The Aesthetic Dimension Of Visual Culture

The Aesthetic Dimension of Visual Culture

How can aesthetic enquiry contribute to the study of visual culture? There seems to be little doubt that aesthetic theory ought to be of interest to the study of visual culture. For one thing, aesthetic vocabulary has far from vanished from contemporary debates on the nature of our visual experiences and its various shapes, a fact especially pertinent where dissatisfaction with vulgar value relativism prevails. Besides, the very question—ubiquitous in the debates on visual culture—of what is natural and what is acquired in our visual experiences has been a topic in aesthetics at least since the Enlightenment. And last but not least, despite attempts to study visual culture without employing the concept of art, there is no prospect of this central subject of aesthetic theory ebbing away from visual studies. The essays compiled in this volume show a variety of points of intersection and involvement between aesthetics and visual studies; some consider the future of visual art, some the conditions and characteristics of contemporary visual aesthetic experience, while others take on the difficult question of the relation between visual representation and reality. What unites them is their authors’ willingness to think about contemporary visual culture in the conceptual frame of aesthetics. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, art history, and cultural studies.

The aesthetic dimension of visual culture

Teaching Visual Culture

This is an updated edition of the first book to focus on teaching visual culture. The author provides the theoretical and practical basis for developing a curriculum that lays the groundwork for art education at all levels (K–12 and higher education) and across school subjects. Drawing on material, social, cognitive, aesthetic, and curricular theories, Freedman offers a framework for teaching the visual arts from a cultural standpoint. Chapters discuss visual culture in a democracy; aesthetics in curriculum; philosophical and historical considerations; recent changes in the field of art history; connections between art, student development, and cognition; art inside and outside of school; the role of fine arts in curriculum; visual technologies; television as the national curriculum; student artistic production and assessment; and much more. New content includes applications of new materialism, ways to document and assess tacit knowledge in students, and uses of AI image generation. Book Features: Fourteen full-color images new to the second edition.Both documents and challenges past and current practices of art education for teacher educators, K–12 teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, school administrators, and community educators. Provides a foundation for art education with ways to update curriculum, an exploration of why newer technologies are making visual literacy essential for all learners, and new ideas about the impact of aesthetics on learning. Covers contemporary issues essential to addressing the increased impact of visual culture across school subjects, including new brain research, visual culture and the environment, the relationship between the diversity of visual culture and identities, and the visual culture of politics.