Grand Plans and Their Subversion: Speculations on the form and Formlessness of Twenty-first Century Art Education

遠大計劃及其顚覆二十一世紀藝術教育之形式與無定形式的思考

布蘭德·威爾森(Brent Wilson)

《視覺藝術》 2期 (1999/05) Pp. 1-22

https://doi.org/10.6960/VA.199905.0001

摘要

藝術教育有如一座古老的城市，現代的規劃人員（當然還有後現代的規劃人員）總有偉大的改建構想。藝術教改人士就像都市計畫人員一樣，一向主張拆除老舊建築重新改建；清除貧民窟；拓寬街道；規劃新的交通模式；設置文化、工業、商業與娛樂專區；再加上其他形形色色的方式，試圖規定民眾該有什麼樣的環境，該過什麼樣的生活。但是美術教育的一般市民－教師與學生－對於藝術教育這個城市應有的面貌與功能，也有他們自己的看法。我們要了解美術教育的改變，就必須體認到美術教改的遠大計畫，以及教師學生未經披露的行為，兩者之間的緊張衝突；一般師生的行為，使得改革計畫扭曲走樣，使藝術教育繼續一種雜亂無章的現狀。此外，我們若要了解藝術教育改變的種種變數，就必須考慮到這個領域以外的因素，例如藝術界、廣泛的視覺文化，以及網際網路。這些事情足以使「都市空間」整個改觀，這是藝術教改人士進行遠大規劃的時候，必須特別注意的一點。
建築大師克里斯多福亞力山大曾經指出，都市計畫人員的設計往往是樹狀結構，個別計畫之間少有關聯，但是自然演變的城市卻是格狀結構，無數居民經過數百年、甚至數千年的互動，產生種種交錯複雜的功能。正如大部分的城市，藝術課程也大多兼具「自然形成」與人為設計的要素，一方面受到國訂課程標準、教改政策、藝術教育專家的著作、教科書、考試方針等等的影響，另方面也具有「自然」的特徵，也因藝術教師代代相傳的教學傳統。此外，藝術課程的傳統特徵，也因藝術與藝術作品不斷的改變，使得課程內容、教法和價值觀問題重重。甚至學生有時候也會建立自己的藝術教育形式，學生通常比老師更能適應當代的視覺文化，他們自己建立的藝術教育社區也遠比老師設計的更有趣、更重要。
本文以亞力山大的自然城市與設計城市理論為比喻，探討現行的藝術教育以及我們可能設計的 21 世紀藝術教育。首先，部分國家的全國考試能夠改善藝術教育，例如在英國和荷蘭，但卻妨礙應有的改變。其次，日本兒童常根據漫畫書上的人物畫出敘事故事，這種藝術教育形式，比根據國訂課程編寫的教科書更有成效，影響力也更大。最後，筆者就藝術課程的架構提出建議，以期發揮規劃的優點，同時也能包容視覺文化、流行文化、後現代藝術世界中看似雜亂無章、含糊不明的特性。

並列摘要

Art education is like an ancient city for which modern planners (and yes, postmodern planners, too) have grand designs. Like urban designers, art educational reformers always have schemes for tearing down old buildings; erecting new ones; clearing slums; widening streets; creating new traffic patterns; establishing zones for culture, industry, commerce and entertainment; and in a myriad of other ways dictating to citizens the kinds of environments in which they should live their lives. But the common citizens of art education-teachers and their students-also have ideas, perhaps less formally divised, about how are educational cities should be built and how they should function. If we are to understand art educational change we must recoginze the tensions that exist between grand schemes for reforming art education and the undisclosed actions of teachers and students-acts that both deform change initiatives and keep art education in a state of formlessness. Morevoer, if we wish to understand the factors that affect art educational change we must look beyond or field to things such as the art world, the broader realm of visual culture, and the, world wide web. We must attend to the things that will literally change and relocate the ”urban spaces” on which art educational designers attempt to impose grand plans.
The architect Christopher Alexander has shown that urban planners base their designs for cities on tree-like structures that permit few interactions among elements. On the other hand, natural cities that have been shaped by many thousands of individuals over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years have lattice-like structures that permit millions of interactions and overlapping functions. In short, professional designers are unable to replicate desirable complexities that citizens natrually devise for themselves. Like most cities, most art educational programs have both ”naturally-occurring” and designed elements. They have been influenced by grand plans in the form of national curricula, change initiatives, the writings of influential art educator theoreticians and visionaries, by textbooks, and examination policies. These same art educational programs have their ”natural” attributes. They are influenced by thousands of strands of conventional folklore passed from on generation of art teachers to the next. The conventional features of art educational programs are also subverted by the perpetual transformation of art and artworks-thus making content, practices, and values problematic. Even students, who are frequently more comfortable living in contemporary visual culture than their teachers, sometimes bulid their own forms of art education-their own art educational neighborhoods-that are enormously more interesting and important than those designed by their teachers.
In my paper I employ Alexander's theory of natural and designed cities as a metaphor for examining the art education we now have and the art education we might plan for the Twenty-first Century. First, I will argue that the national examinations found in countries such as Britain and the Netherlands, paradoxically, improve art education while impeding desirable change. Second, I will argue that Japanese children who draw graphic narratives following models based on comic books called manga, devise a more potent and influential from of art education than is found in textbooks based on the Japanese national curriculum. Finally, I will propose a way of structuring art .education programs in order to capitalize on the strengths of planning while at the same time accommodating the seeming formlessness and ambiguity of visual culture, popular culture, and the postmodern art world.