artwork’s development is driven by the intentions of the author, and formal issues which demand research, reflections, and imagination. The encounter with art history and pop culture contributes new perspectives which must be considered for the future development of the work, and so on. 3.7 Media Narrative Using different media in an artistic project not only gives students a chance express themselves in different media, but also involves certain creative possibilities and limitations. However, a work in one medium can inspire a successive work in another. Finally, the relation between several media can push the understanding of a topic forward by highlighting different aspects and perspectives. Thus, one can distinguish media identity, media inspiration and media contextuality as aspects of media narration in a project. 3.8 Media Identity Each medium has its special traits and possibilities. It is necessary to take those aspects in consideration in order to use the medium appropriately during the course of a project. Drawing can be a rapid, simple medium for developing ideas. Sketches, which can be used for developing and communicating ideas, can be completed quite quickly. On the other hand, sculpture is a slower medium. It requires time and care to use the material and elaborate the form. Because sculpture produces a three-dimensional work, it requires the artist to observe and create precise details, relationships, and transitions among formal elements. However, although sculpture can create a very precise form, it is not a medium which easily allows for the depiction of action against a backdrop. Here, painting or digital montage offer more differentiated possibilities. That is why I chose those media for the different stages of the “Head with a Story” project. Each chosen medium offered appropriate creative possibilities for the individual phases of the project. Since each medium offered different possibilities for creation, students learned the different affordances of each medium. 3.9 Media Inspiration Because each medium has its specific affordances, work in one medium can inspire a continued creative encounter in another medium. Drawings of heads can provide impulses to work out shapes in three-dimensional sculptures. These can inspire entires figures which appear as characters in stories. Sketches of figures and written dramas give impulses for a picture that shows

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a particular dramatic scene. The achievements of one medium can flow into another, which can develop new aspects of the theme. 3.10 Media Contextuality This leads to media contextuality: the movement between different media, each expressing new aspects of a topic depending on affordances, develops an interrelation between media which is a crucial tool for developing the narrative and contextuality of an artistic project. Working in different media does not only allow for more differentiated means of depiction; it also engages perception, reflection, and imagination in different ways. A drawing does not express the same things about a head as a sculpture. Three-dimensional forms offer insight into the anatomic and expressive form of a head that a two-dimensional drawing cannot. A painting enables an artist to depict a dramatic scene by using colors and portraying the figure’s movements and emotions deliberately – if the artist-students can master the skills required. Digital montage allows these things as well, but through different means. Creating a figure from collaged details and fragments is slightly quicker, and produces a result which can appear rather realistic and may consist of a bigger variety of collected and transformed details. Painting, however, involves more skilled work with one’s hands, and thus allows for more spontaneous and expressive depictions. Each medium offers unique creative possibilities, and thus interrelations between media can decisively influence the ongoing creative work of the students, deepening their encounter with the topic. The sequence and interrelation of media is a major pedagogic tool for developing the contextual narrative of an artistic project. 3.11 Meta-Reflections on Media and Reality The affordances and perspectives given by each medium also provides opportunities for discussing the epistemological implications of each medium with the students. This learning opportunity reveals that our experiences and concepts are shaped by the media they come in, and that reality is not stable but depends on the way we look at it. Reality – and truth – are obviously relative. A change in medium leads to a change in perception. This can inspire reflections on the advantages and deficiencies of media used to encounter an object or theme. It can also lead students to the insight that our knowledge and our experiences are dependent on and influenced by what media may “tell” us, and that we should therefore use them with a critical and informed attitude. This insight can be gained by analyzing and discussing various media products. Furthermore, in artistic projects, students themselves are “telling stories” in various media and thus can experience themselves as authors of a reality

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dependent on their personal ideas, perspectives, and intentions. Media contextuality in artistic projects takes place in various respects – in the perception and analysis of artworks and media images, as well as in processes of creation. Both of these perspectives are integrated in the deepening and widening course of the thematic encounter. 3.12 Transformation All considerations of the topic’s contextual relations must finally be transformed into visual language. This occurs through a seemingly contradictory process. To some degree, the artist’s mind must relinquish cognitive operations and instead foreground imagination. The more knowledge is to be depicted, the higher the risk that a less inspired, lively artwork may result. Instead, the artist risks creating an image that is a mere illustration of a thought, a copy of a model, or the application of a technique. Observations and knowledge gathered in contextual research provide inspiration for the artwork. In the transformation process, they must be combined with the logic of the developing form. This form will often not readily encompass new impressions of an anatomical model or knowledge of an historical figure. Rather, it will demand variations, so that the new impressions can be incorporated into the work’s existent form and intentions. The transformation process is somewhat paradoxical: on the one hand, it requires contextual inquiries, yet on the other it rejects direct adoptions so as to leave the formal relations and the contextual intentions of the work undisturbed. When the artist and the artist-student assumes responsibility for his or her work, the work process becomes an existential situation. The author is eager to accomplish the work. For this purpose, he or she makes great efforts to learn new techniques, exercise manual skills, gather new knowledge in different fields, and confront him- or herself with new experiences. This process occurs not in order to get good grades but to create something of one’s own, to achieve something desired in future. This is the existential situation of care that Heidegger calls the basic orientation of human life.6 The human being relates to the past in order to care for his or her future. To do so, man is forced to adapt his knowledge to master the challenges of the present moment. The creation process of an artwork exercises this existential creativity in the form of play, since it takes place beyond the existential needs and threats of everyday life. In the art process, the forces of creativity can roam freely, curiously, and boldly experiment to producing something new and unpredictable. The uncertainty of an open-ended situation that must be mastered by means of creative abilities often produces fear in real life, but can be experienced as joyful in the play of artistic production. Thus, this artistic creation process can foster creative

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aptitudes more than everyday encounters. There is more time, more concentration, and more leisure to exercise one’s perception, reflection, and imagination, which we have already understood as basic elements of artistic thinking. 3.13 Education of Artistic Thinking 3.13.1 Sensitive Perception While engaged in the transformation process of their artworks, the students had many opportunities to exercise sensitive perception, which involves both sensual, emotional, and also intellectual engagement. Sensitive perception is necessary for attentively observing attentively the form of the hybrid head in its different phases of development. Perhaps the facial expression is not satisfying; the form is not complex enough; the anatomical elements appear superficial; the horns look different; or something is missing around the eyes. This concentrated perception combines with a feeling of the form’s expressiveness to give impulses for further work. Intellectual reactions are already involved in the act of perception. The student may first perceive that the eyes are too simplistic by means of a gut feeling, but may also recollect the details of the eyes. The impulse to study anatomical details is an intellectual decision, based on the insight that something is not yet adequate and requires further research. The imagination is already active in this complex situation too: recalling the anatomical construction of an eye requires activating the “inner eye” and one’s imaginative capacities. The imagination then moves from recollection to envisioning a new head made from human and animal elements. In the case of the figures in the dramatic picture, sensitive perception also forms the basis for further activities. The elements constituting the figure are not yet distinctive enough. The action it performs is not yet clear or striking enough. Why does the other figure in the picture look more convincing? – “Classmate, please perform a certain movement so I can study it!” These questions also demand sensitive perception in order to study the body’s position or portray it in a more convincing way. Perhaps the colors chosen for the picture do not yet create the desired atmosphere. Changing them slightly can produce a better result, more in tune with the student’s intentions in portraying the story’s climax. Again, perceiving the artwork’s developing form produces emotional and imaginative reactions and stimulates intellectual reflection. – “It doesn’t look like this character is helping someone or defending himself. What should I do?” Imagination activates memory, but spontaneous gestures performed with one’s own body also allow for informative self-observation. If the defensive gesture is supposed to look peaceful, how does it differ from an aggressive defense? This is an intellectual consideration derived from the intended appearance of the figure in the action scene. Once again, these

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questions may lead students to conduct experiments or research with models and images. Sensitive perception is the basis for almost all activities in the artistic project, whether mental or physical. The students exercise sensitive perception as they consider their artwork, observe models or other natural phenomena, and look at other images. They may be compelled to do so through their classmates’ comments or through a task set by the teacher. Sensitive perception is also cultivated in group lessons analyzing art or pop culture images. The students are further trained in sensitive perception by going on excursions or visiting museums and exhibitions perhaps related to the project topic. Encountering an original work further sensitizes perception: the pupils can experience the difference between the reproduction of an artwork and the original work in its material presence, with a perceptible aura. 3.14 Critical Reflection Artistic perception is not ordinary: it is curious, attentive, and critical. Sensuous attention is immediately combined with an empathetic emotional reaction towards the sender or object of focus. But artistic mental activities do not end with this interrelation of perception and emotion. More superficial and sentimental encounters with artworks tend to end at this point, as do mere aesthetic encounters interested in the experience of the form, the colors, the atmosphere, and the expression. However, the artistic encounter is sensitive with respect to creation. It remains curious and tends to delve deeper into a phenomenon and situate it within broader contexts. Thus, artistic perception remains critical, and is not fully spellbound by the aesthetic effects of an experience or an artwork. It is therefore also critical towards emotions. Artistic perception may enjoy becoming excited by an aesthetic experience, but sooner or later, it also moves towards more critical questions: what is happening in this artwork, how is it made, and what exactly is provoking my emotions? Perception and empathy thus initiate critical reflection. As in Beuys’ diagram of artistic communication, in this process of reflection the attentive receiver listens to the sender, while the communicative flow reverses at its peak and points back to the active receiver. This is literally a reflection. The artist does not only observe an object, but considers the effect of the object on herself. This self-positioning involves an awareness of the objective qualities perceived, as well as an awareness of one’s own emotional reactions. Yet gradually, it expands into a consideration of facts and contexts. What begins as curiosity may develop through the artist’s creative attitude into a critical encounter. In the case of the hybrid heads, the critical encounter provoked questions concerning the form. Feeling that the facial expression is not lively enough,

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or that the head still lacks detail, or that the structures are still superficial resulted in further reflections to find out how to fix unsatisfying aspects. These reflections, in turn, lead students to question their preexisting knowledge. At first, students may rely on experiences and memories, but if these prove insufficient, they will have to conduct further research by observing models or pictures. This can lead to more extensive research on specific topics. For example, if students must undertake research on the shapes of horns, they will need to learn about different kinds of horns, and perhaps about the organic growths of horns from the skull and their function. This information must then be appraised to decide whether it is helpful for continuing work on the head’s form. At this point, imagination will play a major role, but it is not only a question of expressing a form, but also of producing a head with the correct intended character and symbolic meaning. These aspects are not only aesthetic but also intellectual and contextual, and require the cognitive procedures of knowledge, memory, and reflection. Intellectual activity is required in perceiving artistic or pop cultural works. Analyzing the figure of the devil in Michael Pacher’s painting goes beyond initial perceptions of the form and emotional reactions. Students must delve deeper to ask why such a figure has been invented. Why did Pacher choose to combine these particular elements? What are the animal details like? They all appear aggressive, contributing to the evil and threatening appearance of the creature. What does it mean that the devil walks upright and is obviously intelligent? He appears far more threatening than a wild animal. Then the inquiry continues even further. In which tradition is the devil located? What is his history? What does he symbolize? These are questions that touch on aspects of Christianity and philosophy. The devil is a hybrid being, exhibiting both animalistic ferocity and cunning intellect. This represents the contradictory character of man, caught between instinct and intelligence. Thus, considerations of the devil lead to discussions of art history, religious history, and to anthropological and ethical reflections of man. In the three steps of this analysis, one can discover the three steps of the interpretive method developed by the art historian Erwin Panofsky: empirical perception, iconographic, and iconologic interpretation. In contrast to a merely receptive encounter with an artwork, an artistic encounter in the context of an artistic project is integrated within and motivated by the creation process. This artistic encounter is thus characterized by futurity, since the artistic encounters may come to prove significant for the artistic work of the students. When we encounter an artwork, we may want to enjoy an immediate aesthetic experience in the present. If we learn more about the artwork by focusing further on its content and context, we may

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also acquire knowledge that can influence our own attitudes, convictions, and values, and can thus influence our future thought and action. When this analysis is done in the context of a creation process of a personal work, it is part of an existential engagement that attempts to achieve something new. Reflection becomes more oriented towards the artist’s own position towards the picture’s form and content. These will be related to the artist’s own efforts, and thus gain a personal value that requires critical consideration to combine new input with the previous achievements and intentions of his own creation. Thus, the devil or his great-cousins, such as the Orcs or Darth Vader, should be considered in their appearance and in their symbolic meaning. But once they are related to the hybrid head creations, their form and content must be considered critically in order to link new input to the logic of the already developed form. Similar things occur in the case of the dramatic picture of the figure. One cannot simply copy Caravaggio’s aesthetic strategy for dramatizing the appointment of St. Matthew. The aesthetic effects of the strategy must be understood, but then transformed according to the needs of the artwork. 3.15 Imagination Sensitive perception and critical reflection are not sufficient for creating something new; if the imagination is not engaged, the student will have no idea as to how to continue the creation process of the work. If the student decides that her head requires a horn, she must also be able to envision what kind of horn it should be, where it should be placed, and what proportions it should have. At first, these imaginings are often vague, but give impulses for experiments or for research. The student could sketch several horns or make different models out of clay in order to let her idea become clearer. Likewise, researching various horns on the internet or looking at anatomical specimen can produce the same result. The student must once again exercise her imagination in order to transform these sketches into a horn that may fit the formal context of the artwork. To decide whether this aim has been achieved, she must bring attentive perception and critical reflection to bear on the new detail, and observe its formal effect to compare the actual result with her intentions. Adding a horn to the hybrid head is only one of many examples of how imagination forms a crucial part of creative thought and action in artistic encounters. It is easy to see that students also require imagination to interpret blotches of color as traces of a face or a head. They must also use their imagination to create a whole figure based on the hybrid clay head. Imagination is a central faculty that must be used in coming up with a story for the figure.

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This story, in turn, provides students with inspiration to imagine the dramatic situation that shall be depicted. Imagination is the future-oriented faculty of creative, artistic thought. While attentive perception and critical reflection come to bear on present and past, imagination tries to envision future possibilities. It is our “sense of possibility”, as Robert Musil put it.7 In Beuys’ cross representing the existential dimensions of human narration, imagination is the force that opens up visions of the future. In fact, these ideas are barely possible without impulses from history or present encounters. Memories, experiences, and knowledge influence our visions of future possibilities; present observations can lead to unpredictable, spontaneous ideas. Thus, the creative process functions aske Beuys indicated with the curved line (and in “Eurasian Staff”): its movements begin in the future and dive into the past, then turn back to the author or attentive receiver, who carefully listening because he must master upcoming challenges. Because the artwork stands at the educational center of an artistic project, the challenge to create the work mobilizes all efforts of artistic learning. Each pupil must create a personal narrative and produce something that is not yet there and that has yet to be realized. Thus, the future of the not-yet-achieved provokes all efforts and organizes all activities in this enterprise. All new observations and new knowledge must be integrated into this future-oriented personal enterprise. Instead of memorizing knowledge for a test, artistic learning requires transforming new knowledge into a personal vision, a self-determined narrative. Thus, imagination is much more engaged in artistic learning than in cognitive learning processes oriented primarily towards formalized assessments. While in these rationalized procedures, learning involves using past imparted knowledge for momentary success on a test in the present, in artistic learning, all accumulated knowledge and experiences spur on a future transformation in one’s own artwork. Students must develop their own attitudes towards things they have researched and learned, build relations between relevant aspects and disciplines, reflect and evaluate crucial issues with respect to their own intentions, transform their own intentions when they encounter new information, and use their imagination to envision how to transform this information in the context of their own work. Because of the work that has to be done, artistic learning is future-oriented. It is doubly oriented in this direction: on the one hand, the needs of the work point toward future developments, while on the other, the future is the realm into which the growing river of the project develops. The contextuality of the project, the interdependence of its phases and elements produces a development that culminates only in the finished, final work. In both cases, the uncertainty of the future is a provocative, exciting, and sometimes bothersome force.

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It is not clear how the personal work will be finalized until the last act is over. Thus, it remains a constant challenge. Uncertainty is therefore a significant force in creative efforts in the case of project development as well. Teachers must be aware of all ongoing processes, and keep track of the needs of pupils or the whole group. It is just as challenging to foresee the finished artwork as to anticipate all the stages and movements of a creative project. Minimizing this uncertainty requires creating as many controllable steps as possible, yet this results in learning procedures that operationalize and evaluate all learning step with regard to the defined goal. These learning processes do not lend themselves well to fostering creativity, as Mario Urlaß’ example of the identical sunflowers in a primary school shows.8 Instead of curiosity and joyful discovery, the fear of losing control prevails. In fact, a future-oriented artistic work process provokes the “sculptural movement” of creativity between chaos and form. In order to move through the chaotic phases, the art teacher must have artistic experience as well as experience and knowledge of the project theme. The teacher also needs to be artistically and pedagogically imaginative to give pupils new ideas for their works or for the whole project. Then, chaos can transform into a potentially fruitful situation that can produce something new, unexpected, unplanned. This can offer students new opportunities for developing the form of their artwork or engaging in contextual studies. 3.16 Willpower The will is challenged by the creative rhythm of chaos – movement – form. In order to finish their heads according to their intentions and the unforeseen demands of the work, the students had to motivate themselves to be persistent, and assume responsibility for their work in order not to give up too early. The teacher is an important source of motivation and support in this regard. When the pupils have problems with their hybrid heads or their dramatic picture, the teacher is faced with the pedagogical challenge of not giving simple solutions which only require the students to execute them, or leaving them alone with the risk of failure. In the first situation, students’ personal creativity is reduced to almost nothing, while in the second, their motivation may collapse because they cannot find a solution. In this situation, the teacher should positively affirm what the students have already achieved, but also use the “confrontation with the new” to renew curiosity and motivation, since it opens up new avenues. This confrontation may involve researching useful information, observing an instructive object, or undertaking formal experiments. Another important aspect of motivation is assessing the appropriate length for a task or a work. It requires time to fulfill the demands of an artwork, and challenges

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and educates personal responsibility. But the teacher must recognize when the work is done, or when sufficient research has been done to broaden the horizons of the project, and the students must focus again. 3.17 Creative Critique A creative act does not develop purely out of harmony and satisfaction with what is going on. Passion for the work can be motivating but in phases of chaos, this passion diminishes. Here, critique becomes the driving motor for the creative project. Self-critique is necessary in order to achieve good results, which in turn requires the self-awareness to notice one’s own problems. Once a student has observed his lack of motivation or willpower, he can make efforts to overcome this state, either by his own means or by asking for help. Similarly, it is important to critique the work in progress for it to develop optimally. This critique requires sensitive perception of the existent form, reflection and imagination for finding solutions, but this critique will not happen with the appropriate intensity without willpower. Critique of the work and self-critique go hand in hand and are essential for a creative process that takes the work seriously. Such an attitude inspires the sender – receiver relation Beuys outlined for attentive and engaged artistic communication. Teachers, classmates, or colleagues can also give critique on artistic projects. This challenges the student’s personal will in accepting external critique. It is important to learn to accept critique, though this is not easy since every work is the personal expression and achievement of an individual, and personal efforts and failures stand at the center of the conversation. Only constructive critique can support the author and foster the work process. Learning to productively accept critique, and give critique in a respectful and supporting way, are opportunities for constructive personal growth, mobilizing the “warmth quality” of will as a motivating force. These moments of critique are also moments of social learning, in which ethical impulses for thought and action are developed. The creative, transformational force of critique relates to all four parts of the artistic “quartet”. Self-critique, critique of the developing work, critical conversations between teacher and pupils, and the critical reflection and discussion of content is required within the creative. However, if the work is to expand in many possible directions and realize unforeseen potentials, there must also be a critical interrelation between the mental faculties involved in creative, artistic thought. A student can only perceive the failures or weaknesses in her hybrid head if she is attentive and motivated. If students are not motivated, feel little responsibility for their work, and exercise uninterested, superficial perception, they will accept superficial solutions and short-circuit the process of creative learning. Developing sensitivity and empathy towards the form

