Intentionality

IntentionalityEO

#essay, #teaching, #intentionality, #visualisation

‘Teaching isn’t teaching unless the teacher intends to teach at any particular moment’. James Elkins (Why 93)

Intentionality, as used by James Elkins, is explained as follows in the Oxford English dictionary: The fact of being deliberate or purposive.’ But, in this text I will be exploring intentionality more broadly as it is used in philosophy, described like this in the Oxford English dictionary: “The quality of mental states (for example thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) which consists in their being directed towards some object or state of affairs”.

Let’s take a look at this intentionality. John Searle explains that you can direct your mind to Paris just as easily as you can direct it to New York, or to a chair just as easily as to a plane. It enables us to represent the world (Youtube). In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy the idea behind intentionality is explained as the mind being constructed as a mental bow whose arrows could be aimed at different targets. That target could be to teach art, and with that there is the intention to teach.

Searl distinguishes two modes of representing the world: “The mind to world direction of fit in which your perceptions tell you how the world really is. And the world to mind direction of fit in which your desires and intentions don’t fit how the world is but how we would like it to be or change it to be” (Youtube). So, for example, if I intend to open a door and I reach with my hand to open it, the world is changed in order to fit my intention.

Why Art Cannot be Taught, James Elkins Oxford English Dictionary: https://www.lexico.com/definition/intentionality Youtube, John Searle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46qvb_HKIvg Stanford Encyclopedia: https://seop.illc.uva.nl/entries/intentionality/#Bib The Art Story: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/ryder-albert-pinkham/artworks/ In Elkins words: “I also think there is an indispensable component to anything that could be called teaching, and that is intentionality. The teacher must mean to impart something at a certain moment, and must intend it for a certain audience” (Why 92). But, he also describes it as fiction that the art teacher knows what she intends. So, is the teacher capable of making a fictional world as she would like the real one to be?

One of the things Elkin suggests in teaching the visual arts is to teach without words.

I suggest imagining the opposite in visual arts: only use ‘words’. If I understand correctly, teaching without words is showing art: you show an object and with that you get a mind to world direction of fit. There is no action in that. Art is in its essence about the world to mind direction of fit. The artists’ desire is to shape a world (for example a painting or sculpture) like they intend it to be.

Let’s look at what happens when a name is mentioned in class, or in a studio visit.

When a teacher mentions, for example, Ryder, like James Elkins does, your mind directs itself to Ryder. But if you are not familiar with Ryder your mind starts to wander. Ryder is mentioned in the context of an art class so they must be an artist, but are they a painter, sculptor or a poet? Your mind can only form what is called a ‘general thought’, or representation (Stanford).

Now let’s pretend you would not go home and google Ryder, but the teacher would try and generate a more helpful picture of Ryder’s work without showing it.

If Ryder had been mentioned as Ryder the painter your mind forms a general representation of what a painting looks like. So it needs to be more specific.

For example, let the students listen to Wagner by whom Ryder was inspired. Listening to his music, the general image your mind generates of a Ryder painting shifts to a painting with a certain mood. The teacher could also describe the painting: “the dark, bulky forms of trees billowing like clouds into the glow of the sky, the perspective heaping the layers of the composition onto a space that feels materially dense behind the dwarfed couple” (Art). Or, you could let Ryder speak for themself about how theyworked: “I threw my brushes aside; they were too small for the work in hand. I squeezed out big chunks of pure, moist color and, taking my pallet knife, I laid on blue, green white, and brown in great sweeping strokes. As I worked I saw it was good, clean, and strong. I saw nature springing into life upon my dead canvas”. (Art)

Every student could target this painting from his or her own perspective. Using the ability of the mind to generate images. And determine what it intends the painting to look like. When teaching art, intentionality is indispensable. Here, Elkins and I agree. The philosophical meaning of intentionality plays an important role, and the ability of the mind to represent the world can be used and challenged in learning and teaching art.