Virtue and the Art of Teaching Art

ABSTRACT

Discussions of the aims and efficacy of teachers tend to focus on an extended present pre supposing a more or less common profile across subjects and recent times. Given the concern with contemporary schooling this is unsurprising, but it limits what might be learned about the character of good and bad teaching, about the particularities of certain fields, and about the ways teachers conceive themselves in relation to their subjects, students and society. This essay considers the teaching of art, by artists to art students, setting this within a long view of the institutions of art and art training. Three partial models of the art educator and their associated qualities can be abstracted from medieval, early modern, and recent periods. (1) The Exemplar: possessed of practical skills and habituated understanding and judgement. (2) The Master: having in addition to the exemplar’s qualitieserudition and cultivated taste. (3) The Critical-Advocate: theory-oriented, and self-consciously progressive. Good art (be it in terms of expressive, imaginative, formal, representational or other relevant aspects) has the power to transform makers and observers, and to encourage and deepen self-examination and self-understanding. Good art teaching should be alert to and directed towards these benefits.

Keywords:

• art education, 
• craft, 
• design, 
• fine art, 
• virtues, 
• world-view

6. Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In medieval England there developed two groups of painters, those that belonged to the King’s Court, and those associated with London trade bodies. The former practised at various royal palaces but most importantly were engaged in decorating the Royal Place and Abbey of Westminster. By stages, the distinction between Court and London painters diminished and the two groups coalesced through the creation in 1502 of the Painters Stainers Company see Borg (2005).

2 On medieval aesthetics see Haldane (2013).

³ For English translations see R. Sinisgali (1435/2013); C. Grayson (1436/1972), and for a more idiomatic translation intended to allow the work to serve as a manual by present-day sculptors see Alberti (1436/2013), and J. Rykwert et al. (1452/1988).

⁴ See Russell (2020).

⁵ Regarding the teaching of students Constable writes: ‘The landscape painter must walk in the field a humble mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to see nature in all her beauty. If I may be allowed to use a very solemn quotation I would say most emphatically to the student, Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth’ (Leslie, 1951, p. 327).

⁶ There is a parallel with the early history of institutionalized art education in New York which had an analogous position within the US to that of London. Within a quarter century of the founding in 1802 of the Academy of Fine Arts, a breakaway group established the National Academy of Design (1825) in which observational drawing replaced the copying of great works. In 1875 a group (many of whom were women) detached itself to form the Arts Students League of New York. This again sought to engage a wider range of interests and types of students, and also to broaden the range of media and techniques that could be studied. The emphasis on design was likewise due to the US progressively assuming the role hitherto occupied by Britain as the world’s leading manufacturing and economic power. For a review of the literature on the subject up to the 1960s see Keel (1963).

⁷ For an interesting exploration of the art school idea and its implementation see Haste (2013).

⁸ The Artist as Teacher (1991), Values in Art (1992), The Curriculum in Fine Art (1993), The Role of Drawing in Fine Art Education (1994), Fine Art Education and the Museum (1995), What Art School did and didn’t do for me (1996), What Do You Think You Are Doing?: Intention in Making, Understanding and Teaching Art (1997), and From Varying Positions (1998). Texts from these were published as a series Issues in Art and Education: Vol. 1 Artists in the 1990s: Their Education and Values ed. Hetherington (1994); Vol. 2 Aspects of the Fine Art Curriculum ed. Hetherington (1996), and Vol. 3 The Dynamics of Now (from those in 1995. 1996, 1997 and 1998) eds Hetherington et al. (2000).

⁹ In this connection see Haldane (1988, 2015).

¹⁰ See Haldane (2018, 2022b).

¹¹ On self-understanding see Haldane (2022a).