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can mobilize critical perceptive efforts to emotionally critique the state of the work, the quality of perception, and personal motivation. By reflecting on contextual aspects, students can critique the forms they have achieved and determine where they are still lacking. The head may not yet look as intended, certain details are missing or not yet convincingly developed. Imagination is required for envisioning possible alternatives. So far, the mental faculties have been collaborating. But once a vision captures the imagination for no particular reason, and it contradicts the author’s original intentions, there is a critical conflict between imagination and reflection. Yet this very conflict promises opportunities for discovering and realizing new possibilities. In this moment, imagination critiques the inflexibility of the intention, and the influence of acquired knowledge hinders the experimental development of something new. On the other hand, once the results of the experiment are critically reflected and compared to the author’s intentions and the already existent form, they may run contrary to the imagined visions. Not only does cognitive reflection critique the imagination, but also emotion. Now that the experiment is done, the artist can evaluate how the form appears now, and recognize that he is unhappy with the results. Emotions can also oppose the influence of knowledge or original intentions when the artist feels that their influence has harmed the liveliness of the form. Then, this emotional critique forces imagination and reflection to take new initiatives and find alternatives. Emotional critique concerning the state of a work is deeply linked to intuition, since intuition, as we already outlined, appears to be the momentary cooperation of different mental faculties, expressed as a spontaneous emotional reaction. If an artist reacts emotionally to his work, accepting or rejecting the achieved form, experience, knowledge, and imagination play their parts in order to stimulate the reaction. If the artist does not have experience, insufficient knowledge, or a lack of imagination, he will have different intuitive reactions, or none at all. This mutual critique exercised by the various mental faculties spurs on the rhythm of chaos – movement – form essential to creative development. Critical perception builds a bridge between artist and work. Perception appears once more as the epicenter of artistic learning; the sender constantly critiques the activities of the creative receiver until it is finished, “satisfied with itself”. The work is the “strange attractor”9 that propels artistic learning forward and requires the rhythm of self-positioning and self-movement between working on the form and integrating external knowledge and critique. 3.18 Intuition and Flow However, the work is also the energy center that suspends all criticism and conflict and may produce a “flow” of creative action. Mihály Csikszentmihályi

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characterizes the experience of flow through following aspects: an intense and focused concentration on the present moment, a merging of action and awareness, a loss of reflective self-consciousness, a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity, a distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered, the experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience.10 In the context of artistic psychology, this self-forgotten and concentrated creation process is likely dominated by intuition. We already characterized intuition as the momentary interaction of many mental forces. If no serious problem disturbs or disrupts the flow and causes chaos, perception, emotion, knowledge, cognition, and imagination can interact fluently. No one faculty dominates or hinders the subconscious exchange between them. If one element were to become prevalent, this intuitive interaction would cease and the conscious dominance of one element would prevail. Artistic education focused around the artwork trains us to use our intuition and think deeper than in the cognitive operations predominantly addressed in educational programs. Working in a flow on the hybrid head is not an unconscious action. The students must be actively aware of what they are doing and the effects they are producing, as well as of their emotional reactions. They must also maintain active knowledge on their intentions, the anatomic elements, the technical and manual skills, and use their imagination to find inspiration for continuation. However, this does not have to occur in a clearly outlined and reflected process, which would prevent the flow, but can happen in a preconscious, sublime manner. This intuitive work flow can produce an aesthetic able to discover new creative paths that cannot be planned or taught, but emerge organically from the artistic process. Precisely this process produced many of the formal solutions for the heads and the dramatic pictures, which went beyond any plans, intentions, and drafts. 3.19 Educating Existential Creativity 3.19.1 “Is Intelligence Necessary for Art?” The “Head with a Story” project was an example of an artistic project which could show how and to what extent artistic thought and action can be nurtured in such a learning process. Further empirical research should be done, such as a systematic inquiry into pupils’ experiences, reflections, and opinions concerning the learning procedures and outcomes. We did not use interviews or questionnaires for this purpose in this project, but instead held a final discussion once the project was done. In a reflection on the learning process and topic, I discussed with the pupils not only what we learned by producing the works, but also asked them what abilities they used and exercised in the process. It was astonishing to see how readily the students could reflect on their

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own activities and experiences in the project and pinpoint the mental activities used in these processes. An alert pupil provided us with the starting point for our discussion by asking, towards the end of the project, “Is intelligence necessary for art?” This question points to two aspects: on the one hand, students in school normally do not reflect on the skills they learn and use, but instead focus on tasks and subject matters. On the other, they typically learn that intelligence has primarily to do with rational thinking, memorization, and cognitive analysis of contents. Aspects of artistic creation that involve perception, emotion, or imagination are not usually considered elements of intelligence or learning processes. We discussed what abilities we used to create the clay heads and develop the dramatic pictures. We recalled that rational knowledge was necessary, which we gathered in group lessons analyzing artworks or other pictures, observing natural objects, or searching for information online. We only had to look at the finished works and remember what efforts were necessary to create them. Reflecting on this, we discovered that neither the heads nor the pictures would have reached their final states without a sensitive and critical perception of the forms. Emotions were recognized as important too: as emotional reactions to the developing work, and as a feeling for the expression of faces, figures, actions, or atmospheres. It became clear the students had used their imaginations since they had all created something that had not yet existed and thus had to be envisioned and developed in many stages. From time to time, this challenged their willpower and motivation. And it was clear that manual and technical skills were necessary and had to be exercised in order to achieve intended results. By examining the question of intelligence in the overall light of the project, the pupils gained insight into the mental activities brought about by the creation and perception of images. They thus expanded their understanding of the different kinds of intelligence. Beyond the cognitive intelligence required in school, other forms of intelligence exist and are crucial for mastering creative tasks: perceptual, emotional, and imaginative intelligence, which we discovered were clearly activated and educated in artistic contexts. This discussion developed into a metacognitive reflection on the project and its educational merits, thus giving the pupils new insights into the educational value of studying art. In fact, the educational potential of artistic projects reach far beyond the learning process within these projects. These project dealing with certain topics, ranging from formal experiments and material transformations to cultural, social, and scientific contents. Learning procedures in or outside school always have an exemplary character. As the next

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chapter, which discusses the different ways of conducting an artistic project, will show, artistic learning centered on a creation process will always address all aspects of creative thought in creating a narrative on a subject matter. Educational contexts can challenge and exercise artistic thinking in a playful way. This space for play opens up beyond the challenges of real life and its existential problems. This free space provides the opportunity for experimental procedures where trial and error are possible, where the unknown can be faced with curiosity rather than fear, and mistakes are possible but are not fatal. In contrary, they can be fruitful for learning more about the object and growing in one’s own abilities. In this space free from real-life problems, thinking about topics, imagining possibilities, perceiving the world, and cultivating empathy can take place in an easeful, inspired setting. 3.20

Forming the Social Sculpture – Ethical and Political Perspectives of Artistic Education The fields of ethics and politics exhibit the existential need for the creative abilities educated comprehensively in artistic learning. Both are fields in which an individual’s education impacts social life. Once again, Beuys’ concept of the “social sculpture” is a relevant reference: “every man as an artist” participates in the social sculpture, and artistic education can prepare the individual for the challenges of self-determined behavior in real life. If ethical behavior is to be undertaken responsibly, it requires artistic thought and action. An ethical problem or situation requires a culture of questioning (Kultur der Frage), not an attitude of ideology or domination. The artistic relation between sender and receiver exercises a culture of questioning, since the other – the person, the object, or the situation – is regarded as “non-identical”, and respected as something that cannot be fully understood through general concepts. The sensitive resonance of the active receiver is required for perceiving the particular characteristics of sender, and the receiver must then decide how to react. Thus, each particular ethical conflict calls for sensibility, reflecting relevant aspects, and imagining possibilities and consequences, all motivated by the will to observe, understand, and act appropriately. Since every situation is unique, ethical behavior cannot be determined by preexistent moral principles alone. Relying on principles risks leading to amoral behavior, or indifference. Ideologists and fundamentalists tend to regard all people, objects, and problems as subject to political principles or religious prescriptions, without giving any regard to the uniqueness of the person or conflict in question. Ideology and indifference are two ways of escaping the challenge of responding to the unknown and adequately reacting to the particular. If someone wishes to respond adequately, he or she must first ask themselves what the particular challenge is. Moral, political, or

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religious principles will not suffice. Sensitivity and imagination are required as well, and they will likely be in conflict with moral principles. Once more, the critical relationship between our mental abilities provokes a creative response to a challenge. Principles and values are good for providing moral or political orientation, but they often will be in conflict with the particularity of a situation. Then, existential creativity is demanded for finding appropriate solutions to the problem at hand. In order to do so, we have nothing less at our disposal than perception, empathy, imagination and reflection. However, we must be attentive to exercise all these forces of existential creativity. By playfully exercising these abilities in theme-related and work-oriented artistic projects, artistic education aims to develop the individual, her personality, and her social aptitudes. Existential creativity comes about through the critical but productive collaboration of all mental faculties. Chaos – movement – form, the sculptural principle of creation, also occurs in confronting ethical, social, and political problems. As the basic principle of creative action, it must also be mastered in economic contexts: inventing new products, developing successful business strategies. But it would be short-sighted to see art education only as a subject which can foster pragmatic creativity. Though this may be the case, industries, companies, and business networks are constantly confronted with ethical and political issues, since they exert massive influence over societies, politics, and the lives of ordinary citizens. Let us recall Beuys’ use of the red rose to symbolize an artistic society. The roots of the rose are in the “mental life”, in which culture and education feed the citizens with knowledge and experiences, and foster their abilities. The stem and leaves are the “juridical life”, which provides organization and rules for turning ideas into reality. This realization takes place in the “economic life”, the blossom of the flower, where all educational, artistic, scientific, and political efforts emerge through the people’s labor, which transforms material conditions into goods. The means of production and the quality of the products are evaluated by more criteria than success on the market. Products facilitating the lives of consumers, working conditions that respect the needs of the employees, strategic aims that are oriented towards social responsibility instead of towards profit – these are the ethical and democratic aims of an ecological economy which treats soil, water, climate, plants, animals, people, and societies with a “warmth-quality of will”, enabled by critical, empathic, and imaginative thinking. Ethics, politics, economy are cultural narratives as well. They also take place in the “vertical” relationship between mind and matter, and the “horizontal” line between past and future. Artistic projects provide a form of education in which those relationships can be developed intensively and extensively through creative work on exemplary themes. Students can learn to think more

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broadly when projects activate the full range of their mental forces. The educational process can be intensified by concentrating those forces on the object, the “sender”, eg. the work and its needs. Delving into those needs in the transformation process will start the rhythm of self-positioning and self-movement. This narrative relationship questions the past in order to master the future. “Fabricando fabricamur” – in the case of the artistic project, the future of the experimental work, which can only be achieved through play, challenges and educates the existential creativity of artistic thought, narration, and action. This form of engagement is not just required within the narrow context of artistic learning, but also in the broader world, in globalized, democratic societies. The migration of people, cultures, goods, and the ongoing controversies in democratic societies require personalities able to behave in a self-determined fashion under complex, ever-changing, and often contradictory conditions. The forces of freedom must be strengthened when old truths, traditions, orientations, beliefs and solutions cannot be relied on anymore. Freedom is the result and the condition of existential creativity. A creative existence requires freedom from political, social, and ideological fetters in order to become free for self-responsibility to determine one’s own personality and one’s ethical and political behavior. Fostering this creativity is the aim of artistic education, in which “every man as an artist” contributes to the “social sculpture”. Artistic education offers unique opportunities for cultivating this ethical attitude of thought and action. Ultimately, many factors come together, and concrete individual and social conditions can prove decisive. In this case, artistic education can offer an alternative path to enhance the existential creativity of each student.

Notes 1 The project “Fantastic Vehicles on a Journey” is documented in: Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Die Welt als Spiel, Band II: Theorie und Praxis künstlerischer Bildung (Oberhausen: Athena, 2007), 256–289. 2 See Bering, Niehoff, Visual Proficiency: A Perspective on Art Education. 3 See Chapter 4. 4 Dennis Atkinson, “Art, Ethics and Education: Speculative Futures”, in: Art – Ethics – Education, eds. Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Dennis Atkinson and Raphael Vella (Leiden: Brill Sense, 2020a). 5 Dennis Atkinson, “Art, Ethics and Education: Speculative Futures”, in: Art – Ethics – Education, eds. Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Dennis Atkinson and Raphael Vella (Leiden: Brill Sense, 2020a).

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6 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).http://pdf-objects.com/ files/Heidegger-Martin-Being-and-Time-trans.-Macquarrie-RobinsonBlackwell-1962.pdf, 358. 7 Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities) (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1930–33/1978), 16. 8 Mario Urlaß, Künstlerisches Projekt “Sonnenblume” (Artistic Project “Sunflower”), n.d. https://www.mario-urlaß.de/lehre/schulprojekte 9 Friedrich Cramer, Gratwanderungen. Das Chaos der Künste und die Ordnung der Zeit (Tightrope Walk. The Chaos of the Arts and the Order of Time). (Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1995). 10 Nakamura, J., Csikszentmihályi, M. “Flow Theory and Research”, in: C. R. Snyder Erik Wright and Shane J. Lopez. Handbook of Positive Psychology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 195–206.

CHAPTER 6

Variations of Artistic Projects By using a cultural theme, the “Head with a Story” project fostered students’ existential creativity in personal and social realms. The focus that students brought to the hybrid heads also led them to make new observations and reflections on the hybrid nature of the human, caught between instinct and reason. In their work on the dramatic picture, they learned about strategies in art and media to impress expressive, emotionally moving forms upon viewers. Thus, aspects of anthropology, media critique, and ethics formed part of the artistic learning process, which straddled mind and matter, work and context. Other themes will likely require differently organized projects. Different student groups will also require different creative learning processes. “Head with a Story” was one example of a structured artistic education project with specific learning aims. The following chapter will introduce several additional artistic projects centered on other topics, and with different project structures. It will introduce additional possibilities to promote and develop this kind of artistic learning. The examples discussed in this chapter are projects I conducted with students at my secondary school. Additionally, two colleagues who are engaged in similar pedagogical projects will contribute their accounts of two more projects toward the end of the book. One example is from a primary school, one from a secondary school in a socially disadvantaged area of a city.

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“Freedom and Dignity”

In this chapter, the projects will be outlined in an overview of the project structure, and with pedagogical commentary on the chosen strategies, methods, and learning goals pursued. “Freedom and Dignity” is a project conducted in the ninth grade. It was part of a two-year curriculum development and research project entitled “Images & Identity: Educating Citizenship through Visual Arts” (2008–2010) which was funded under the European Commission’s Comenius Scheme. Teams of art educators in six European countries (England, Portugal, Czech Republic, Ireland, Malta, and Germany) collaborated in this interdisciplinary research project bridging art and citizenship education.1 “Freedom and Dignity” was my contribution to this project.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi: 10.1163/9789004424555_006

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1.1 Course of the Project 1.1.1 Inductive Assignment – Discussion and Drawings The pupils knew that we were participating in the EU project “Images & Identity: Educating Citizenship through Visual Arts”, but I did not initially introduce a concrete topic in our learning group. Pupils in the ninth grade, who are between fourteen and fifteen years old, are certainly familiar with the term “identity”, but its meaning is not self-evident. Accordingly, we began by discussing this term, since it was part of the title of the EU project. At that age, students generally do not have abstract arguments on such a topic. “Identity is what constitutes me”: this sentence is generally how my students understood the term. During the discussion, they mostly made concrete contributions, such as, “My friends and my hobbies are important for my identity”. They also discussed their families, but did not think about school as an influence until I brought it up.

figure 6.1 Drawings on the topic of “personal identity”

After the initial discussion, I told the students to make a drawing which should depict the things they considered important for their personal identity. It was to be a spontaneous drawing; I gave them no further criteria. In all of their drawings, the pupils depicted themselves, either as a sketched face or a whole figure. They also all drew things that were important to them, such as sports, music, or instruments. The girls’ drawings often featured animals – dogs, cats or horses. By and large, the students did not include their friends, but only symbols for certain activities or preferences.

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1.2 Photography I: Self-representation After initially broaching the topic by means of discussion and spontaneous drawings, I sent the students home with an assignment: for the next class, they had to take a photograph of themselves. Compared to the drawings, which mostly used schematic symbols to represent hobbies or preferences, the photographs allowed for more concrete depictions, since each student could portray him- or herself in real situations. The general theme of these photos was “self-representation”. Again, I gave them no special criteria, but stressed that the photos should tell the viewer something about the person – a selfie was insufficient. I purposely did not ask for photos about “identity” in order not to cause problems or inhibit ideas, since this term remained somewhat abstract.

figure 6.2 Photographic self-portraits by students

The photos brought in by the students were largely of good quality, and presented the person in a close-up shot, well-placed within the rectangular picture frame. I asked them why there were so many good pictures, to which they responded, “We’re always taking photos of ourselves or our friends, it’s normal!” They were obviously unconsciously used to taking photos of this kind, since they were always taking photos of their friends, and were influenced by the professional photos of celebrities or fashion models. Years before, I had led a project in which students also had to take photographs of people. But at that time, the pupils did not yet have smartphones, which allow them to take photographs at any moment. I had to investigate the various ways of taking effective photos of people with the students. Years later, because of the ubiquity of smartphones, this learning process was not necessary anymore. Nonetheless, we still discussed the way they took their photos, since they largely took them out of habit but had no precise idea of why the pictures

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figure 6.3 Photographic self-portrait by students

functioned the way they do. We analyzed aspects such as perspective, light, close-ups, poses, and the relation of the person or people to the surroundings or background. 1.3 Photography II: Role-Play Many of the photographic portraits depicted the students alongside people important to them – mostly friends, but family members too. They also asked friends to take photos in which the student was carrying out an activity related to one of their hobbies, such as football, riding, or playing guitar. Although these photos were visually effective and gave more concrete perspectives on each student and what was important in his or her life, they largely repeated the motifs of the drawings. With the next task, I wanted to shift perspectives to provoke new reflections and ideas. The theme for the following week’s photos was “Role-play”. This challenged the students to produce an imaginative self-depiction. In choosing their role, they would show something of themselves, but not the actual constitutive aspects of their person. Instead, they disguised themselves and assumed a new identity, to which they nevertheless held a certain affinity. Since there was no psychological background connected to this task, the point was not to interpret why they had chosen particular roles. Rather, it was intended as a playful exercise, and the students carried it out mostly eagerly, some also with humor. Again, they produced photographs of rather good quality. They showed the pupils as fashion models or princesses, while one girl presented herself as a vamp. Boys appeared as “Blues Brothers”, football players, or Santa Claus. One smaller boy staged himself as “Don Jonson” with gelled hair and sunglasses in a lightly blurred close-up photo.

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figure 6.4 Photos role-play

figure 6.5  Photo role-play

1.4 From Harmony to Discovery After creating this series of photographs on personal identity – actual self-depiction and imaginative roleplay – I was stuck. Those pictures and tasks did

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not provoke deeper considerations of identity. They were merely spontaneous depictions of actual or fictional aspects. The EU project “Images & Identity” had the subtitle “Educating Citizenship through Visual Arts”. Up to now, we had not yet addressed the realm of the subtitle, which introduced the essential intention of the research project. The initial photographs did not have any political perspective, but only represented a preliminary, personal approach to the topic. It seemed that the students were not preoccupied with any pressing social or political problems in relation to their identity, and which could have provided material for the project. Other colleagues participating in the EU project had more difficult discussions about identity in their classes because their pupils had immigrant backgrounds. This was one central concern in the research project: how can the visual arts, and contemporary art in particular, contribute to the development of citizens’ identities within globalized society? To put the question in even more concrete terms, how can art contribute to European identity? In this instance, I had a very homogeneous class. All of my students came from German, white, middle-class families; only one pupil had a father who came from England. The Gymnasium of the Benedictines lies in a rural area, and only very recently have more pupils with immigrant backgrounds joined the school. This urgent contemporary issue – migration and identity as a citizen – did not seem to be a problem for my class. I asked myself whether there were really no identity problems in the apparently harmonious world of my students. If so, it made no sense to artificially construct this problem if “migration and identity” remained an abstract topic for the students. Considering their photographs and reflecting on their biographical and societal situation, I suddenly hit on a point worth examining. All the self-portraits and role-play photographs showed the pupils looking happy. This was good to see. They were obviously a happy generation in a prosperous country, living in peaceful conditions and expecting a promising future. But that was not always the case for children in Germany. The grandparents of my pupils lived through National Socialism. Parents who came from East Germany to the west grew up under the socialist regime of the GDR. So the students all had people in their families who had grown up under vastly different political and social conditions. Naturally, the students had not considered the experiences of their parents and grandparents when they were dealing with their own, contemporary situation. However, this point was significant for their lives; it was not an abstract attempt at introducing a political issue into the topic. Instead, looking at one’s family history opened up a thematic field in which political and social differences could be discovered immediately adjacent to one’s personal biography.

