Academic
Resisting the cultural recession Penny Huntsman argues that we should cherish the Art History A level Following the threat posed to the Art History A level last year and the subsequent call to arms to save it, we have to ask some pertinent questions. Why is Art History so important? Why did its too often fragmented body of teachers come together so forcefully to save it? Why should it be more accessible? I feel impelled to attempt to answer these questions, if only to justify why I seek to be a part of a passionate movement to retain and resurrect it. Art History is many things which are both time and context dependent, but, above all, art is a form of communication and everyone should have the opportunity to speak its language. Denying some social classes the opportunity to engage with the past prevents them from communicating effectively in the present. Art History teaches us how to decode encoded messages and to become critical analysts. The subject has admittedly resided overwhelmingly in independent schools, but it performs all of the ideal functions that the political philosopher Harry Brighouse suggests are needed by young people to become autonomous adult learners capable of leading ‘flourishing lives’. Teachers of Art History even have the privilege of avoiding the de-humanising ‘banking’ system of education, deemed by educator and philosopher Paulo Freire as negating creativity, and the ability to transform the world in the way young people need to. Leaning once more on the seminal work of Freire to explain why Art History is so important, I suggest that the subject offers a body of knowledge which is capable of ‘demythologizing’ concealed realities. Art History encourages the kind of critical discussion capable of exposing truths. Along with many other ordinary Art History teachers, I am able to illustrate ‘demythologizing’ in action in most lessons. Let’s take an art-historical analysis of the French artist Ingres’ Grand Odalisque, 1819, as an example. A typical lesson would not pore over this particular nude’s fleshy beauty in the same way that its 19th century audience did, but rather deconstruct 40
Spring 2017
her ‘femininity’ and ‘otherness’ in such a way as to unveil both patriarchy and imperialism, thus opening up a critical dialogue about the oppression of knowledge itself. Crucially, Art History does this with the very learners – the privileged – who tend to have the opportunity to learn in a consciously critical way from birth. Schools like mine share all that they can – including me – with state schools because, despite the government’s best efforts to crush creativity, most of us still prize education for education’s sake. It’s probably important to share with the reader that I was state-school educated, and extra-curricular trips got me thinking about art and changed my life course. Tired of telling people how big the subject could – should – be, I used a recent taster lesson in a state school to experiment with the idea of Art History as a vital body of critical pedagogy and to dispel some myths. It was the best two days’ voluntary work of my life. I created a lecture ‘Art as Protest’. I started with a timeless classic, ‘The Arnolfini Portrait’, – well it’s prettily painted graffiti to be precise – and then moved on to Banksy’s rebellious youth-pleasers and JR’s posters in the favelas of Brazil. Shamelessly, I selected them because they chimed with the students’ geography project on the Olympics in Brazil and demonstrated the relevance of Art History today. It had to be juicy, but then Art History can be whatever you want it to be – it’s the history of everything. The students’ enthusiasm was palpable, their gratitude disproportionate. Horrifying was the revelation that not a single student had any idea of what Art History was about. Now that they knew, they wanted more of it. Young people rejecting Art History is fine by me, but young people not being given the chance to even know of it is not. This is a social justice issue, and, as well as teaching social justice, this characteristically inter-disciplinary subject can also teach global citizenship in a world where tolerance and understanding need, more than ever, to underpin every facet of a child’s education.
