While art is essentially an expression of ones creativity and ideologies, a certain amount of tutoring is required to get all aspects of any piece of art into perspective.
Art Education helps to achieve this end as it educates the artist in the field of applying his designs to utilitarian areas that may range from personal effects to a large number of commercial aspects and commodities.
Art Education on the whole embodies painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, designing, video film making as well as graphic art. Additionally it is a broad term for designing any form of clothing, jewelry, pottery, objects de art and so on to some extent.
HistorySome of the finest and first schools of art were established as early as 400 BC in Greece. In Europe people followed the Atelier Method of taking apprentices to hone their skills in any one particular art form. The Renaissance period was a prime example of this when more and more young budding artists attached themselves to a certain painter or sculptor to learn the intricacies of the trade.
It was also the time when emphasis was laid more on design than art. There were more design schools than art schools in 18th century England. Children, adults and professionals typically gauged most of their ideas from community folk art, museums, places of worship or simply their own homes.
Recent HistoryRoyal families were also important aficionados of art and Prince Albert supported and created a number of significant art schools in the region. Prince Charles following on that note was responsible for the opening of the Prince’s Drawing School in Hoxton as a centre to learn academic drawing.
In the Netherlands Marten Krabbe (1908-2005) believed greatly in seeking the hidden artist in every child, he wrote a number of books that were well received to that effect. Similarly art education received a major brush up in the Netherlands through the Dutch Art Teachers Association founded in 1880 and their significant art magazines thereafter.
In the United States the approach to art is more methodical than whimsical, in terms of discipline and regularity. Typical art schools took over most of the bohemian and craft based schools that had dominated the art scene post World War II. Although art received a periodical slump in the 1920s when Picture studies were taken over by studio work, art education grew by leaps and bounds in the American subcontinent. A large number of art institutes, departments and organizations at the National level stand testimony to this fact.
CurriculumMost art education much like any other field of education is imparted through modules and structures, to ensure that students begin at the base and move on to the current trends and practices over a specified period. Like any other academic category, art education also employs a certain discipline and form which is essential to the proper coverage of all aspects.
In most art schools around the world art is taught through tried and tested modules such as the:
- DBAE (Discipline Based Art Education) that highlights art history, techniques and criticism.
- Visual culture and diversity models.
- TAB (Teachers for Artistic Behavior) which relies more on the judgments of the student than the teacher in close correlation with the other prevalent art techniques, criticism and history.
- Government prescribed art modules that lay emphasis largely on local arts and crafts.
- Six-Fold Models, that teaches art in components such as Creative-Production, Cultural-History and cultural-Response.
The former three modules are used extensively in most art schools in the United States and the latter two are existent in Canada and the United Kingdom.