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The students almost certainly knew that their parents (if they had grown up in the GDR) had had rather different childhoods, not to mention their grandparents. However, I did not evaluate how much they knew, and how deeply they were involved in their family’s stories about that time. We had a classroom discussion about these issues in which I learned that most of the students had learned something about their family’s history through stories told occasionally by family members. But none of the pupils had undertaken further research to understand the political and social conditions under which their parents and grandparents had lived. I asked the class whether they knew about the “Hitler Youth” organization, which all young people in the Third Reich had to belong to. Only a few pupils knew what it was. When I asked about the “Young Pioneers”, the youth organization of the GDR, no one knew what this was, though some students had at least one parent who had lived in the GDR. By discussing the histories of the students’ parents and grandparents, we discovered a blind spot which introduced unknown factors into the considerations on identity. This topic was close to the pupils’ biography but had remained unexplored. Their own, largely positive experiences of growing up were not universal; different experiences were present in their own families. Dealing with this topic allowed the students to achieve new insights and reflections concerning their own identity, and presented the opportunity of linking these considerations to political perspectives that were a crucial part of the “Images & Identity” project. It was a topic that covered biographical history as well as political and social history. 1.5 Analyzing Posters: Hitler Youth and Young Pioneers In order to introduce this topic, I selected advertising posters for the “Hitler Youth” and the “Young Pioneers”. The two posters of the “Hitler Youth” depict a boy and a girl respectively, both in uniform. Both are ideal characters for this purpose, representing the white Aryan race. The boy is looking resolutely to the right as Hitler’s face appears in the background, looking in the same direction. The girl, glowing with happiness, is looking up to someone (probably Hitler), while a crowd of cheerful members of the youth organization stands behind her. The headline over on both posters reads, “Young People Serve the Führer”. The posters of the “Young Pioneers” also depicts young people in uniforms. On one poster, three boys stand in the foreground, smiling yet determined. The slogan reads, “For Peace and Socialism. Be Prepared!”. The other poster features both boys and girls, and the group is depicted in a more casual assembly. The headline simply says: “This is who we are”. The pupils easily discovered the intentions of the posters to persuade to join the organizations. Background information about the “Hitler Youth” and the “Young Pioneers” made clear that all young people in the Third Reich and

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figure 6.6 “Youth serves the Führer. All ten-year-olds in the Hitler Youth”, posters (https://www.dhm.de/fileadmin/medien/lemo/images/628_1.jpg http://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/lebensstationen/bilder_750/2_48.gif)

figure 6.7 Documentary photos of Hitler Youth (from Grube & Richter, 1982) (https://s-media-cache ak0.pinimg.com/564x/85/8a/79/858a79887e4b7464360105a810862c2.jpg)

the GDR were called upon to become members of these organizations, which sought to educate and introduce children to the ideals of the reigning regime. In order to get a deeper understanding of the nature of these organizations and their political aims, we looked at documentary photographs. One showed

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figure 6.8 Documentary photos of Hitler Youth (from Grube & Richter, 1982)

figure 6.9  Young Pioneers (http://nva.4mg.com/ 97653.jpg)

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figure 6.10  Poster Young Pioneers, “For Peace and Socialism Be Prepared!” (http://www.dhm.de/archiv/ ausstellungen/lebensstationen/ bilder_750/3_69.gif)

figure 6.11 Young Pioneers marching with the Red Army (http://www.dra.de/ rundfunkgeschichte/75jahreradio/osten/img/marsch_41.jpg)

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Hitler Youth members during a roll call, another young pioneers on a march with Soviet Union soldiers. Both photos emphasized quasi-military situations as an official part of the organizations’ activities. How early these educational military experiences began became clear in another picture where a small boy in uniform, who was being observed by soldiers, gave the Hitler salute. 1.6 Discussing Freedom and Dignity Upon examining the posters and the supplementary photographs, it became clear that the freedom of the children depicted was restricted, or had perhaps been completely taken away from them. In order to make the pupils more aware of this problem and link it to present-day concerns, I then discussed the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the class. This states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. The subsequent articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights detail concrete rights, such as equality before the law, or the protection of privacy. The subsequent Human Rights Articles also clarify the meaning of the term “freedom”: freedom from slavery, torture, and degradation. The equality of all human beings and the prohibitions against degrading treatment also partially explain the concept of dignity, which was difficult for the ninth-graders to put into words. We also looked at Immanuel Kant in order to add a further dimension to the concept of freedom. Kant differentiates between the freedom from certain things and the freedom to do certain things. We worked as a class to find examples for the latter kind of freedom. Some of the pupils’ suggestions included: “the freedom to do what you want”, “the freedom to choose a career”, “the freedom to travel”, and, with regard to the youth organisation posters, “the freedom to decide who you are”, and “to express your opinion”. In order to concretize the concepts of freedom and dignity further after the discussion on human rights, I showed the class the poster “Human Rights for Everyone”, which was produced by Urs Grünig for Amnesty International in 1999. The poster features an out-of-focus image of a woman’s face; her eyes are covered by a black bar and her lips are covered with a red stripe, quite possibly a piece of tape. White letters run horizontally across the middle of the woman’s face, spelling out the words “Human Rights for Everyone”. The pupils’ analysis of the poster first focused on the woman’s anonymity, with comments such as “the black bar hides the eyes so you can’t recognize the person”. They also noted that the red tape over her mouth meant that she was unable to speak. It was clear to the pupils that the woman’s freedom of speech had been taken away from her: “Nobody is listening to her”; “She isn’t allowed to speak”; “She isn’t allowed to express her opinion”. In comparison, the bar over the eyes was predominantly interpreted as a sign of anonymity, but also as a means

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figure 6.12 “Human Rights for Everyone”, poster, 1999 (Urs Grünig) (http://www.imageidentity.eu/artists_images_folder/germany/urs-grunig/ gruenigmenschenrechte.jpg)

of preventing the woman from seeing and looking at things. Grünig’s poster also provided the students with useful insights into the topic of dignity. They considered the “ban on speech” and anonymity (“the identity of the person is completely irrelevant”) to be damaging to her dignity. 1.7 Comparison of Photographs The discussion of human rights enabled the class to explore fundamental aspects of the European system of values, which affords opportunities for a free and dignified life to EU citizens. The link nevertheless remained general because all of the various perspectives that had been introduced in the lessons up to this point could now be correlated. The aim was to establish connections between the pupils’ original self-portraits, the analysis of the youth organisation posters and the considerations raised in the discussion on the first article of the General Declaration of Human Rights. The project needed

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to return its focus to the students’ identities, so I gave the pupils a reflection task, asking them to compare a poster from one of the youth organisations with a photograph that they had taken of themselves at the beginning of the project. In doing so, they were required to consider the effect produced by the images and explain what they told us about the people depicted. They were also to explain to what extent they believed the images expressed freedom and dignity. This comparative reflection task placed a number of intellectual demands on the pupils. They were, however, able to draw insights gleaned from previous picture analysis and considerations that had come to light in the last discussion. As they compared the images, the pupils became aware of the difference between the staged appearances of the children in the posters and their own, free self-portraits. The free choice of clothing, unforced use of facial expressions and gestures, free choice of the type of self-portrayal or role-play and the emphasis on fun and the pupils’ hobbies and preferences were contrasted with the uniforms, the artificial setting, and the forced nature of the posters, which, according to the pupils, were not faithful portrayals of the actual situation and were aimed to “lure” in other young people. Interestingly, however, many pupils claimed that the boys and girls depicted in the posters did in fact exude a sense of dignity. On the one hand, their dignity was damaged because they were forced into a certain role, made to wear uniforms, and told to recruit other children into the organisation. On the other hand, the children appeared “orderly”, “cheerful”, and “proud”, which all were markers of dignity of a sort. 1.8 Individual Work – Reflection and Production Up until this stage, the complexity of the contextual aspects had required combining individual work with class exploration of relevant information in each lesson. Now, however, we had come across a problem area that made it possible for the pupils to produce independent, individual work as a continuation of the project. The question of the freedom and dignity of human beings confronted the pupils with an issue that was new to them. They had perhaps grappled with this issue in abstract terms before, but until now had barely dealt with its more concrete definition, if at all, and had not consciously related it to their own identity. Their task now was to find a concrete topic which addressed issues of freedom and dignity, research information on this topic, and produce an image relating to it. The majority of the class chose to design a poster. In order to give the pupils the opportunity to carry out this task, we revisited Urs Grünig’s poster and examined the fundamental elements of poster design. We discussed aspects such as the weighting of images and text, the connections

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between the content of the images and texts, using size and color to emphasize certain elements, and creating an optical balance in the distribution of poster elements. The pupils were then tasked with using these essential layout factors in their own design work. The first step in the individual creative work was to find a concrete topic related to “Freedom and Dignity”. At first, this did not prove all that easy, because the majority of the pupils quickly fell into clichés. The pupils were allowed to work on their own or in groups of two to three students, which encouraged them to exchange ideas and critical reflections on the emerging work. Two girls, for example, wanted to campaign for freedom by taking a photograph of one of them behind a barbed-wire fence and complementing this with a text protesting against political imprisonment. Another pupil chose an image of the Pope giving a blessing in the sunlight, titling it, “Freedom and Dignity without Limits”. It is clear from these examples that the pupils initially approached the topics with a certain naiveté and superficiality. This proved to be a crucial turning-point in the task. I had to find a way to challenge these clichés, but without discouraging the pupils, instead spurring them on to examine their topic in greater depth. One sensible method was to let the pupils conduct their own discussions on their work, with or without the teacher’s involvement. I prompted the girls to discuss their draft with other pupils to find out if they found it convincing. The predominant response was that the scene behind the fence looked contrived and had little to do with the topic of political prisoners. I asked the boy who wanted to make a poster of the Pope whether the Pope really represented freedom without limits. We discussed this and came to the conclusion that the strict moral principles of the Catholic church are not exactly representative of freedom without limits. Overall, three closely linked operations can be distinguished in this content-oriented art project work: research, construction, and transformation. The pupils had to carry out research on their topics in order to acquire relevant knowledge. They also had to reflect on various information and concepts, form opinions, make judgements, and construct links between them. Finally came the key component of transformation: creating the piece of work. At this point, the content that had been researched and considered was reshaped, not by being illustrated, but by being evaluated, selectively used, interrelated in new ways, defamiliarized, and fictionally developed. This was also the case in the poster creation task, in which the main goal was to produce a clear statement, in contrast to freely painted designs. In this respect, the posters were an example of applied art rather than fine art. The pupils used computers to complete all of their work on their posters, working in the school’s computer room. They were able to carry out internet

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research quickly, many of them beginning by searching for images related to their topics. They then continued to search for further information, most choosing Wikipedia as their first source. From here, they followed links to find additional sources of information, although I occasionally had to prompt them to carry out more in-depth research or expand on significant concepts. The images and information then had to be sorted and connected before the pupils could conceptualize the statement that they wanted to convey in their work. They also needed to reflect critically on whether their statement was sound and sensible. I encouraged students to undertake critical reflections on the content and the emerging form of their poster, both through discussions with individuals and groups, spurring on discussions between pupils, or in the form of a class discussion on their work so far. The students were also able to use the computers to create an experimental draft of their poster design. Computers allow users to access, move, and manipulate images and texts of their choice, as well as edit, compare, and save their work in progress. Image editing programs also allow students to use media images in their work and create semi-professional posters at school.

figure 6.13 “Oppressed women. Easy to overlook. Discrimination in Afghanistan”

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Although the posters varied in terms of formal quality and content, they were all evidence of the completion of a well-thought-out design process, in which initially superficial ideas were replaced by in-depth insights and expressive forms. This was evident in the work of the two girls who eventually produced two posters: one dealing with the repression of women in Afghanistan, and another focusing on forced prostitution. While searching for a person who represented freedom and dignity, the aforementioned pupil changed the focus of his work from the Pope to Nelson Mandela. He researched Mandela’s biography and found appropriate images, combining them with short explanatory texts to depict prominent stages in Mandela’s life, from his time as a freedom fighter to becoming a political prisoner, then being released and elected as President of South Africa – testifying to the life of a “dignified person”. 1.9 Artistic Learning Procedures Crucial elements of artistic education can be discerned within the learning procedures of this project. Analyzing the posters and photographs required the sensitive perception of form and its effects, as well as critical reflection of relevant biographical, social, and political contexts. The posters and photos of the youth organizations also activated the imagination as the students attempted to identify with the young people depicted. Designing the posters also required these elements of artistic thinking, and in fact intensified them, since the students were asked to create images which would express their own inquiries and visions of a self-determined political topic. Willpower was required to persevere and develop the posters to a satisfying degree. To achieve this goal, skills in poster design had to be learned and applied. The teacher, as well as the students, went through creative processes between chaos – movement – form. The students experienced this movement throughout discussions on their personal identity, considerations of young people under political dictatorship, and in discussions on rather abstract topics such as freedom and dignity. These were intellectual creative processes which moved between the chaos provoked by an encounter with something new and difficult to comprehend, and growing insight into content, meaning, and relations. Moreover, the students experienced the creative rhythm of chaos and form during their experimental work on the posters, and some on their paintings and collages. I, as the teacher, underwent a pedagogical experience between chaos and form because I began the project without a clear vision of the end result. The project initially developed from one step to the next before it gained a clear direction towards the topic of “Freedom and Dignity”, after stalling in the phase of the students’ photographic self-depictions. There is some risk involved in taking this path, and it should not be done ordinarily,

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figure 6.14 “Nelson Mandela. First he is a freedom fighter … then he is robbed of his freedom … after 27 years he regains his freedom … is elected president of South Africa … a human being with dignity”

but an artistic project can develop fruitfully in this fashion too. It challenges the teacher, who should be engaged and broadly oriented within the field of the theme. The project on “Freedom and Dignity” touches on biographical, political, and ethical issues. It represented a challenge as well as an opportunity to reflect on more abstract ideas which nonetheless were closely connected to students’ personalities and lives. They discovered that their personal biography was embedded in specific contemporary social and political conditions, and that the recent past was still close to them, because their parents and grandparents experienced childhoods under different political regimes. The examinations of the youth organizations of National Socialism and the GDR provided an approach to historical political realities still relevant in their families through

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figure 6.15 “It’s hard to be nobody …”

figure 6.16  “Empty and depleted. Around 150 million girls are annually forced into prostitution”

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figure 6.17  “He wanted to live. But his mother didn’t want him”

sensuous perception. This led to further inquiries and reflections concerning freedom and dignity which were also philosophical (and ethical) considerations. Examining the central terms of the first sentence of the Declaration of Human Rights opened up new perspectives for individual work in this thematic realm. Once they chose their own sub-topics, the students had concrete issues to work on, firstly based on media images they analyzed, and then dove deeper into their contexts by gathering and considering relevant background information. In doing so, personal, political, and ethical considerations were transformed into a statement or poster which expressed an elaborated position of the pupil towards his or her topic. Here, artistic education is a mode of political and philosophical education as well. Because it results in the creation of a work, this education does not remain abstract but becomes a form of personal inquiry and positioning that includes reflective thought as well as empathy and intentional expression.

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This project thereby went through many dimensions of existential narration. From the very beginning, it was related to the term “identity”. The focus on the present stage of personal identity was expanded into the past by considering childhoods under different political regimes, and into the future by considering the political and ethical contexts of the terms freedom and dignity. These were then transformed into a concrete expression in the personal posters. The posters did not only depict something past or present, but as pictures which call for political or ethical reflections and changes, they became statement on better political and ethical conditions. Thus, the dimensions of the existential narratives were connected in various ways, horizontally linking together past and future, and vertically transforming reflections and intentions into depicted positions. The students began their identity work with lighthearted personal pictures, and ended up with pictures that expressed their political and ethical engagement.

2

“The Leaf Principle – Bionic”

2.1 Drawing a Leaf This project developed along a different course. The inductive assignment began with the task of drawing a leaf. The drawings made by the students held crucial structural elements of a leaf but also made mistakes concerning functional details. The veins were mostly drawn disconnected from the stalks, and did not extend to the leaf’s outer edges. When we discussed this, we discovered

figure 6.18 Spontaneous drawings of a leaf

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figure 6.19  Ornament pictures

that veins provide the leaf with nutrients and also serve as a scaffold to give the leaf stability. We made these observations using leaves collected in the schoolyard, which we distinguished into different types, including beech, chestnut, maple, and oak. 2.2 Fantasy – Leaf Ornaments The next task went beyond drawing a leaf using a natural model: the students were to play with the functional structure of a leaf and create an ornamental picture composed of different interconnected leaves and stems. Biological functionality was transformed into an imaginative, playful picture. To make this work, we examined Art Nouveau ornaments in paintings and architectural details such as the Art Nouveau entrances of the Paris metro. 2.3 The Technical Use of the Leaf Principle After creating this ornamental image, we researched other instances in nature exhibiting similar construction principles to leaves, such as insect wings and

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bird feathers and wings. Then I told the students to research whether this natural construction principle could be discovered in technical objects as well. They could use the architectural surroundings of the school, found objects, and the Internet. In this research phase, they discovered some applications of the natural structure in the wings of airplanes or the sails of a ship. The architecture of the school also exhibited comparable elements. The new building housing the art rooms has a huge glass wall on the south side of the building. There, we could observe how the large windows were arranged along slender metal struts, and interpreted this as a use of leaf structure in a rectangular construction. 2.4 Inventing Bionic Objects Then began the main working phase. The principle of a leaf structure had been clarified, and identified within nature and technology through perception and

figure 6.20  Worksheet

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figure 6.21  Draft drawings

reflection. Now, students were to imaginatively transform it by designing a technical device. At this point, we introduced the term “bionic”, which is used to designate the use of natural structures and functions in technological inventions. (Bionik is the German term; in English, this method is also referred to as biomimetic.) The students produced sketches of their initial ideas, which formed the basis of further discussions in the class. Several aspects had to be combined in this design process: the functional structure of the leaf had to be transferred into the functional structure of a technical object, and this object had to be novel, not simply copy existing things. This last aspect was intended to let students use their own imaginations to invent things that could be fantastic or humorous. After the drawings, the students began building models of their objects. The students had new questions on the choice of the appropriate material for

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the intended object, manual skills and technical solutions, and perceiving and judging the emerging form. Often, the functional details required a closer look. One cannot construct wings for a flying vehicle simply by using a flat piece of paper, wood, or metal. Instead, this represented an opportunity to learn about aerodynamics of airplane wings. Their profile is constructed in a way that the airstream is separated into two-thirds pull and one-third push. Wing models could be built in a similar way, using material which would enable these constructions, such as tin or plaster. In other cases, the students had to choose adequate proportions in order not to use too much material for a function which would unnecessarily raise construction costs and look awkward. 2.5 Product Design Inventing a technical object by applying the leaf-principle challenged the imagination, but also required research on functional and technical details. To some degree, the task introduced the requirements of product design which – particularly in industrial design – must combine appealing aesthetics with technical functionality. We took the opportunity to learn something about applied art and discussed the “form follows function” principle of design

figure 6.22  Wilhelm Wagenfeld lamp (https://media-prediger.de/ media/catalog/product/t/ e/tecnolumen-wagenfeldwg-24-wa-24-1.jpg)

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figure 6.23  Tiffany lamp (http://warisanlighting.com/ wp-content/uploads/2016/ 06/tiffany-lampsphoto-10.jpg)

objects such as lamps made by the Bauhaus metal workshop. We discovered that the famous Wagenfeld lamp held aspects of the leaf – or rather a plant – principle, since this lamp is made of a semi-spherical, glassy lampshade perched on a thin, glassy shaft. In comparison, Tiffany lamps exhibit more fantastic, playful details and contain floral structures in the lampshades and shaft. These lamps, designed in Art Nouveau, clearly stress the decorative aspects of the form while the Wagenfeld lamp reduces all elements to geometric round forms, with all details serving both a functional and an aesthetic function. We could assume that it is cheaper to manufacture a Wagenfeld lamp than a Tiffany lamp, since it has no purely decorative elements. In addition, the complex forms of the Tiffany lamps do not look as if they could be made by machines, and are in fact hand-made, which makes them even more expensive. 2.6 Examples of Pupils’ Works The pupils were not asked to construct an object that really functioned. But functionality was important, even if it was to some degree a fantasy. They learned to apply the bionic principle in a playful way by finding inspiration for their objects in the structure of a leaf. The inductive assignment that had

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begun with observations, research, and ornamental images now led to individual ideas which were elaborated in experimental work. Many students found functional solutions for chairs, for example. One girl designed a chair with a metal scaffold structure imitating the veins and stalks of a leaf. Within this swinging structure, the girl put an orange pillow also in the shape of a leaf. Another design was for a double chair, which was also a swinging chair. The frame was made out of two wooden elements, connected by thin ledges into which red felt “leaves” had been placed. A small table was attached to the sides of the upper and lower seats where a can of cola and a bag with a sandwich could be served. Another functional solution was a house with elements cut out of plastic material, which had a roof in the form of a leaf where the veins and the stem collected the water and let it flow down a strut into a fountain. A forest cabin was built out of transparent paper, foil, and wooden sticks, with solar panels on the roof. A girl constructed a sunshade in the form of an upright twig with large orange leaves that gave shade. The four chaise lounges under the leaves could be pulled out and pushed together, the felt lawns unrolled to cover the chairs and rolled up again to store them. This construction was made from a twig, leaves, cardboard, and felt. Two flats in spherical form in a treehouse could be reached through the stem and branches covered with painted stars. A cocoon-like bowl hung on a curved branch planted in the ground. This swinging hideaway could be accessed with a rope ladder made of colored woolen threads, fixed with paste. One student made an airplane with a triangular glider wing with thin braces to hold the sail. The

figure 6.24 Student’s works

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figure 6.25  Student’s works

airplane also had a propeller, and the object was made out of paper and papier-mâché. A more fantastic flying object was the swing set under an umbrella with a big propeller on top. One could hold the umbrella in one’s hand and fly high with it, rocking in the sky. To make it, the student used a real umbrella, painted all of its segments in different colors and decorated the inside with ornaments. The student attempted to copy an original propeller form for the

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figure 6.26 Student’s works

propeller, and made it out of plaster. The seat was made of a wooden board with a pillow-like cover of foam and cloth decorated with leaves. Another fantastic design was the candy factory which looked like a head with big eyes for the windows and mouth. The sweets were produced inside using pipelines and conveyor belts – inspired by the veins serving the leaf with nutrients. The candies were delivered through the tongue in the open mouth.

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figure 6.27 Student’s works

During the creation process of the bionic objects, I held individual talks with students but also had group lessons on certain topics. At the beginning of each lesson, we sometimes looked together at works in progress discussed possibilities or problems which were of common interest, such as mechanical solutions, choice in material, or technical details. Those technical details often spurred the students on to conduct individual research on items such as airplane wings or architectural structures. Their new insights were not only an inspiration for their own work but could also be presented to the entire class, who then learned about things including the “curtain wall” of skyscrapers, in which a steel scaffold anchors the entire building and allows for hooked-in concrete floors and a façade with suspended windows. The student presentations often provided opportunities to go a bit deeper into the subject matter. For these, I also prepared some supporting information. 2.7 Contexts: Architecture, Design, Art The contextuality of the various works went beyond the aspects connected immediately to the individual creations. In group lessons, we analyzed examples in architecture, design and art which used the leaf principle. We observed the building of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt to understand the skeleton system in modern architecture, which uses planes of concrete and glass. We examined when this construction principle not only allowed for rectangular but diagonal elements, giving the building a dynamic appearance. The Olympic Stadium in Beijing also resembles natural forms since it looks like a bird’s nest, as if built from gathered branches. In addition to the Bauhaus swinging chairs of Marcel Breuer we analyzed the design use of the leaf principle in vehicles: flying objects like Charles Lindbergh’s hang-glider, and recent technology such as the “Turanor Planet Solar”, a solar-powered high-speed catamaran. We discovered the artistic use of the leaf principle in Panamarenko’s

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figure 6.28 European Central Bank, Frankfurt/Main, 2015 (Coop Himmelb(l)au) (https://boerse.ard.de/europaeische-zentralbank-frankfurt102~_ pd-1459431797016_v-z-a-par-al.jpg)

figure 6.29 National Stadium Beijing, 2008 (Herzog & de Meuron) (http://img.dooyoo.de/ DE_DE/orig/1/4/2/2/7/1422782.jpg90)

figure 6.30 Turanor Planet Solar, catamaran, 2010 (http://www.designboom.com/wp-content/ uploads/2013/07/planetsolar-solar-powed-boatdesignboom01.jpg)

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figure 6.31  The Aeromodeller, 1969–1972 (Panamarenko) (http://s3.amazonaws.com/ mhka_ensembles_ production/assets/public/ 000/019/772/large/ Untitled059.jpg? 1386156666)

figure 6.32 Movements of the Earth and of the Moon on an Axis, 2003 (Mario Merz) (https://10172-presscdn-0-75-pagely.netdna-ssl.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/ 09/2014_0924_Movements%20of%20the%20Earth%20and%20the%20Moon% 20on%20an%20Axis.jpg). © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2019, reprinted here with permission

figure 6.33 Umbrellas, 1980–1983 Aims and Procedures of Artistic Learning (Christo and Jean-Claude) (http://christojeanneclaude.net/data/ a6a904e1f27bbfface35068de300d9ed.jpg)

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“Aeromodeller”, an airship in a museum which only flies in the beholders’ imagination. The leaf principle also appeared in “Umbrellas”, a land art project in which Christo and Jean-Claude connected (in our imaginations) California and Japan over the Pacific ocean by installing yellow umbrellas in the landscape on one shore and blue ones on the other. Mario Merz varied the leaf principle in his igloo sculptures where a brace construction allows for the insertion of different materials such as stone or plexiglass, creating a mysterious hut with a certain aesthetic on the surface and an enigmatic inner space. 2.8 Aims and Procedures of Artistic Learning Many aims and procedures of artistic learning can be discovered in this bionic project. The sensitive perception of forms was required, both concerning individual creations as well as objects in architecture, design, and art. Gathering knowledge about natural and technical functions demanded reflection. Transferring those insights into new technical devices challenged the imagination. Willpower, motivation, and the exercise of appropriate manual skills were necessary in order to develop the works. The rhythm of research and transformation was driven by the developing form of the bionic object and the need to research new information and construct relations between facts and artistic intentions. This fueled the development of an interconnected creative narrative, which examined natural history, art, and technology in order to create a not yet existent object. In doing so, the students exercised artistic communication, becoming attentive receivers who “listened” to the object of interest. This artistic “listening” process challenged all mental faculties to dive deeper into the matter or the object, by exercising intuition as well as rationality. Chaos – movement – form, as the plastic principle of creativity, constantly took place constantly in the transformation process as well as in the reflection on and application of new insights after observing and analyzing natural forms, technical structures, and artistic inventions.

3

Different Topics – Different Ways of Artistic Learning

The three artistic projects discussed have three different themes, and, accordingly, develop differently with respect to the pedagogical framework of the theme. Structured projects are a form of public art, with students as creative participants. Thus, these projects are to some degree determined by the creative process of the art teacher, who has to observe the learning process and has to decide what interventions might be necessary at various points. These pedagogical decisions occur within the quartet of artistic learning: the teacher is involved in processes which connect the needs of the developing

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work to relevant topical contents and the intentions and difficulties of the students. In the “Head with a Story” project, the topic was a natural as well as a cultural object. The inductive assignment began with random forms, which provided inspiration for fantastic inventions and further creations. In the case of “Freedom and Identity”, the topic was conceptual rather than concrete. After broaching the question of identity through personal drawings and photos, the pupils discovered that the topic “Freedom and Dignity” was an inherent part of these self-portraits. This demanded research into an abstract field of ethical and political questions. Looking at historical photographs addressed

figure 6.34 Student’s works, “Transforming paper”

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figure 6.35  Student’s work, “Transforming paper”

the relationship between the pupils’ self and the childhoods of their parents and grand-parents. Reflections on freedom arose and became more differentiated through an examination of the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ultimately, this ethical and political theme led into the deeper work process of the project. Posters were chosen as an appropriate medium because they allowed students to express a statement in this thematic field by combining images and text. A sensuous approach built a bridge between abstract thoughts and the process of creation. This approach was undertaken by finding photos on the internet which concretized various expressions of “Freedom and Dignity”. The students had to do research and reflect on their individually chosen topic in order to produce a poster in which pictures and texts created an expressive and well-thought-out statement. The bionic project around the “leaf principle” took yet a different approach. While the “Head” project began with random forms, and the “Freedom and Identity” project approached a philosophical theme, the bionic topic was inspired by the observation and understanding of a natural structure. This gave the students inspiration and orientation for their creative work, which required combining imagination and functionality. Other topics involve other beginnings and developments. “Transforming Paper”,2 for example, began with students making spontaneous, 30-second sculptures from a blank piece of paper. The crumpled, folded, or ripped papers provided us with many opportunities to make observations on sculptural principles such as “positive forms” – elements protruding into space – and “negative forms” (holes or folds) which let the space penetrate the shape, static (symmetric) or dynamic (asymmetric) balance, and formal relations that set the whole form in motion, or accentuations which stress certain aspects of the form. The students then used this “grammar” of sculptural traits to develop their own creations using various kinds of paper. We analyzed modern sculptures by Antione Pevsner, Naum Gabo, and Alexander Calder, as well

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figure 6.36 “Seductive” (slide from a student PowerPoint presentation on the topic of “Angel”)

figure 6.37 “Contemporary representations. Is he the real devil? … Or is he?” (slide from a student PowerPoint presentation on the topic of “Devil”)

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figure 6.38 Student’s works on the topic of “Kitsch”

as the Bauhaus lessons by Josef Albers, who let his students work experimentally with paper to discover the possibilities of three-dimensional form which could then be used in functional applications such as architecture. “Kitsch as Art”,3 on the other hand, required preliminary research into the nature of kitsch, its features, and its idealization of an idyllic world, thus veiling real conflicts and problems. After inquiries into topics such as angels, garden gnomes, Barbie dolls, fairy tale figures, or fashion accessories, the students

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presented their findings and insights in - partially humorous - PowerPoint presentations. This provided them with a conceptual foundation for beginning to sketch and develop their artwork on kitsch, carefully choosing the appropriate medium for their expression in consultation with the teacher. The work was to achieve a double character: on the one hand, it was to use the features of kitsch so that the work would really look like kitsch at first glance. But then, upon closer examination, the beholder would discover alienating and irritating elements, so that he or she would recognize critical aspects of the form. Thus, a Barbie doll appeared as a vamp in a costume with feathers, glitter, and leopard fur, but her eyes were replaced by those of a crocodile. Students transformed a women’s handbag through the use of contradictory material, making it in metal with handles made of pink barbed wire. Two girls posed for photos of a self-made fashion show where they disguised themselves in strange, over-thetop clothing, and put the photos photos into frames with kitsch applications as red hearts, glitter and pink color. 3.1 Polarities as Traits and Tools in Art Pedagogy The list of different themes for artistic projects illustrates that a wide range of topics is possible. In fact, everything is possible, since artistic projects deal with topics from all aspects of life. They develop creative narratives which activating all elements of artistic thought, thus educating existential creativity. From material to philosophical considerations, from random forms to cultural inquiries – in all cases, artistic projects combine creation with knowledge, and intuitive action with critical reflection. These characteristics already show that artistic learning consists of many polar aspects, replete with tensions and connections. Material versus philosophy, random encounter versus scientific research are polarities in the outlined project topics. Looking back at the projects described, particularly the more extensively documented “Head with a Story” project, many other polarities become apparent. All poles represent extreme aspects of a relationship through which artistic learning takes place. In literature on art education those poles are often only stressed one-sidedly. Concepts stressing the perception and interpretation of art or media works neglect the creation process, and vice versa.4 Some positions stress intuition, emotion, and fantasy, disdaining rationality and critical reflection in the artistic process, and vice versa.5 But such a one-sided approach does not adequately address the traits, opportunities, and requirements of the artistic education process. Instead, this process challenges teachers and the students to link the poles, let the “sculptural energy” flow in the tension between them, and build connections in order to play with the full range of artistic learning practices. Stressing

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only some aspects is a waste of time and energy, since this obstructs the full evolution of creative learning. “Head with a Story”, for instance, tried to integrate production and reception. It combined transformation in the artistic work-process with research into different disciplines, from art history to philosophy. It attempted to stimulate intuition as well as reflection, perception as well as imagination. The structured project comprised phases of experimental work as well as group lessons on crucial aspects. It also related both poles to one another, since the work process produced new needs for knowledge, and the new knowledge was related back to the work influencing reflections and inspiring new transformations. In the rhythm between experiment and contextuality, the process of creativity took place between chaos and form, uncertainty and clarity. The art teacher should not avoid the polarities of artistic learning processes but should play with them according to the pedagogical needs which emerge over the course of the project. The poles are tools which she or he can use in order to shape the process of the structured project. Thus, this project is a kind of pedagogic artwork as well, growing between the poles of guidance, direction, confrontation with new information, and the contingency inherent to the creative process, with which the teacher has to operate. Since all of artistic education occurs between the poles of artistic creation and the domain of education, the many connections between them provide opportunities as well as challenges. Sometimes, it is useful or necessary to lay the emphasis on one pole: for instance, learning a technique or crucial aspects by heart, free experimentation without criteria, setting certain tasks, or allowing students to explore a field of interest and gather information. The art teacher’s art is to balance these poles according to the needs of a single pupil, a group, or the entire class, with regard to the work process and to the exigencies of the topic. Stressing only one side of a polar relation is, by and large, not the best way to proceed. Instead, the teacher should weigh the two against one another and place an accent within the energetic field between them. For instance, experimenting with criteria and confronting students with a new technique connects the poles of imitation and independent discovery. The pupils have learned crucial aspects of a material and a technique and must create a preliminary object following their imagination and experiences while using these guidelines. As they immerse themselves in their own work, transforming new insights gathered from their research, an exchange takes place between the poles of intuitive flow and scientific inquiry. The process combines both polar possibilities in a reflective, experimental creation act. The act of creation occurs anywhere between those poles and thus becomes something special, an individual learning process brought forward by a sculptural tension, a

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movement between creation and reflection, each pole inspiring and criticizing the other, “kneading” the students back and forth, as Beuys characterized the inner agility of artistic learners. Inductive and deductive assignments are another polar couple of the artistic learning process, opposing rigid prescriptions of tasks to complete freedom without any criteria (“Do what you want”). We already mentioned that both extremes obstruct creativity instead of fostering it. When the task requires only obedience, it does not leave the students with room to pursue their own intentions, while a complete lack of orientation leaves students stuck with the skills, knowledge, and ideas they already have. It is important for the teacher to find an inspiring balance between confronting the students with something new and providing orientation and criteria on one hand, and providing impulses for individual explorations and developments on the other. Every teacher is challenged to weigh the poles of prescription and freedom, and set the pedagogical emphasis on an appropriate point between them. Artistic education also takes place in the decisive polar relation between two languages: the language of images and verbal language. Art education is an interdisciplinary subject, moving between art and education, intuition and rationality, pictures and science. Inherent to this interdisciplinary character is the tension between images and words as two different languages which are related, yet never exactly alike. To a large extent, artistic learning processes emerge from this incongruent relationship. On one hand, the artistic creation of images provides an experience of intuitive flow – a preconscious aesthetic of creation in which working on the form yields new possibilities that require neither planning nor verbal expression. Images stimulate emotional reactions and imaginative associations at first independent from verbal considerations or explanations. However, considerations and reflections can affect emotions and imagination, and vice versa. In a happy moment, reflection, emotion, imagination are in harmony, and affirm and inspire each other. In a “lucky” moment, they criticize each other and thus push along the process of analyzing or forming a picture. Verbal language is the medium in which relevant knowledge is discussed, in which observation and information are connected to each other. It is the medium in which resonance becomes reflection as the active receiver, who is “listening” to the sender, begins to rationally consider sensuous impressions, combine them with relevant contexts, interpret them, and develop a personal position (perhaps even an evaluation or judgment) on this subject-object relationship. Verbal communication is the medium for classroom discussions. Verbal constellations attempt to grasp the traits of a picture, express its aesthetic values, emotional impact, imaginative visions, and possible meanings. They

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try to address problems, faults, and errors in the creation process and give hints and suggestions for improvements. However, verbal language can never completely describe and explain what a picture expresses. “A picture is worth a thousand words” addresses the irresolvable incongruence between pictorial and verbal language. Importantly, aesthetic learning teaches students to work with both. The remaining tension between the two provides opportunities to strengthen both. Perceiving a picture constantly spurs us on to find new words to express its effects and meanings, because words are never quite adequate. On the other hand, rational reflections on pictorial phenomena and effects can inspire new aesthetic perceptions or new ways to continue the process of creation. The picture is a “strange attractor” for rational considerations. Functional pictures in advertising or entertainment attract attention, but manipulative strategies lie beneath the sensational, easily grasped surface. Artworks retain a mysterious, enigmatic character as an alienation of everyday experience or as completely abstract inventions. In any case, pictures challenge our understanding and reveal to us that understanding does not only involve the rational grasping of facts. Advertising addresses our emotions, trying to overwhelm critical reflection. However, we must retain our critical distance from the picture to discover deeper layers of intention. As objects of sensuous perception, artworks first address our emotions and imagination, then call for contextual reflection as we dive deeper into the picture. Nonetheless, a difference remains between the reality that images disclose and that of verbal communication; images stimulate all mental abilities, and also show that reality is manifold, complex, and does not only consist of rationally attainable insights and facts. Images, especially artworks which are personal perspectives of individuals, tell stories in a different language, thus opening up access to different realities. Images report on the world, the domain accessible to the human mind. Pictures demand attentive perception, empathetic emotionality, imagination and reflection – the entire range of creative thought – in order to apprehend their narrative of reality. The reality of images shows that emotion and imagination are faculties providing provide special access to this reality. This makes images critical counterparts to scientific or other rationalist approaches to reality. Pictures are thus crucial to an education which intends to prepare students to be flexible, creative actors in a complex natural, cultural, and social world. Pictures are not simply manipulative devices or fantastical visions, but instead open up different aspects of reality. Artistic education not only teaches students how to competently and critically read pictures, but also provides access to diverse experiences, realities, and mental abilities in order to master complex encounters deliberately and creatively. In order to initiate

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and carry out learning processes that aim to make “every human an artist”, and develop everyone’s abilities in existential narration and creativity, the education of art teachers faces complex demands and challenges as it takes place between the arts and sciences, between verbal and pictorial language.

Notes 1 Mason, Rachel and Carl-Peter Buschkühle, eds., Images & Identity. Educating Citizenship through Visual Arts. (Bristol, UK/Chicago, USA: Intellect, 2013). 2 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Die Welt als Spiel II. Kunstpädagogik: Theorie und Praxis künstlerischer Bildung (Oberhausen: Athena, 2007), 208–224. 3 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Künstlerische Bildung: Theorie und Praxis einer künstlerischen Kunstpädagogik (Oberhausen: Athena, 2017), 566–596. 4 In German Art Education this was a conflict between the two leading art educators in the 1990s, Gunter Otto and Gert Selle. 5 In Germany this was significant in the concepts of the more emotional “Musische Bildung” in the 1950s and the subsequent “Kunstunterricht” in the 1960s which stressed the rational processes in art education.

CHAPTER 7

Studying Artistic Education 1

Becoming a Generalist

Art education is an interdisciplinary subject, as already indicated by the name – a combination of art and education. But the study of art education demands more. The subject stands on three pillars: art, visual studies – including art history – and pedagogy. Art educators must study all three fields, and moreover learn to combine and link them together in order to develop, explain, and legitimate practices in art education. In certain respects, the art teacher is a generalist, able to navigate and work between these three fields. On the other hand, he or she must also be a specialist in order to develop educational practices from these fields simultaneously. Neither artists nor art historians need to do this, but can remain in their fields unless specific interests motivate them to move beyond their discipline. Exchanges between art and art history often take place, but they often focus on research and the exchange of information. An art historian is not required to become a practicing artist, nor is an artist required to become a scholar of art history. However, an art educator must be a practicing artist as well as a scholar. Moreover, she or he has to be a philosopher and pedagogue.

2

Art Educators Have to Be Artists

The art educator should not only be an interdisciplinary generalist working between art, visual studies, and pedagogy. Art educators also have to be specialists in art. This is even more important than their knowledge of art-history, philosophy of art, or pedagogy. One can hardly teach swimming without being a swimmer: theoretical explanations of swimming won’t help a student learn how to swim in a pool. This is comparable to art education. Being able to explain theoretically how a painting or sculpture technique functions is insufficient for motivating and teaching students. Superficially demonstrating these techniques will result in superficial works by the pupils, except for with highly talented students. The artistic projects described in this book all take the artistic works of the students as their centerpiece. Without artists producing artworks, no art historian will have something to do, no art philosopher will be able to think about © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424555_007

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the essence of art, and no art educator will have something to teach. This is why artworks are at the center of artistic education. They grant access to the entire pedagogical spectrum of artistic creativity, in contrast to the more narrow learning afforded by the analysis of artworks and media images. Why only watch and talk about swimming? Swimming yourself opens up far more experiences than thinking about it. But when you swim, you may run the risk of drowning, especially when you are a beginner. In this case, it can be helpful to have someone at your side who can support you, help you overcome weakness and doubt, and prevent you from losing faith and orientation in deep or troubled waters. Only a skilled swimmer can do this. This also reveals why art educators must be artists. In order to support the students in their artistic work, they need to have experience with this kind of work. Chaos – movement – form, the sculptural dynamic of creativity that Beuys outlined, indicates that chaotic situations are inherent to creative processes. If this were not the case, nothing new would ever be created because all possibilities would already be clear in advance, and no risks would need to be taken. Often, art lessons are also prepared along these lines. A task with broadly defined criteria, often derived from the analysis of an artwork, allows the uncertain art teacher to feel secure regarding the pupils’ creation process because he or she can always fall back on the prescribed criteria and can evaluate the results according to them. As we already showed with the example concerning the twelve similar sunflower pictures in a primary school, this kind of creation work does not foster individual creativity but instead encourages obedience to rules. The art teachers must have experience with creative processes in order to be able to support their students at all points in their creative work. Only then the teacher can dare to take risks, thus offering the pupils opportunities for individual development. If the teachers know how to handle situations of chaos, disorientation, and uncertainty, they can view them as fruitful moments for discovering new possibilities, insights, and behaviors. Their own experience within those creative processes gives the teacher the necessary background to accompany the students in their experiments. This artistic experience can only be achieved through individual artistic work, which offers knowledge from which pedagogical impulses can emerge – initiating an artistic project, affirming promising attempts of the students, and assessing when new information and insights may help move the work along. The art teacher does not only possess “know-how”, or skills in certain techniques or media. It is also crucial to be experienced in the psychology of the artistic process. The teacher must not only have theoretical but personal experience with the roles of perception, empathy, imagination in the creative process in order to give helpful guidance. Personal artistic experience develops the

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teacher’s own sense of the aesthetic needs of the growing form as well as the psychological needs of the student artists. It allows the teacher to develop pedagogic initiatives targeted to the specific situations of the students as well as the artistic needs of their work. Instead of controlling every step of the process, the art teacher should also be eager to support experiments and individual inquiries. Instead of focusing on whether certain criteria have been fulfilled, he appreciates disobedient actions that uncover unplanned possibilities. Artistic experience enables the teacher to recognize the specific qualities of different works on a topic. On the basis of artistic experience and knowledge, the teacher can serve as advocate for the different works which he sometimes has to defend against their creators, giving them tasks to observe, feel, imagine, reflect, experiment, or research in order to find out “what the work wants”. If the work does not only address formal aesthetic problems but specific contents, sufficient knowledge is also required in order to support the creation process in the art educational relation of teacher – student – work – content. This reveals that an art educator should also pursue scholarly studies (in art history, for instance) in parallel to his own artistic development.

3

Providing Time and Space for Artistic Studies

Artistic experience can only be acquired if the art teachers have enough time and space to focus on making art during their studies. It is far from sufficient to visit two or three painting seminars, which are held in seminar rooms which do not provide the studio conditions needed for artistic work, and receive a grade at the end for the results. Such studies can provide students with barely more than a superficial experience of painting that is not an artistic experience. To develop actual artistic experience, art teachers need time to focus on a selected artistic field – painting, sculpture, printing, photography, video, or performance. In Germany, there are two paths for art education studies: one at the art academy, and one at the university. One can often tell the training of art teachers based on the work their students in school produce. Almost always, students taught by an art teacher who was trained at an art academy produce work significantly more complex in form and content than students taught by university graduates. At the art academy, art educators study together with art students in classes led by renowned artists. Their artistic studies are centered on the medium of their choice and continue throughout their entire course of study. After the first two semesters, which serve as introduction and orientation, students can choose their medium and, with the agreement of the professor, can enter the class of their choice. At least three years of intensive artistic studies follow which focus on the personal artistic development of

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the student. In addition, art educators have to study other subjects, including art history, philosophy of art, and art pedagogy. However, the majority of the course of study is dedicated to artistic practice. Classes take place in studio rooms large enough to provide space for every student to create their artworks and store their working materials. In universities, art classes are seldom given appropriate time and space. Practical courses are held in seminars of two or three hours a week so that they fit within the curriculum structure of the university. If the students are lucky, they can work in studio rooms with different media, but often seminars are conducted in ordinary seminar rooms which do not allow for extensive work with materials, or provide enough space for bigger work and equipment. Spatial conditions influence creativity. Artistic creation can barely be stimulated within the sterile atmosphere of university rooms. Using seminar rooms to make art feels like an exception, in which art students are tolerated, but frowned upon by the university. (By the way, it is also worth discussing to what extent the atmosphere of university classrooms obstructs the creativity of scientific thinking.) The spaces used for art classes at universities are often not appropriate for artistic learning, nor does the segmentation into seminars provide adequate time for learning. Two or three hours a week devoted to artistic work in a selected field is not enough to develop personal artistic work with the experiences of intensity, struggling for solutions, extending one’s technical skills, developing one’s aesthetic sensitivity, pictorial imagination, and reflection of relevant contexts. Under these conditions, the students must continue their work in their spare time. Responsible teachers will provide them with support whenever possible, even beyond institutional limitations. Artistic work requires time. An artist cannot create work on command every Monday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The intensity of a creative process is affected by temporal restrictions. If an artist knows he has to stop in two hours, he might not even begin. Artistic creativity, if hurried, cannot dive deeply into the process. That is a problem for artistic education in schools, too. Some alternatives are possible, like project work in afternoon lessons in studio rooms. As the documented projects in this book reveal, artistic projects are indeed possible under school conditions.

4

Should I Study One Medium or More?

Focusing on a medium of choice lies at the core of an art educator’s training and personal artistic development. Yet additional studies in art education are

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not limited to acquiring knowledge in art history and pedagogy, but also require studies in more than one artistic medium. In school, art educators should be able to initiate and accompany artistic work in more than one medium; pupils should have the opportunity to work on painting, sculpture, and new media. Different students have different talents in and affinities towards artistic media. Artistic projects provide students with opportunities to choose among media and select the one most appropriate for his or her intentions. Art educators should therefore be able to support their students in more than one medium, which requires finding a balance within another polarity in their own studies: concentrating on one medium in order to develop personal artistic experience, and gathering knowledge and skills in different media in order to provide a variety of options for pupils. Studying art education at German universities requires working in a variety of media, while studying art education at an art academy does not. This results in a problem which can manifest in different ways in school art classes. On one hand, some teachers successfully transfer their experience in one field into supporting students working in other media. On the other, teachers with expertise in one medium often cannot sufficiently move outside this field and tend to give lessons and tasks in that field. One way of dealing with the demand to study several media at the university is to give students the chance to intensify their studies in one medium over several years of continued work and additionally let them take seminars on other media of two semesters each. Altogether, artistic studies should cover two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and new media.

5

Giving Grades for Artistic Studies

Art academies typically do not give students grades each semester, since grades are counterproductive for developing an individual artistic position, a process which requires time and opportunities to try new things, make mistakes, and conduct further research. Students graduate after studying for eight semesters or more, during which time they should be continuously accompanied by an artist teacher. At university, students tend to receive grades regularly. This should be replaced by examinations in which works are presented and processes are discussed. These could be given after studying a given medium, or as final examinations for the entire course of study. Here, the constant support and feedback of teachers is essential for giving students orientation in their artistic development.

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Visual Studies – Pictorial Sciences

In the following chapter, the term “visual studies” is used to refer to a complex field in relation to art education, which is not restricted to the classical field of art history. Since media images are of enormous influence in the contemporary world, media studies also forms part of the course of study of art educators. In addition, philosophy plays an essential role in art education, considering questions such as the character of art, artworks, and artistic thought and action. Therefore, visual studies is a complex and interdisciplinary field, which takes art as its focus but connects it to other disciplines and topics. The reason I am discussing visual studies is the extended, anthropological understanding of art outlined in this book. Art is not understood as a domain of images or a cultural discipline, but as a complex way of thinking and acting which can develop the art of living, i.e. existential creativity. Artworks are understood as complex objects which express this creativity, while artistic thinking is regarded as a holistic and creative way of human thought which can be educated by means of artistic encounters and processes. Those assumptions are already a result of complex considerations within the fields of artistic creation, science, and pedagogy outlined in this book. This already suggests that art educational studies should not only provide encounters with artistic practice, art history, aesthetics, philosophy of art, and art pedagogy, but should also link these fields together, construct relations between them, make arguments for its relevance in educational contexts, and develop and justify pedagogical perspectives. Art educators have to be artists, but also scholars in visual studies. This is the realm of theoretical encounter with the interdisciplinary professional field. But what is visual studies? According to the extended concept of art, which understands art as an anthropological term, it is more than the traditional discipline of art history. Art history is not obsolete but it is no longer sufficient to cover the huge and influential realm of images in postmodern culture. In the 1960s in Germany, “Visuelle Kommunikation” (Visual Communication) began addressing images from popular media, like television or advertising, within art education in schools.1 The “iconic turn” has been discussed since the 1990s and has led to an extension of the term “picture” or “image”.2 Pictorial or image science not only deals with the history and the presence of artworks, but also with the traits and the influences of images in the popular media. Architecture and design are also subsumed under this enlarged pictorial term, since they are not only functional factors but also have aesthetic and symbolic aspects. Pictorial competence became an important argument for legitimating art education as a main subject in schools.3 In this context, the name of the subject changed, and appears in Anglo-American discussions as “Visual Culture Education”4

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or “Visual Culture Art Education”, while in Europe, an international research group was formed to create a framework for “Visual Literacy” (ENViL).5 Visual studies are necessary for a prospective art educator, since images in new media strongly affect the lives and thoughts of children and adults today. TV, film, advertising, comics, computer games, and the Internet are all spaces in which people can encounter images, either in print or electronically. However, the sheer multitude of these pictures in everyday life is not a sufficient argument for marginalizing artworks and art history in the studies of an art educator. Art history remains important beyond media studies, since art history provides an account of traditions which influence the aesthetics and content of popular images. Art history is a major domain of cultural heritage which contributes to the development of the cultural identity of students of all ages.

7

The Contemporary Relevance of Art History

Historical knowledge is obviously important, but it is even more paramount to continuously draw conceptual links between the past and the present. Developing “image proficiency” requires elaborating a “backward-looking image history”6 in order to come to an understanding of the historical influences within contemporary art and media images. However, coming to this historical view is not enough. Instead, a “forward-looking image history” is necessary in which the past is encountered in order to decipher differences within the present. For a pupil today, the knowledge of romantic aesthetics in painting can be useful beyond performing well on a test, quiz, or trivia competition. It can deepen the student’s understanding of historical developments within his own culture or the culture of his surroundings. But historical knowledge becomes important for the student only when it can be transferred into his contemporary context. The curved “Eurasia” staff connected the existential dimensions of the artistic narrative through a cross symbol, which came out of the future, reached into the past, and curved back into the present, toward the listening, reflecting artist. This indicates the pedagogical importance of encountering historical material: these encounters happen with an eye toward the future. Art history can provide knowledge and experiences of the past which, in turn, explain for present phenomena. But they also inspire reflections on the differences between the past and the present. These differences help the students learn about their present life conditions and how they relate to the past, but also – and more importantly – how their present differs from it. Romantic images today, produced by advertising, for instance, are not stimulated by melancholy

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spirituality or political resistance (as in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich), but are mostly motivated by economic interests in order to persuade or seduce the individual as a customer. In order to critically examine these images, it is essential to have an understanding of historical traditions and contemporary differences, as well as the ability to conduct comparisons across different media. To continue with the example, it is important to know about the aesthetic strategies and philosophical background of Romantic painting as well as advertising strategies in order to critically discern similarities and differences between historical periods and images in present-day media. Art history is an essential part of the studies of art educators as well as media studies, combined within visual studies, which integrates historical and other critical approaches to images.

8

The Role of Philosophy

8.1 Crucial Questions in Artistic Education Philosophy plays a central role in artistic educational studies. Perceiving and comparing aesthetic relations between various historic images is the first step. The second is even more important for reflecting on the position of the viewer in these contexts. Aesthetic comparisons lead to considerations of content which integrate relevant biographical, social, and political aspects, as well as drawing on intellectual history. Finally, pictures express a philosophy. It is important to discern this philosophy to decipher the intentions and positions of artworks or media images. Such a philosophy, expressed through images, is influenced by social conditions as well as by the “Zeitgeist”. Image history integrates necessary aspects of social history and Zeitgeist according to the methodology of iconology, for example, which interprets pictures with regard to their historical and philosophical relations. An art educator must therefore also be educated in the various methodologies of pictorial analysis. But interpreting the contents of images remains to some degree superficial when changes in the history of thought expressed in images are not sufficiently grasped. It is crucial for art educators to study philosophy and intellectual history to have a solid understanding of hermeneutics and self-conceptions throughout history. Philosophical studies are not only necessary for understanding the intellectual historical background of a work of art, but also open up more perspectives regarding the professional field of art education. Philosophy is not only crucial in the history of thought, which is a necessary background for interpreting pictures, but it is crucial for understanding basic issues. Philosophy enables us to ask, What is art? Without asking this question, art education cannot develop convincing arguments concerning the next question: what can we expect to

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learn from art? Only by inquiring into the nature of art can art educators consider other relevant topics, such as, What is the character of the artistic creation process? What kind of knowledge or experience does the perception and contemplation of artworks make available to us? How does this differ from the perception and reflection of media objects? What mental abilities are stimulated by the production and perception of art? This leads to the specific question of art education which brings about its own self-understanding as artistic education: What are artistic thought and action like, and how do they educate people? In order to discuss the relevance of artistic creation and art history in the contemporary, media-saturated world, one must have knowledge of the specific traits of art in comparison to media. Only receiving experience in artistic creation as a practicing artist does not allow an art educator to formulate precise answers to basic questions such as, What is the character of an artwork? What happens in artistic creation processes? What mental abilities can we educate through creating art? Likewise, only learning about epochs within art history will not help art educators answer questions such as, What happens in the process of analyzing artworks or media images? What mental abilities do artworks challenge and educate? Does art provide unique experiences and insights which cannot be derived by other means, whether through popular media, the natural sciences, or technology? What purposes and specific values can art education claim to reveal itself as educationally indispensable? This question reveals the importance of a theoretical foundation for art and its educational contributions; this theoretical foundation enables art educators to defend and position it within educational and curricular discussions. To focus more closely on the topic of this book, why speak of artistic education instead of art education? What does it mean to have an anthropological understanding of art instead of regarding it merely as an aesthetic or cultural phenomenon? What does it mean to put existential creativity at the center of this education, and attempt to educate students as creative people in society? To what extent does an anthropological understanding of art extend the reach of art within education, revealing it as not just one subject among others, but instead as an alternative means of education that can integrate other subjects too (for instance, in artistic projects that combine research with personal reflections and creative transformations)?

9

Relevant Philosophical Disciplines

These questions involve several philosophical disciplines that are relevant for the studies of art educators. First of all, they address anthropological questions by inquiring into human nature and the fundamental role of creativity.

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Secondly, they involve epistemology, since artistic projects involve studying the activities of thinking in artistic creation and perception processes. Furthermore, examining sensual perception, empathy, knowledge, reflection, imagination, motivation and skills at work, again links to anthropological considerations: What is a human, and what is human intelligence? This is followed by the pedagogic question: How can we educate the full spectrum of human cognitive faculties, and what contributions can an artistic education offer in this regard? Phenomenology and aesthetics examine the character of the artwork. What are its specific qualities? How does it differ from other objects, natural and technical? Once again, these inquiries are always combined with a pedagogical perspective for art educators. What aspects of education are specifically connected with artworks as objects of perception and production? How does working with artworks differ from dealing with media images? One answer may be that artworks offer an author’s individual perspective on the world, whereas popular media artefacts tend to depict a reality according to the interests of economic or political clients. Nonetheless, artists’ worldviews are also influenced by their biographical, social, political, and cultural backgrounds so that an artwork is an expression of complex considerations and attitudes towards reality filtered and transformed by an individual. This again brings up philosophical considerations of the role of an artist and her achievements. From the point of view of an art educator, this question again has pedagogical aspects: What can we learn from artists, from an artistic attitude towards the world, from artistic thinking and acting? Ethical considerations are linked to these anthropological, epistemological, and aesthetic questions. If artistic thought and action are distinct from other modes of thinking and acting, and if they mobilize a complex interaction of mental abilities and thus approach things in a different way from science or economics, for example, do they then have certain ethical implications? We already pursued such questions in the encounters with Beuys’ work and discovered the interrelation between intuition and rationality, between emotion, reflection, and imagination in resonance with an object. In artistic communication, this object is regarded as a “sender” to which the artist “listens”, identifying persons and things not as means to an end but regarding them as non-identical beings with their own reality and dignity, thus establishing a culture of questioning (Kultur der Frage) rather than a culture of command. Linked to those ethical questions, which inquire into the artist’s thought and action, are aspects of political philosophy. Art and media often contain political messages, explicitly or implicitly. In order to critically decipher political content in media images or political artworks, it is necessary to have knowledge of relevant political theories and intentions. While these can

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be researched as part of an individual artwork’s context analysis, the overall connection between art and politics, and the question of the political instrumentalization of art, are of a specifically philosophical nature. These theories span between the theory of l’art pour l’art, which denies art any form of political engagement, and theories that call for using art as a political instrument. In turn, they simultaneously inquire into the philosophical nature of art, and deliver insights on the pedagogical potential of art. Lastly, this inquiry into philosophy also extends into metaphysics – again from two perspectives. Just as anthropology, ethics, and political philosophies provide contextual knowledge, knowledge of metaphysics is also relevant for interpreting and creating images concerned with a certain topic. The metaphysical philosophy of art inquires into what kind of reality artworks embody: Are they subjective, individual visions and creations, or are they the sensuous appearance of a transcendental idea? Are they esoteric or arcane, or are they cultural expressions of societal conditions? The metaphysical question is closely related to the history of art and media, since it refers to the history of ideas as expressed in the history of art, as well as discussing the current status of images as constitutive elements and narratives of reality. It is a metaphysical question to debate what we can experience in artworks – both contemporary and historical – and in media images. When we ask, what is the reality of a picture, what reality does it show, what understanding of the world and existence does it provide, and to what extent does it reveal a form of truth, these are metaphysical issues concerning the reality and truth claims of art. Again, these philosophical questions also stimulate pedagogical questions in artistic education, such as, Why examine pictures? What reality or truth do they make available or manipulate? What kind of non-verbal reality appears in the encounter with artworks and other pictures? Why is it worth dealing with this in educational contexts?

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Pedagogy – The Art of Artistic Education

10.1 Philosophy as Bridge between the Three Fields Since these various philosophical perspectives provide ground for reflection on artistic education, its traits, its possibilities, its aims, and its legitimation, philosophy can be a helpful bridge between the three fields of art education. The challenge within art education studies is not only to learn about the fields of artistic creation, visual studies, and art pedagogy, but also to build bridges and connections between them, in order to move aptly within the realm of artistic education. Reflecting on artistic creation processes can inspire considerations

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of the character of an artwork and artistic thought and action. Considering artistic experiences can lead to reflections and discussions that touch on the aesthetic, psychological, epistemological, ethical, political, and metaphysical aspects of art. In doing so, the next step for art educators is to inquire into the consequences of these findings for art education. Beginning with reflections on the personal experience of artistic creation, all three fields are covered and linked by such considerations. Philosophy is the bridge, since it reflects personal experiences, combines them with relevant philosophical theories, and thus leads to pedagogical questions and perspectives. Comparable processes occur in the reception and interpretation of artworks or media images. A meta-reflection on reception and interpretation again leads to complex considerations on the nature of the artwork, the artwork vis-à-vis other images, the reality and narratives of artworks, considerations of artistic knowledge, thought, behavior, social, political, and cultural influences and transformations in art or other media, ethical qualities, political responsibility, and metaphysical expression. These inquiries into the character and relations of art provide a complex and rich field for art education, its contents, interdisciplinary interrelations, contributions to cultural knowledge and identity, and potential influences on critical thought and personal development. Again, philosophical reflections build a bridge between different disciplines and link scientific inquiries and discussions to pedagogical perspectives.

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Educational Studies

Philosophy is a field which asks fundamental questions about art, artistic thinking and education. But education and pedagogy is also a major component of the studies of an art educator. Art practices and visual studies must constantly be regarded from a pedagogical perspective and with a mind to effective classroom teaching. The field of education is diverse, and covers other aspects besides philosophical considerations of education, as mentioned above. Both traditional and current questions must be pursued: educational theories, sociological research, and theories that link artistic education to social challenges and issues. Art educators require knowledge of the educational system as well as a grasp of current pedagogical challenges in the field of art education, such as media education, transcultural education, and inclusion. Certainly, not all of these can be studied in depth, but basic knowledge of relevant educational aspects is necessary, and developing areas of focus should be possible.

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Besides studying education, art educators also require focused studies within art pedagogy. It is important to learn about the development of drawing skills and pictorial expression. Theories of aesthetic education often combine various disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, learning theories, cultural and sociological studies, and lay various points of emphasis in these fields. While these theories are crucial for understanding the pedagogical merits of aesthetic and artistic education, art pedagogy builds a bridge towards educational practices. Art pedagogy links theories, empirical research, artistic, and pedagogic experiences with practical teaching in schools of different kinds, pupils of different age, art education outside schools, in museums, or private art schools. Art pedagogy develops goals and justifications for artistic education, and develops and evaluates methods for fitting educational approaches.

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Art Pedagogy as Art

Because art pedagogy brings the fields of artistic practice, visual studies, and pedagogical theories to bear on practical, educational situations with pupils, it deserves particular attention. Treating pedagogy as a minor aspect of art educational studies is a big mistake, though it is typical to accord too little attention to this discipline. For decades at German universities and art academies, art pedagogy was taught by experienced art teachers from schools, following the belief that the experience of a school practitioner was sufficient for teaching the prospective teachers about pedagogy. In light of the different disciplines, issues, and experiences outlined above, it is clear that this approach is insufficient and is not an effective means of teaching pedagogy fully within art educational studies. In fact, art pedagogy is a discipline in which the art of art education can be studied, reflected upon, and learned. The “art of art education” is a consciously-used expression because artistic education understands learning processes in the realm of art as a form of participatory, public art. The concept and the practice of artistic projects described in this book show how art pedagogy can link theories of art and artistic learning with pedagogical aims and methods. Studying art pedagogy can prepare prospective art teachers to act as creators of artistic learning processes in the pedagogical quartet or interplay of the process between teachers, students, work, and content, and should enable them to understand and use the polarities of art education as tools for shaping these learning processes.

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Interdisciplinary Studies in Artistic Projects

In order to provide such training, the study of pedagogy should link pedagogic theory with empirical research and teaching experiences. Traineeships in or outside schools accompanied by seminars on pedagogy are one way to gather these practical experiences. Another way to combine theory and practice in art pedagogical studies is to learn within the context of artistic projects. Studying within artistic projects has different learning aspects. The trainees will learn to work artistically in such projects. The projects offered should neither be focused only on projects in certain media such as painting, sculpture, or video, nor only on formal aesthetic problems. In order to be able to use artistic projects as avenues for artistic research into and expression of relevant topics, theme-related projects should be part of the studies of art educators as well. These projects deal with cultural, social, philosophical, and scientific topics, and allow the participating students to choose the medium for their work. Projects that focus on coupling research to creation are different from projects focused on developments in certain media or formal experiments. They provide complex processes of gathering and creatively working with knowledge, as the projects documented in this book intend to show. To enable prospective art teachers to conduct such projects in their future practice, projects of this nature should be a constitutive part of their studies. Artistic projects provide a broad field of pedagogic studies related to the practice of artistic learning. In fact, participating art educators teachers are in authentic artistic learning situations which offer the possibilities to observe and reflect upon the pedagogical aspects related to this education. Together with their teacher, they can reflect on the creation process: What is going on? What forms of thought and action does it demand? What relationships and connections can be discovered in the links between the author, the work and the content? What role does the teacher play in these contexts; what are his aims; what are his possibilities and challenges to accompany and support the students? What are the possible consequences of the teacher’s interventions, and what alternatives are imaginable? These pedagogical reflections can be made concerning the reception processes in a project as well. What can a pupil learn in analyzing art or media images? How is this related to the creative process in the project? How do reception and production influence each other? What are the educational opportunities provided when artistic education processes aim to foster individual creativity? What abilities of thought and action are exercised in the realm of perception and reflection?

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Experiencing and Reflecting Polarities

While reflecting on the educational options in the production and reception phases of an artistic project, art educators are confronted with a polarity within artistic learning. The educational situation offers possibilities for identifying other polarities as useful tools which can shape educational procedures and thus the project as a whole. These polarities have been described in the project documentations: the choice between inductive and deductive assignments, group work and individual research and experimental work. The art educators can therefore experience the elements of an artistic project – induction, experiment, contextuality. The twofold meaning of contextuality can be reflected within the topic and the creation of the artwork – as individual research into relevant information, the construction of (interdisciplinary) relations of meaning, and as phases of a structured project which allow the participants to focus on the topic together through phases of production, exercise, observations, reception, and discussion. Here, the operational elements of artistic learning can be distinguished – research, construction, and transformation. Reflecting on the pedagogic aspects of artistic education in project frameworks allows the students to bring their own personal experience in project work to bear on discussions regarding educational goals. Elements of existential creativity, such as creative narration, or artistic thinking, with its constitutive abilities of sensitive perception, critical reflection, personal imagination, willpower, and practical skills do not remain abstract. Instead, the art educators in training can discover their importance for themselves by reflecting on their own experiences in the process of artistic work and inquiry. The pedagogical discussions occurring throughout artistic projects can inspire the pedagogical self-reflection of prospective art teachers, allowing them to develop a deeper understanding of the components, challenges, and opportunities of artistic educational processes. Because they are personally involved in the project, students have the chance to reflect on themselves and their own relationship to these processes. In doing so, they do not only have the chance to discover different aspects from their own experience, but they also can reflect on their personal attitude towards artistic learning, their personal motivation and aims in this field, and the challenges they face in the course of their studies. Artistic projects can integrate phases of pedagogical reflections, and thus these projects provide the opportunity of linking educational practice with educational theory. They are also a place in which the three fields of art education – art, visual studies, and pedagogy – can be linked together, since scholarly

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contexts are crucial for these projects as well – inquiries into art, media studies, and philosophy.

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Critical Reflection and Imagination in Pedagogy

Prospective art teachers must also study different concepts of art education. Studying various historical and contemporary pedagogical positions provides the students with necessary knowledge of historical developments and current problems in their professional field. It also enables them to reflect on alternatives, to evaluate and judge them, and thus develop and legitimate their own pedagogical positions. Pedagogical concepts bridge the gap between theory and practice, but should not be treated as frameworks one can apply schematically. Rather, the art educators in training should reflect upon them, their aims, their methods, and various pedagogical legitimation theories in order to deliberately decide on their own art educational practices. One can expect art educators to do their work on the basis of gathering knowledge, reflecting on this knowledge, and making decisions in the complex field of their profession. They will be determined, flexible, and creative in their pedagogic practice, combining knowledge, experience, and imagination to understand the pedagogic possibilities of art instruction. Knowledge of various pedagogical concepts and their practical application can inspire the pedagogical imagination, since it provides the art educator with various alternatives in planning and holding lessons. In addition, gaining personal experiences in artistic projects as well as through traineeships in schools allows art educators in training to critically consider and come up with a personal approach to pedagogy. This includes learning that there is no one, best practice, but instead realizing that pedagogical decisions must be made based on the needs of the pupils, the works, and the content in each given situation. In this sense, artistic education becomes more than a schematic methodology and develops into an art of art pedagogy.

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Existential Creativity – Artistic Education as a Mental Attitude

This chapter began by characterizing art educators as generalists. Art educators must be artists but must also be able to navigate relevant fields, such as art history, philosophy, visual and media studies, and cultural theory, as well as art pedagogy and education. However, a field of study in artistic education should not make a set of qualifications its final aim. Artistic education instead

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aims at making every person into an artist, and fostering the existential creativity of each individual. This is the aim of artistic education inside and outside schools. It is an alternative educational concept which teaches people to use playful thinking and existential narration within the context of art. But the skills and abilities taught in these contexts extend beyond the reach of the classroom. They are abilities crucial for the larger project each person must embark upon: creating one’s own personality, and shaping one’s biography in the art of living. Artistic education is not only a concept within art education; it is also a mental attitude. It involves turning each individual into an artist of living, which requires permanently using one’s capacity for existential creativity in all realms of life. All of life provides educational opportunities for people and their abilities to creating their own selves and relationships to others, things, social and cultural realities. Wilhelm Schmid characterizes the subject who practices the art of living in postmodern conditions as the “coherent self”. The coherent self has a more or less firm core to its personality, formed through education, socialization and its genes, and has flexible borders, where openness and curiosity push towards new experiences. These new experiences must be related to the self again, which has to decide whether they will influence its ways of thinking and acting, whether it will modify its convictions, values, engagements. Thus, the coherent self does not defensively reject all new impulses, nor get lost in the many possibilities of postmodern culture and society. More than ever before, the individual is challenged to be free. Since the “grand narratives” of religion or political ideology can only shore up their validity through oppression and violence, and globalized, mediatized societies confront the individual with diversity, conflicts, and contradictions, the subject is forced to find its own path and declare its own values in this complex reality. Instead of clinging to fundamentalist identities or surrendering to superficial consumerism, the artist of living insists on the possibility of shaping his own personality, biography, and life. In order to do so, he requires the ability to “listen” to the new and to reflect on himself – exercising a culture of questioning evident in artistic learning processes. This culture of questioning is creative, since it involves a respectful, resolute awareness of the other as a non-identical reality. The subject enters into encounters related to his personality, mobilized by personal reactions, which “care” for his own life. Heidegger characterized the human existential condition by means of “care” (Sorge). The individual is always interested in its future, and all activities, including the relationship to the past, are some way or the other connected to this concern. In order to shape one’s own life deliberately, fill it with meaning, values, and aims, people must learn to create existential narratives. Artistic projects importantly

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teach participants to create existential narratives as “local” and self-responsible. Artistic learning in these projects links the inquiries of the past to interests that lie in the future because the student attempts to establish a personal position in an artwork. In doing so, she is challenged to engage in the culture of questioning within the artistic communication between mind and matter, treating the material in an appropriate way so that the work finally becomes something new and non-identical. This involves holistic thinking: the critical interplay of emotion and cognition, imagination and will. More than ever before, the individual is, to use Sartre’s words, “condemned to be free”. A free person can stick with clichéd historical solutions or indulge in fantastic visions of the future. But such reactions do not measure up to self-determination and responsible creation. To be a responsible subject means to be responsible for one’s own thought, actions, personality, and behavior. In a diverse, plural world, our abilities to be empathetic, considerate, imagine consequences, and mobilize our good will, are our basic tools for facing life’s challenges in a responsible and creative way. Existential creativity, generated through the interplay of the faculties of artistic thought and executed in self-determined narratives and actions, does not rely on fixed convictions, methods, systems, or ideologies. This repeatedly confronts the subject with uncertainty and the need to perceive, reflect, judge, and decide anew. To educate free people, as the artist of living can do, is to provide them with the ability to exercise existential creativity. Studying art, Beuys once said, should be possible for everyone. He expected that once people had studied art, they would bring an artistic approach to their various professions – whether they were bakers or lawyers, teachers or physicians.7 One cannot be certain of the results, but teaching people to use existential creativity will result in different outcomes than a pragmatic education focused on economic efficiency. Fostering a culture of questioning and a lively relationship between our mental abilities may lead to individuals who have developed personalities and are responsible citizens. The permanent artistic self-education of the authors of the “social sculpture” may increase our chances at creating a human society, an ecologically-minded economic system, and artistically-minded future technology. Artistic education, and the minds of artist educators, are crucially important to producing this change.

Notes 1 Hermann K. Ehmer, ed., Visuelle Kommunikation, Beiträge zur Kritik der Bewusstseinsindustrie (Köln: Dumont Schauberg, 1974).

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2 William Thomas Mitchell, What do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005); Christa Maar, Hubert Burda, ed., Iconic Turn. The New Power of Images (Köln: Dumont, 2004). 3 Kunibert Bering, Rolf Niehoff, Visual Proficiency – A Perspective on Art Education (Oberhausen: Athena, 2015). 4 Kerry Freedman, Teaching Visual Culture, Curriculum, Aesthetics and the Social Life of Art (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 2003). 5 Ernst Wagner, Diederik Schönau, Common European Framework of Referencefor Visual Culture – Prototype (Münster, New York: Waxmann, 2016). 6 Kunibert Bering and Rolf Niehoff: Bild-/Kunstgeschichte. Kunstpädagogische Anregungen (Oberhausen: Athena, 2016), 9. 7 Harlan, Rappmann and Schata, Soziale Plastik, 39.

CHAPTER 8

Art Class as a Construction Site Mario Urlaß

Wherever we go or drive, our environment is full of construction sites which we often take for our real, permanent lifeworld. Things that preoccupy us in everyday life have infiltrated our thoughts and speech as metaphors. The construction site is even more potent as a metaphor than in the actual world of construction. Even the educational system is a permanent construction site: schools and universities are constantly being rebuilt and reshaped. One change immediately follows the next. The educational system has been reshaped for market fitness through changes such as the focus on quality in educational discourses, the scientific and politically-motivated introduction of educational standards, and the evaluation of schools through broad-based tests and evaluations. Even art class cannot escape this system, yet it is a rather different kind of permanent construction site. Art class as a permanent construction site provides a metaphor for a project which is constantly developing and changing. The unprecedented growth of educational and pedagogical processes, the transformation of our lifeworlds, and the constant expansion of art into the everyday, into transdisciplinary sciences, and global society requires permanent restructuring and rebuilding. Despite this, art pedagogy suffers from a lack of construction and renewal, as a look at different schools will reveal. For decades, art educators have addressed the same topics and understood themselves as teachers for formal, subject-specific skills. They have overlooked the complexity and holistic aspects of the subject, and ignored the subjective perspectives of their students, obstructing students’ expressions of individuality. Art class should instead foster freedom and creativity as faculties that can constantly fuel personal development. Art class should teach students self-knowledge, self-awareness, and self-development; it should give them ways to constantly build and transform themselves. The current educational plan for schools in Baden-Württemberg makes these intentions clear: “To show children how differently and imaginatively they experience, represent, and interpret the world. The subject art/works comprehensively fosters creative abilities and aesthetic sensibilities. It allows students to gain knowledge of themselves and the world, position themselves, and develop themselves through perception and action”.1 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi: 10.1163/9789004424555_008

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How Can We Bring Students into Educational Situations Which Foreground the Self and the World?

1.1 Artistic Education Using art-oriented pedagogy, artistic education can promote both theories and practices which focus on the subject’s uniqueness and its abilities for self-development. “Artistic education which understands art as existential creativity, as the subject’s ability to build worlds”, can be understood as an educational principle which connects the exploration of various topics to processes of personal development which focus on freedom and independence as basic, democratic principles for determining one’s own life. Personal development, in this case, accompanies the search for identity and the freedom of individual thought, feeling, and desire. Artistic education understands itself as the education of “subjects with different – and differently developed – abilities and faculties, with physical, emotional, intellectual, and emotional needs, able to live an independent, responsible, self-determined, self-actualizing, and expanding life”.2 Thus, the project work privileged in artistic education is more than a pedagogical tool. Project work should be understood as an educational process which involves the development of knowledge, skills, capacities, social skills, and agency. Artistic thought and action are developed in a manner which does not focus on the development of manual skills, the formal understanding of visual problems, or discipline-specific knowledge, but instead on personal expression and the transformation of knowledge and experience. Artistic education occurs in artistic projects which center on processes of perception, critical reflection, contextuality, and transformation. Artistic projects are characterized by the successive development of a topic over a long span of time. They often move between directed and self-determined learning, free-form processes and guided ones, reality and imagination, loose and strict thinking, personal and disciplinary questions. My own understanding of artistic education is based on personal experience and research conducted in high schools and elementary schools. My goal here is to point toward a missing link and propose a solution. As Kämpf-Jansen writes, To address the general problem of discrepancy between theoretical foundations and practical applications, I would like to introduce the term “missing link” into art pedagogy. The “missing link” can be characterized as a gap, the inability of praxis to connect to pedagogical theory, and vice versa. This gap is, in my opinion, the biggest problem within art pedagogical discourse today.3

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This chapter will discuss the traits and methods of artistic education in elementary school by describing an artistic project based on the construction site. It will give insight into its beginnings and various phases. The project was structured into successive phases which continuously developed content and skills. Over the course of several weeks, the students had opportunities to understand, research, and artistically respond to different aspects of the theme, and develop it individually after their summer vacations. This ninety-minute class, held for twenty-one students in an elementary school, took place on a weekly basis and was integrated within the curriculum of the day school. 1.2 The “Construction Site” as an Artistic Project The construction site is a topic which touches the lives of students: it has the potential to push students to ask new questions, undertake research, discover new things, and expand their own ideas. Construction sites enable people, as educational subjects, to establish a constructive relationship with their environments. One advantage is that the construction process is usually not hidden from human eyes; one can usually discern and follow the building process. Children are not bothered by construction sites. On the contrary, they find them extremely interesting. Children look at construction sites with amazement and curiosity. They are impressed by the machines, the powerful people digging in the earth, and the object emerging from the ground. In a text entitled “Construction Site”, Walter Benjamin writes, “Children are particularly fond of haunting any site where things are being visibly worked upon. They are irresistibly drawn by the detritus generated by building”.4 1.3 Plan All construction sites begin with a plan: a blueprint or technical drawing which lays out the geometrical and statistical information for the building. The children also observed this by looking out the window at the activity on the school construction site. The construction workers would look at their plans, compare them, point to them, and discuss them. What did these plans look like? We had large sheets of paper at our disposal. Either alone or in groups, the children were asked to draw a possible blueprint. It did not matter whether they did this correctly or not; this assignment was intended to stimulate imaginative impulses based on observing the actual construction site. Some students produced drawings that formally resembled a “real” blueprint, were drawn with pencils and rulers, and had numbers and arrows. Other sketches were extremely expressive, drawn freely, and used colored pencils to depict construction material such as hoses, cables, and fences. The sketches revealed a spectrum of different perceptions and representations of planar space, as is often the case in children’s drawings. At the same time, the images

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figure 8.1 Construction site curiosity

simultaneously presented and developed complex information by connecting actual observations with imagined elements.5 This first assignment made the children curious to learn what a blueprint actually looks like, and how constructions can be undertaken based on a blueprint. We invited a construction worker into the classroom to speak to the students and show them a construction plan for the new cafeteria, explaining details, the successive construction phases, and the time frame for building. While the construction process follows precise steps and has a clear outcome, this does not correspond to the development of an artistic process. Rather, in the artistic process, the involvement with the topic develops in successive phases which come together in a narrative context6 whose phases build on each other but cannot be foreseen in advance. The aim for the artistic project on the construction site was to give the children new impulses to engage with the theme, engage in inquiries, orient them within the subject, and finally open up individual paths for artistic creation. 1.4 Work and Play Children are good at playing with construction sites. They use technical equipment such as toy cranes, diggers, and trucks, and mimic what they see in the real world. Almost every child’s room has a wealth of materials, objects, and devices which can be used to build something. Because of this, I asked the children to bring their construction site toys to school. We pushed the classroom furniture to one side to create a large playground in which different construction site scenarios could be tested out with the toys. The children used tape

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to fix parts of the construction site and roads to the floor. While they could see the construction site and workers outside, the children transformed the observed situations into play. There were construction sites inside and outside. Cranes lifted loads, trucks carried material, people interacted, transformed things, built. Outside, work; inside, play. Inside, play was encouraged for its own sake,7 while outside, directed action was undertaken to produce a building. Simultaneously, playing with the construction site took place within a pedagogical framework. Play as a necessary form of child expression and experience was connected to an educational process based on an expanded notion of creation. Alongside the free-form construction site play, which was the main activity, there were also initiated pauses, collective observation of activity on the actual construction site, discussions concerning similarities and differences between the game and the outdoor site, and moments of observing the toy construction site from a distance. The scene unfolding on the floor resembled an enormous picture filled with lines, shapes, colors, materials, and objects in a permanent

figure 8.2  Observing the construction plan with the expert

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figure 8.3 Max and Boris’ construction plan

state of transformation. It was also important to draw the class’ attention to this fact. 1.5 Experiments with Materials On a construction site, materials are brought to light by machines as they dig into the earth. At the same time, materials make the emerging building possible. The diverse aspects of materials allow for different means of engagement in experimental artistic work. Excavation work on the cafeteria produced mounds of dirt. The open shafts revealed various layers of earth; that which had been hidden had come to light. The excavated earth was carried into the art room and examined by the children. Like in archaeological work, they were asked to sort the materials and carry out aesthetical and material forms of discovery.8 They separated out stones, brick fragments, wood, and concrete from the different earths. This expanded field of materials offered opportunities for a perceptual, tactile approach which involved the touching, smelling, and production of imprints alongside visual comparisons. Some of the construction site earth was mixed with binder to become paint. The next task involved reproducing impressions of earthwork on the construction site through painting. The children worked alone or in pairs, painting their perspectives of the excavation work on large plywood boards with the earth-paint, supplemented with black and white paint. They used large paintbrushes to “sculpt” out iron-reinforced shafts, piles of dirt, earthen surfaces, and metal grates lying on the ground. The children

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figure 8.4 Work and play

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figure 8.5 The indoor construction site

happily scratched and scribbled details into the wet, thickly-applied paint, and explored the construction site through painting. In addition to earth excavation and the use of specific building materials, construction sites also contain many objects that are used to organize and secure the premises. Cordons, construction foils, and pylons are used for guidance and for keeping people out. These objects provided impulses for further experiments which focused on shifting their meanings. After learning about the actual function of traffic cones, the children explored constellations of 25 traffic cones on the floor of the art room. By lining up the cones, the children created a course through which they had to weave dexterously. In smaller groups, the first-graders came up with, tested out, and presented further ways of arranging the comes. Different constellations and patterns were produced by stacking, laying out, and positioning the cones upright. Thus, a group of girls combined several cones into an object which they felt resembled a crawling “construction site caterpillar”. Once the children had played with and transformed these objects into something beyond their original context, the next task consisted in depicting themselves with the available materials. The children had already begun using the traffic cones as hats and arm extensions in the preceding exercise. Once again in small groups, and with the help of their classmates, the children transformed and depicted themselves using cones, construction foil, and cordons. They thus appeared in new forms through strange costumes and disguises.

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Every transformation was documented in a photograph, in which the children used expressions and gestures to underline the particular nature of their character. 1.6 The Room as a Construction Site The construction work outside continued apace with our creative explorations. The construction site itself kept moving closer to the school building,

figure 8.6  Earthwork by Sümeyra and Boris

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figure 8.7 The “Construction Site Caterpillar”

which resulted in spatial restrictions. As we entered the art room one Monday morning, we discovered that the outward-facing windows and wall had been covered with a wooden wall wrapped in black construction foil. Though this first appeared to be an obstruction, it turned out to be a large surface for creative explorations. Work continued beyond the partition wall. The children could now only hear, not see, the construction site. What did it look like? The children remembered everything they had seen previously: the crane, the building materials, barriers, signs, ladders, and the portable toilet. Using chalk, a group drew what they had seen and remembered as a large “drawing” on the black wall. The children then produced the actual drawing using white tape, cordons, and paint. A further wall drawing made as “tape art” was created on a second wall, which we had covered in black construction foil donated by the workers. Not all of the children could participate in the wall drawings; despite the large formats, there was not that much space for drawing. Because of this, some of the children were allowed to use the middle of the room to create their own construction site. Using available furniture and tools, they created a playground and construction site. They stacked tables and chairs up to the ceiling and decorated them with idiosyncratic objects made of tubes, cordons, and other found objects. In one lesson, the children created a kind of house, which they playfully occupied at the end. A boy and a girl created a large, crane-like machine, and were able to precisely explain its functional mechanism. Alongside the aesthetic and artistic experiences brought about through play and creation, these processes also engendered dynamic communication. The

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figure 8.8 Sarah

figure 8.9 Ensar

figure 8.10 Paul

many different kinds of interactions produced opportunities for independent and cooperative work, independent work as part of group work, and shared organization and execution of creative plans.

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1.7 Looking at Art, Learning from Experts Artistic education consists in more than stringing together research, experiments, and creative tasks focused on a theme. These processes are connected through structures which involve image and art analysis as well as knowledge acquisition. Artistic project work in this sense is thus both multi-perspectival and interdisciplinary.9 We accompanied the process of creative work by reading children’s non-fiction books for children which explored and explained construction sites.10 We read important information out loud together and looked at pictures. Many children’s books are available on this topic, and a selection of books was made available for further research. The children received first-hand knowledge from the civil engineer who was in charge of the cafeteria project. She visited the class twice. During the excavation work, she explained the particularities of underground construction to the children. How do water pipes work? How does a building receive electricity? Then the engineer explained how everything worked on the construction site. She lifted a manhole cover and showed the children the sewers. The children were allowed to measure the construction site’s dimensions using a measuring wheel with a counter, expanding their knowledge of numbers and units of measurement. Safety clothing was shown and explained. They were allowed to examine and test out work shoes, gloves, safety goggles, helmets, and safety vests. The second visit was devoted to the various machines on site. How does a cement mixer work? What loads can the crane lift? Unquestionably, the crane was the most fascinating object on the construction site. The crane was also an element of a contemporary artwork which we examined together at length in a double period. As an introduction, we read

figure 8.11 Construction site wall drawing

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figure 8.12 Improvised construction

the following text together: “In 2015, the Argentine artist Leandro Ehrlich astonished the residents of Karlsruhe by installing an artwork in the town square. A construction crane carried an unusual load. Unlike other cranes in the city, no containers, construction materials, or machines hung from the steel ropes of the “art crane”. Something unusual hovered in the air over the construction site. What could it have been?” The children were asked to draw the object hanging on a crane on a worksheet with the graphic depiction of a crane. Some solutions included a second crane, from which a third crane hung; an egg; a block of ice; a fishbowl with a goldfish; the statue of a Pokémon; a space ship with aliens; an entire house. This selection already reveals how readily children are able to imagine unlikely combinations of objects. This is the essential foundation of artistic thought. In the ensuing conversation, some of the children explained their choices. Some logical explanations were offered in addition to the fact that the crane should carry something unusual. The crane that Sarah had drawn could transport ice blocks to a swimming pool which had been cut off from the water system. Once the ice melted, the pool would be filled with water. The student who had drawn the entire house was particularly proud when we looked at photographs of Leandro Erlich’s work, “Pulled by the Roots”. In the pictures, we could see a giant crane with a house hanging from steel ropes, with a large root structure on its bottom. It appeared to be ripped out of a row of

figure 8.13 Inspecting the construction site

houses in the vicinity. There is not enough space to go into the students’ analyses here, but it became clear that even first-graders are able to apply to concept of “uprooting” to things beyond plants and trees. Every person has roots – in their family or heritage. Excitedly, the children discussed their “roots”, and some talked about the fact that they came from different countries. Through particular circumstances, people – perhaps even with their houses – can become uprooted. Erlich, who is well-known for his hyperrealistic installations, clearly references universal themes such as uprootedness, immigration, and simulation in his work. In the context of the construction work in Karlsruhe’s city center, Erlich transformed an important tool in thought-provoking fashion. Throughout the course of this project, we examined various artistic works. In our collective examination of the finished earth paintings, we also looked at works by Antoni Tàpies. Almost all of Tàpies’ work is connected to earth.

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During one visit to the school’s construction site, we discovered small workers on its edge, heaping together miniature earth structures between sidewalk stones: ants. Using small construction worker figures, used in model making, as well as various materials such as sand, earth, brick fragments, and toy blocks, the children created small miniature construction site scenes and photographed them. As a comparison, we examined photographs by the British street artist Slinkachu,11 who placed “little people” in various scenarios on London city streets, including construction sites. 1.8 Individualization The project, which had begun in a structured format in April 2016 of the first grade, developed after summer vacation into individual investigations which spoke to the children’s interests and artistic intentions. “Construction” continued to be the thematic framework. On the basis of a shared conversation about possible construction projects, based on previous experience, and paired with the specific interests in construction that the children held, first ideas were sketched out, written down, and collaged. This allowed for the development of many approaches which went beyond the reach of previous work. The children’s drafts included plans for a miniature treehouse; a construction site robot who could relieve workers of difficult tasks; a driving machine that was a combined crane, digger, and mixer; a Pokémon temple (the favorite fantasy animals of one student); a hotel named “Papillon” which was to be built of Legos; an “electrical installation”; cages for stuffed animals; a house on stilts with a rope ladder; and a space station that was also a house, to name only a few designs. The children left for their summer vacation with these ideas and were tasked with doing research on their own topic, collecting pictures, and gathering materials. After their vacation, the children were put in educational situations which they had to increasingly organize and structure themselves. They had collected “construction material” with great enthusiasm over the break, and had brought along new, useful tools. They built their designs over several weeks. Milena created her miniature treehouse with small planks and tree branches which she had already cut down to size at home. Justus and Ismet used cardboard boxes, strips of wood, cardboard tubes, wires, and many other small parts to make their space station, which barely fit through the door by the end. Paul and Boris were occupied with their multifunctional construction vehicle, which could push, move, grab, and lift loads using various extensions. Arina built a Pokémon temple with carefully designed little towers. It was spray-painted gold, just as she had intended, and decorated with Pokémon figures. Magnus brought in children’s books on electricity. He absorbed himself in them, then

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figure 8.16 Magnus’ Electrical Installation

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figure 8.15 Arina’s Pokémon Temple

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installed cables on a large corrugated sheet, attached sockets, and carefully labeled them. Although he knew that his wiring would never be connected to an electric circuit, he worked intently and happily imagined different functions for it. In addition, the various cable connections on the surface created a graphic pattern which looked like an independent “drawing”. His artistic intensions moved between imagining possible functionality and the free, playful connection of the cables.

2

Conclusion

An open project scenario of this kind places high demands on the teacher. It requires “pedagogical sensibility to encourage the individual processes of the students”.12 At the same time, the teacher must have the artistic skills to think along with the students in their various creative phases. In phases during which students critically reflect on the work that has been done, the teacher must be able to give students impulses for continuing their work. One should also not underestimate the need for practical flexibility in helping children saw, screw, hammer, mount, use hot glue to connect small parts, or use a tablet computer to document the construction of a Lego hotel as a stop-motion film. The teacher also requires flexibility to connect the multiple perspectives opened up by artistic projects with other disciplines and topics. In this sense, the art teacher “must not only be an artist, but also an anthropologist, reporter, sociologist, epistemologist, semiologist, pedagogue, NGO affiliate, Internet observer, and project creator”.13 This culminates in the educational task of creating learning processes that allow students to develop independent positions. These learning processes do not develop straightforwardly, but are rather artistic learning processes which involve moving forward and backward,14 taking apart and rebuilding again. The “Construction Site” project came to an end after six months of “construction”. Yet a continuation was conceivable. New phases could have been determined by the development of the cafeteria construction, and evince parallel growth, perception, reflection, and creation.15 The metamorphosis of the construction site would have provided new situational opportunities for analysis. We could have focused on aspects of interior architecture, learned about new materials, and focused on novel aesthetic and artistic demands. New construction specialists would have come in with new knowledge. It would have been important to remain open regarding new developments, maintain an openness towards the changes on the construction site without losing sight of the children’s interests. It would also have been possible to take up the students’ individual projects and develop new approaches in different media,

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research new contexts for treehouses, machines, space stations, hotels, robots, temples, Pokémon, or electricity. Finally, this project sought to create spaces and opportunities to pursue individual decisions and creations. In an ideal situation, this produces a learning culture which can offer many different solutions to life’s challenges. Thus, contemporary art education can be a “construction site” which, first and foremost, is about the “self as a construction site”. Artistic education can be understood as an opportunity to link the freedom and desire to grasp the world through artistic thought and action with personal development which foregrounds participation and self-determination as foundational faculties for shaping one’s own life. To this end – let’s keep building!

Notes 1 Bildungsplan Baden-Wuerttemberg, Kunst/Werken (Stuttgart 2016), 3. 2 Wolfgang Kersting, Verteidigung des Liberalismus (Hamburg, Murmann 2009), 22. 3 Helga Kämpf-Jansen, “Zum ‘missing link’ der Kunstpädagogik”, in Horizonte. Internationale Kunstpädagogik, ed. Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Joachim Kettel and Mario Urlaß (Oberhausen: Athena 2009), 335. 4 Walter Benjamin, “Construction Site, 1928”. In: One-Way Street. Trans. Jephcott and Shorter (London, 1979), 52. 5 Hans-Günther Richter, Die Kinderzeichnung. Entwicklung, Interpretation, Ästhetik (Berlin: Cornelsen, 1997). 6 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Die Welt als Spiel I u. II, Kulturtheorie/Kunstpädagogik (Oberhausen: Athena 2007), 254. 7 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens. Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel (Hamburg: Rowohlt 1994), 19. 8 Petra Kathke, Sinn und Eigensinn des Materials (Weinheim: Beltz 2001, 2003). 9 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Perspektiven künstlerischer Bildung (Köln: Salon, 2003), 42. 10 Patricia Mennen, Auf der Baustelle (Ravensburg: Ravensburger, 1999). 11 Slinkachu, Kleine Leute in der großen Stadt (Hamburg: Atlantik 2009). 12 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Zum künstlerischen Projekt. In Kunst+Unterricht 295 (Seelze: Friedrich 2005), 9. 13 Thorsten Meyer, What’s Next? Art Education – Ein Reader (München. Kopaed 2014), 221. 14 Klaus-Peter Busse, Kunst unterrichten (Oberhausen: Athena 2014), 143. 15 Mario Urlaß, Pendeln und Bündeln. “Potenziale künstlerischer Bildung in der Grundschule”. In Horizonte. Internationale Kunstpädagogik, ed. Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Joachim Kettel and Mario Urlaß (Oberhausen: Athena 2009), 335.

CHAPTER 9

On the Educational Potential of Art: A Requiem for Schönau Christian Wagner

1

Introduction

This essay describes the development of a performance project with pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, charting the process from initial meetings of the group to the culminating public performance and critical reflections upon it. The concept describes how to initiate artistic thinking, artistic problem-solving competences, and attain eligible learning objectives with pupils from secondary school. This paper is the detailed description of an experiment: how to turn art class in school into an artistic process. The learning objectives and methods are derived from art as conceived in the concept of artistic education. Making art requires overcoming the institutional framework of the school system. Art needs time and space to develop not usually available in a public school system. Moving beyond traditional ideas of art and creativity also involves rejecting a traditional understanding of teaching art in the classroom. If “making art” is not only understood as the creation of an artwork but as a process, art education must impart more than artistic skills and knowledge. Transferring artistic issues to classroom situations must lead to new aesthetics, performative forms of action and their thoughtful reflection. This perspective challenges all participants. The pupils must give up their role as passive learners as they are confronted with a new learning environment and situation. Similarly, the teacher needs to accept his new role as a mediator in the artistic process and develop a different pedagogical self-perception. In addition, the artists involved must realize that the process of creating art involves an intensive social aspect. Cooperative art projects between public school pupils and artists, who function as extracurricular experts, are becoming more widespread. Although these projects aim to integrate art within the school system as much as possible, they are not a form of teaching utopia but remain integrated within general schooling. It is important that these projects do not promote art for art’s sake to make sure that art education is taken seriously. Pedagogical experiments are © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2020 | DOI: 10.1163/9789004424555_009

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important for the advancement of art education. These experiments are more credible when they are integrated in the organizational procedures of a school and do not proceed entirely independently.

2

Pupils, Art, and Economic Utility

The German school system is hallmarked by its inability to handle social and cultural diversity. Educational success still depends on social origin. In 2016, pupils with an immigrant or working-class background remained more frequently at a low educational level than pupils with German, middle-class parents, graduating from “Hauptschulen” (secondary schools for students who will pursue vocational training after grade ten) or “Förderschulen” (schools for special needs education). Students with immigrant backgrounds are twice as likely to leave school without a degree as students from non-immigrant backgrounds.1 Artistic thought and creation gives students the opportunity to cultivate their skills to think independently and develop creative problem-solving competences. This could be defined as a main educational goal in a school environment, characterized by a focus on social and personal needs. Nonetheless, the Hauptschule lists “maturity for vocational training” (“Ausbildungsreife”) as an important educational objective. In practice, school success is thus often measured by the numbers of pupils transitioning into apprenticeships. Lamenting the lack of maturity of students and apprentices is a tradition within the German educational discourse. In 2006, the first German national education report (“Nationaler Bildungsbericht”2) highlighted problems in the vocational education system. This sparked a discussion about the definition of “maturity for vocational training”. Vocational maturity was accepted as an important educational aim of the school system. Furthermore, the idea of “maturity for vocational training” is questionable in terms of assessing young people according to ideas of economic utility.3 Primary educational goals should instead be timeless and independent of questions of economic utility. School curricula today focus on teaching pupils knowledge and skills deemed necessary for functioning in society. Instead of promoting utilitarian thought, education should pursue an all-encompassing humanistic education, which helps students to develop their own social agency and participation. It should be understood as a strategy of providing far-ranging knowledge, enabling students to engage in critical thought and self-reflection. In a fast-changing, postmodern society with allegedly unlimited opportunities and choices, artistic thinking provides valuable skills for living

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one’s life. Carl-Peter Buschkühle describes these skills as sensitive perception, critical reflection, and fruitful imagination. These elements promote an alternative pedagogical objective, in which students learn to build up integral perceptions of the world and orient themselves in it.4

3

Pupils as Performers: Dying and Death from Different Perspectives

The performance project took part in a “Kooperationsklasse”, a school class which helps students transition between secondary school and vocational school. Kooperationsklassen help pupils who are having trouble achieving a school diploma. Usually, pupils are between 15 and 18 years old, while the class is a course spanning two school years. Most of the pupils have problems with conduct, participation, and absence. The class is not supposed to be larger than fourteen students. The students come from difficult social and family backgrounds, while the school itself is located in a so-called socially troubled area.5 When the performance project began, only ten students were regular participants in the class. Two pupils were in inpatient treatment programs, and two had a record of chronic truancy. The level of learning in class was low, and lessons were characterised by individual compromises and alternative solutions. There were no cultural enthusiasts in the classroom. Nevertheless, the performance project offered opportunities to work together against stereotypes, racism, and prejudice towards the type of school, the urban district, and its inhabitants. Pupils from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds often do not have a deep involvement with culture. The students came from an urban district far removed from cultural institutions such as theaters, museums, and other cultural facilities, which are in the city center. In addition, the social barriers to access are very high. The practical project work began with a meeting between the students, teachers, and artists. After an initial discussion, the students presented their neighbourhood to the artists and documented stories about living there with a video camera. The students made first attempts to work in a performance style by posing with different masks. After a few more meetings in school, the group moved to “zeitraumexit”,6 the workspace of artists Wolfgang Sautermeister7 and Silvia Szabo.8 “zeitraumexit” is an independent workspace with stages and ateliers located in the city center. An important step in the process was deciding on a suitable theme. Preliminary discussions yielded some topic suggestions, yet surprisingly, the students did not appear to be very interested in them. A theme such as “I am

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beautiful” or something similar yielded few reactions. Instead, an event which had recently occurred in the neighbourhood dominated the discussion: a few weeks before the first meeting, a young man was stabbed to death in a street fight close to the school. Most of the students knew this man and were very concerned about the incident. At least one of the pupils had been an earwitness to it. Discussing this situation led to talking about related experiences: the death of a student’s grandmother; the court process against a young mother in the district who had let her disabled child die of starvation. This intensive discussion yielded a topic for the project: “death”.

figure 9.1 Schönauer Requiem: Masks. (Christian Wagner, May 2012)

Besides carrying out practical exercises related to the performance aspect, such as moving, dancing, or reading aloud, work accomplished in the art space and at school brought about an in-depth, substantive dialogue on the issue. The topic was both challenging and broad. Everybody was supposed to bring in various aspects that were familiar to them: we took a closer look at death in computer games, in pop/rap music, and advertising. Teachers in other subjects also worked on the topic: the poem “Todesfuge” (“Death Fugue”) by Paul Celan was the subject of a German lesson and led to discussions of a photo of Amon Göth, the perverted commander of a concentration camp during the Third Reich. In art class, we discussed Anselm Kiefer’s work “Sulamith” (1990) and “Dein goldenes Haar Margarethe” (1981). We also made excursions to the

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Jewish cemetery in Mannheim, and to a church to discuss death with a priest, and whether or not he feared dying. At this point, the students did not know anything about the objectives of the project. The starting point was only the topic; no one, not even the artists or the art teacher, had a working plan. Ideas were collected, and concept sketches slowly began to be made. In this project phase, the students primarily met with their teachers at school; only a few meetings took place at the art space. To establish a deeper relationship with the artist, Wolfgang Sautermeister, the students wrote him letters. Sautermeister continually sent questions to the pupils by mail, and they answered by sending him drawings, writings, and pictures or ideas. These letters were used for inspiration, and some of them would be later screened as part of the stage design.

4

Artistic Thinking as a Teaching Process

The process of artistic thinking is challenging, and demands that students deploy sensitive perception, reflection, and imagination. Project-oriented work provides many opportunities for this, because it offers time for intense involvement with the different aspects of the topic. The rigid time-table of a school week is usually not flexible enough to provide space for this involvement, while the short intervals of school lessons leads to content hopping instead of deepened, sustained engagement. At this point, it became necessary to stretch the limits of the school system. Working within an artistic project requires pedagogic breathing room to enable all participants to bring in their creative potentials. Demanding this freedom also requires justifying such a project and answering questions about the specific learning objectives. Work on an art project needs to begin with an initial open situation, with the opportunity to recreate this situation during the process. However, this does not mean that this kind of project work is characterized by apathy and randomness. Ulrike Hentschel points out that educational processes in a performance situation require openness and must be seen as an educational opportunity. Consequently, educational objectives cannot be defined in normative terms.9 In performance work, the perspective on educational goals needs to be different: Marie-Luise Lange emphasizes that performative art consists of volatile, variable, and non-determinable processes and events.10 4.1 Settings for Artistic Exploration The following project sequence can illustrate the learning situations that emerge from an artistic process. The main work location in this project phase

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had switched from school to the art space. At this point, the process focused on creating scenes and illustrating ideas, while the students experimented with different settings. Rehearsals took place on stage: in this first exercise, all the lights were switched off and some pupils were on stage, facing the back wall, while the rest of the group watched the scene. These students lit matches in an unspecified rhythm. To avoid conversations, calm music was played. The burning matches projected silhouettes of the performers on the wall; the dark stage brightened and fell back into darkness in slow, varying rhythms. After a while, the music faded, and the only thing to be heard was the rhythmic sound of the students striking matches. The whole situation was now characterized by an intense silence. After a few rounds, the exercise finished and the students assembled in the auditorium. The room was still dark, with only one spotlight illuminating the stage. In this focused, unhurried atmosphere, the artistic director placed a rifle at the center of the spotlight. After a while, he began talking about the weapon, telling its story and demonstrating the handling. The sound of the trigger was loud and surprised everyone in the room. Wolfgang Sautermeister gave instructions for the next exercise: one after another, the pupils were to go to the center of the spotlight, pick up the rifle, and assume a posture of some kind. After holding this position in silence, the gun was to be placed back in the spotlight.

figure 9.2 Schönauer Requiem: Rifle. (Christian Wagner, June 2012)

In the following fifteen minutes, the pupils were completely concentrated. Without any request from the teachers or the director, there was no talking and no laughing while watching this scene. They tested out different poses hastily. They did not take any violent or pugnacious poses, and did not glorify the

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weapon. Every student walked into the spotlight, picked up the gun, struck a pose, held it, put the rifle down, and walked off the stage. The poses varied: some held the heavy rifle defensively, clinging to it, or aimed it fearfully into the darkness, blinded by the spotlight. At the end, everyone sat down, leaving the rifle behind in the spotlight. The room continued to be silent. After a while, a conversation about these two scenes began. Unlike in a normal school situation, the discussion was focused and calm. A real rifle in a classroom would have caused a stir. In this situation, the students thoughtfully commented on their encounter with this object. The teenagers even began to philosophize about it as they described their emotions while holding and feeling this weapon. 4.1.1 Self-Awareness and Self-Alienation under a Spotlight All perceptions, ideas, and actions in the situation described arose out of the students’ efforts. Only the setting was given: they were provided with a calm and focused atmosphere and an unusual object. This setting invited them to begin individual processes of artistic exploration. This exploration began with sensing the given situation, and ended with philosophical reflections regarding their own thoughts, actions, and self. In a school full of pupils confronted with social and economic problems, working on questions of identity seems to be appropriate. Youth culture in challenging environments does not usually critically question living situations and perspectives. Teenagers often adopt life plans provided by role models in popular culture or accepted family traditions.11 Artistic work in a school context always provides the opportunity for students to confront various aspects of their lives. This can be realized on the sensuous level of getting in touch with an artistic issue or work. Working in art education with some kind of artistic subject can be fruitful, but very often it is not easy for students to open up to personal aspects and use them in an artistic way beyond stereotyped portrayals or poses. Bringing pupils to self-awareness as a first step to self-reflection cannot be achieved with any art-educational tricks. It is necessary to create an artistic process that allows for intensive discussion and analysis. Work in an artistic process must importantly not only elaborate knowledge but also apply and transform it within individual artistic expression. Knowledge content is condensed into an artistic form. Artistic knowledge contains not only subject matters but also images, recollections, and imagination, which are linked to the matter at stake and transformed into new interrelations.12 Carl-Peter Buschkühle points out that an artistic learning process allows for and requires self-positioning. Self-positioning includes two perspectives: while being confronted with the artistic subject, the students need to find and

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adopt position to provide an artistic answer in form of an individual artistic creation. This situation is demanding; as Buschkühle describes it, the need to create an artistic object is a “strange attractor”13 that leads to the need for a kind of self-motion in the process of experimentation, research and reflection. In this situation, the pupils need to find and take positions in relation to their own artistic creations.14 This self-positioning is intensified in a performance process. Mindfulness regarding one’s actions – just as in the confrontation with the rifle – is at the center of performance work. This process refers to personal experiences, which means that performance work is always biographically embedded. Imagination, experiment, research, and searching for biographical traces are performance methods that allow performers to portray aspects of identity from different perspectives. Maria Peters describes performance work as identity work as long as the artistic issue is connected to the people involved in the performance. The performance process is then an aesthetic research process that allows performers to turn their attentiveness towards their own biographical situation.15 Self-awareness is always associated with self-alienation and is a socially communicated construct. Sartre describes self-awareness as dependent on outside social perception. The gaze of another person is, in Sartre’s words, a reference to self-awareness.16 The spotlight on the rehearsal stage helped to create an atmosphere in which the pupils were forced to focus on themselves. Consequently, the students exposed themselves to the viewers and to their own perception. This self-perception changed in the process of artistic work: in a performance process, the self-image becomes malleable. Under the spotlight of a stage, self-perception becomes a topic of visual and verbal reflection. Identity is challenged by the feedback of classmates, artists, directors, and teachers. Buschkühle calls this moment an uncertainty of self (“Verunsicherung des Selbst”), caused by the play with one’s identity. It reveals that a self-image is an aesthetic construct balanced between self-perception and outside perception.17 4.1.2 Corporeality and Social Skills in Front of a Rifle The artistic process described above included not only individual learning aspects – rather, creating such an intensive setting depended on the social skills of everybody involved. Standing on a stage under a spotlight in front of an auditorium is not easy, especially when the auditorium consists of classmates. Besides the moment of self-perception, the students expose themselves to the viewers.

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figure 9.3 Schönauer Requiem: Horse. June 2012 (Wagner, Christian)

Sitting in the dark auditorium after the rifle scene, the students were able to organize a fair feedback situation. The remarks on the performances were authentic, and the pupils tried to express helpful, constructive critique. This is not always common in a group of teenagers used to staking out a position in a rough living environment. It was a moment of intensive social learning, arising out of the unique atmosphere and the switch between outside perception and self-perception. Under these circumstances, the process of artistic exploration led to a form of life cultivation. The students were dissociated from their usual habits and were confronted with a variety of biographical aspects. Reaching a point of social awareness is supposed to be the first step in an ethical and moral education. Understanding art education as a process not only of production but also of reflection and sensitive perception makes it possible to use this subject for developing oneself. In the discussion of the rifle scene, the students highlighted the performance of Dominik, one of the pupils. Until that day, Dominik had been more or less boycotting the project, coming late to class or hanging around without participating in the work process. The encounter with the rifle changed this. He began working with this object in a very intensive way. Everybody was surprised by his pose in the spotlight. His physical presence, with a shaved head and a serious facial expression, was exceptionally striking. In the feedback discussion, his classmates were not able to explain the phenomenon of his stage presence. Their attempts to describe it led to a discussion of importance of corporeality as an aspect of performance and identity. Corporeality is one of the four main foundations of performance art. In addition to performance time, space, and audience relationship, corporeality

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is an important artistic medium. The students recognized this and overcame their previous ideas about acting. In a performance, the performer creates processes of embodiment. Ideally, this process continually develops on stage. Erika Fischer-Lichte underlines in this context that the creating performance artist cannot be separated from her artistic material.18 Working with teenage students on corporeality is not easy but an important educational topic. Questions about the perception of physical changes are sensitive at this age. All intensive discussions must respect personal limits and relate to aspects of identity. As described above, one’s perception of one’s body is a focus in performance work. The students began working on their own and giving their classmates feedback on their physical presence. Limits to agility and individual strengths were brought into the spotlight. Educationally, the art project helped foster tolerance and respect as social skills. 4.1.3 Downshifting in an Analog Environment Buschkühle underlines that as a consequence of our media and consumer culture, perception today is accelerated. Images in digital media are impermanent and constantly changing. Today’s society is replete with a wide range of artificial stimuli, detached from any original encounter, and causing an excess of abstraction and artificiality.19 The matchstick and the rifle scenes can be construed as moments in which perception is slowed down. Wolfgang Sautermeister calls this a ceremony of the moment (“Feier des Augenblicks”20). The spotlight on the rifle and the repetition of silent poses with the rifle increases the attention of the audience and the performers. In a different scene, film portraits showed only students’ faces. For approximately ten minutes, the audience looked at the pupils’ faces, with only music accentuating the scene. The students did not act in these films, and performed no actions except for winks and natural head movements. The performance project worked by slowing down and intensifying the perceptual process. This not only produced an artistic effect for the audience, but was also important for self-perception and social perception. Slowing down is not easy for teenagers these days, since the use of mobile phones and social media triggers superficial, rapid scanning. Peters emphasises in this context that performance-based art education should not be oriented towards knowledge-sharing, but pay close attention to the perception of fragile moments and variations in personal expression.21 Slowing down perception is essential for using images in an educational manner. Buschkühle underlines the importance of the sensuous presence of images to develop the potential of artistic education as a means of

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figure 9.4 Schönauer Requiem: Portraits. (Christian Wagner, June 2012)

cultivating one’s personality. An image can be troublesome; it can question deeply ingrained beliefs and knowledge. It fosters sensitivity and spurs on the process of reflection. This reflection forces the subject to move inwardly between rationality and instinct, mimesis and reason.22

5

“Schönauer Requiem”: A Requiem for Schönau

The main creation of the performance took up three months of intensive project work. Step by step, the fragments of the performance were drawn up. It was a process of collecting different ideas from different positions. The students were familiar with the topic and proposed scenic variations, music samples, and ideas for props and costumes. They rehearsed dance scenes and came up with the idea of integrating a brass band. A movement coach worked on motion sequences with the pupils. The artistic director used a kind of collage

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technique to create the upcoming performance: single scenes, performative situations, sounds, moods, and pictures were remixed and put together into a sixty-minute-long stage play. The working hours were detached from normal school hours. The students spent three days of the week at the art space “zeitraumexit”, while only two days were spent on conventional school education. Two weeks before the public performance, the process of creation was finished and the rehearsals began. The students now had to get used to the procedure of the one-hour-long performance-play. They knew that no adults would be there to assist them because the performers would have to stay on stage for the whole performance and have memorized all scenes and cues. This period made it clear that the classroom community had been strengthened through the work together. Of course, conflicts arose during rehearsal, but the relationship between classmates and the team of adults was largely characterized by trust and openness. The pupils were now quite confident in unfamiliar surroundings, and their creativity and motivation was recognized by all the participants and members of “zeitraumexit”. On a Friday night, five months after the project started, the performance was staged in front circa fifty spectators in the sold-out art space. The performance consisted of a series of scenes that dealt with different aspects of transience. At the beginning, the pupils stood in front of the audience, wearing masks while a brass band played Bach’s B-Minor Mass. The students told stories of their experiences watching horror movies, while a girl sang a Polish dirge. After this, the rifle scenes took place, followed by a controversial tableau vivant of a mass shooting. This oppressive part was followed by a screening of video recordings of their faces accentuated by the brass band playing chorales,

figure 9.5 Schönauer Requiem: Skull. (Christian Wagner, June 2012)

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creating a contemplative atmosphere for ten minutes. The most embarrassing part for the pupils was the drum ‘n’ bass dance scene which followed, creating a contrast with the previous mood. Some more tableaus, including the matchsticks scene, followed, and the performance ended with the pupils sitting right in front of the first row of the audience. A skull mask was circulated from pupil to pupil, and the performance ended in silence.

6

Concluding Remarks

After the second show, the students were more than proud and happy: they were euphoric. The local newspaper praised the performance enthusiastically. The members of the art center, used to a wide range of performance art, were impressed. In a meeting a few weeks later, the students shared feedback: they related their own experiences and discussed the feedback they got from parents and friends. The students’ performance was perceived as authentic and deeply serious. The students described this project as the highlight of their entire school life. In retrospect, teaching art in a project-oriented format is challenging but also contains opportunities to achieve a wide range of educational goals. The process of artistic thinking is ambitious. Implemented within performance art, it is open to pupils with varying talents. As described above, educational work in these kinds of projects aims at life cultivation. This educational purpose can be understood as the cultivation of an “aesthetic of existence” (Ästhetik der Existenz), to borrow a term from the philosopher Wilhelm Schmid. Schmid questions the idea of identity and develops an alternative view of it, defining identity as a state of continuous transition requiring permanent self-invention to foster a more reflective art of living.23 Following this premise, performative acting allows people to practice artistic thinking and self-invention. Sensitivity, empathy, and the continued process of reflection and imagination lead to new, creative answers and solutions. These abilities are not only fundamental for the creative process, but also enable the students to pursue personally and socially satisfying life choices. Of course, participating in an artistic project is not life-changing. It is an opportunity for students to practice and experience possibilities at hand. It is also an opportunity for the teacher to move beyond the familiar teacher’s role and relinquish his position of authority. The teacher must join in the process of self-awareness and self-alienation, leading to reflection on the pedagogical self-image. This experience also affects the pedagogical understanding of learning environments. It is necessary to ask how schools, as institutions, can

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support creative processes and develop the formative capacity of individual learners. Schools need to create learning environments that open up space for imaginative and autonomous learning. Teaching very often still takes place in systematized and schematized forms, while school days are structured by the hour and lesson. This tradition of schematized teaching focuses on the possibility of evaluating learning outcomes, and its system might support educational quality. On the other hand, it might minimize the educational potential of art education in particular. Joseph Beuys defined transition and development as outcomes of the artistic process. Following this, art education needs to integrate and accept stages of chaos to allow creative skills and intuition to unfold.24

Notes 1 Klaus Klemm, “Soziale Herkunft und Bildung im Spiegel neuerer Studien”, in Soziale Herkunft und Bildungserfolg, ed. Burkhard Jungkamp and Merte John-Ohnesorg (Berlin: W. Bertelsmann Verlag, 2016), 17–23. 2 Konsortium Bildungsberichterstattung, Bildung in Deutschland – Ein indikatorengestützter Bericht mit einer Analyse zu Bildung und Migration (Bielefeld: W. Bertelsmann Verlag, 2010), 79–83. 3 Rolf Dobischat, Gertrud Kühnlein and Robert Schurgatz, “Ausbildungsreife – Ein umstrittener Begriff beim Übergang Jugendlicher in eine Berufsausbildung”, Arbeitspapier: Bildung und Qualifizierung, No. 189 (May 2010), 23–43. 4 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Die Welt als Spiel, Band II (Kunstpädagogik): Theorie und Praxis künstlerischer Bildung (Oberhausen: Athena 2007), 160. 5 The urban district is called Mannheim Schönau-Nord: the term “Sozialer Brennpunkt” (socially troubled area) is not in use anymore. Nowadays the term “Planungsräume mit stark überdurchschnittlichen sozialen Problemlagen” is defined as an area with high rates of welfare recipients. This rate is in Mannheim-Schönau-Nord on 46% (average in Mannheim is 22%): 50% of children and youths under 15 years are living in welfare situations. [Online available on: https://www.mannheim.de/sites/ default/files/page/44850/sozialatlas_2014.pdf, p.86 and (updated data) https://www.mannheim.de/sites/default/files/page/44850/mannheimer_ sozialatlas_aktualisierte_daten_2015.pdf]. 6 Available online at: www.zeitraumexit.de 7 Available online at: www.wolfgang-sautermeister.de 8 Available online at: www.silvia-szabo.de

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9 Ulrike Hentschel, Bildungsprozesse durch Theaterspielen, in Körper im Spiel: Wege zur Erforschung theaterpädagogischer Praxen, ed. Ute Pinkert (Berlin: Schibri, 2008), 82–92. 10 Marie-Luise Lange, “Zur Erzeugung von doppelter Wahrheit. Über ästhetische Laborsituationen und nomadisierendes Lernen in der universitären Kunstpädagogen/innenausbildung”, in horizonte. Internationale Kunstpädagogik: Beiträge zum Internationalen InSEA-Kongress horizons/horizonte – insea2007germany, ed. Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Joachim Kettel and Mario Urlaß (Oberhausen: Athena 2009), 232. 11 Bernd Dollinger and Henning Schmidt-Semisch, Handbuch Jugendkriminalität: Kriminologie und Sozialpädagogik im Dialog (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2010), 214. 12 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Künstlerische Bildung. Theorie und Praxis einer künstlerischen Kunstpädagogik (Oberhausen: Athena, 2017), 201. 13 Buschkühle, Künstlerische Bildung. Theorie und Praxis einer künstlerischen Kunstpädagogik, 287. 14 Ibid. 15 Maria Peters, Performative Handlungen und biografische Spuren in Kunst und Pädagogik (Hamburg: University Press, 2005), 8. 16 Jean Paul Sartre, Das Sein und das Nichts. Versuch einer phänomenologischen Ontologie, trans. Traugott König (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1991), 467. 17 Buschkühle, Die Welt als Spiel, 295. 18 Erika Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp, 2004), 129. 19 Carl-Peter Buschkühle, Wärmezeit: Zur Kunst als Kunstpädagogik bei Joseph Beuys (Berlin: Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1997), 59. 20 Wolfgang Sautermeister, JETZT. Notizen zur Lehrbarkeit von Performance-Kunst, in Horizonte. Internationale Kunstpädagogik, ed. Carl-Peter Buschkühle (Oberhausen: Athena, 2009), 99. 21 Peters, Performative Handlungen und biografische Spuren in Kunst und Pädagogik, 6. 22 Buschkühle, Künstlerische Bildung. Theorie und Praxis einer künstlerischen Kunstpädagogik, 283. 23 Wilhelm Schmid, “Ethik der Selbsterfindung. Über Produktive Widersprüche bei Montaigne (1533–1592)”, Kunstforum International: Lebenskunst als Real Life, No. 143 (1999), 46. 24 Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1979), 44.

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