Employing the concept of a rhetoric of emotions, European Premodern fine art is revisioned as popular culture. From ancient times, the rhetoric of emotion was one of the principle concepts informing the theory and practice of all forms of European cultural production, including the visual arts, until it was gradually displaced during the 1700s and…

While visual art appeals to the sense of sight, both recent art and popular visual culture appeal to the whole sensorium, the sum total of the ways we experience the world. Common assumptions about the senses regarding their number, their relative importance, and their relation to one another are problematized in light of recent psychological and…

In 1999, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science introduced a new kind of compulsory arts education in secondary school aimed at stimulating cultural participation among Dutch youth. This article examines whether the course, called "Cultural and Artistic Education," succeeds in doing so. Data on 3,851 secondary school students (ages…

This article begins with the premise that art education should engage with forms of popular visual culture in the art classroom so that students can better understand, evaluate, and critique the world around them. The researcher argues that studying video art with students offers a valuable approach to critiquing film and television, among other…

In this graphic representation, two characters/caricatures discuss, contemplate, and fantasize the history of the field of art education, its current state, and future manifestations. The conversation is illustrated around the possible reconceptualization of art education. Through text and visual metaphors, the philosophical beliefs, theoretical…

Critical art histories have strategically contributed to the constitution of visual culture studies as an interdisciplinary field that interprets the mediations of mass-produced imagery in contemporary culture. This article advocates for an anti-historicist perspective of art historical knowledge connected to cultural analysis and centered on the…

In defining popular culture as inherently pleasurable, including the pleasures of transgression, the author argues that while art teachers now critique popular visual culture for its often-dubious ideologies, they are yet to come to terms with its transgressive pleasures. Teachers fail to engage with its carnivalesque, subversive qualities because…

The explanations of 101 adolescents and young adults, who are fans of popular culture narratives and make art inspired by these phenomena, provide insight into why these youth were drawn to create fan-based artworks, how they learned to make these art forms, and what the creative activities mean to them. Emergent themes highlight (a) the…

Historically, the majority of studies on children's image making have emphasized the appraisal of children's graphic development and/or the artistic qualities of children's pictures, thereby assigning them the status of self-contained visual artifacts and objects of analysis in their own right. However, such a product-oriented paradigm of inquiry…

This article examines the culture wars in the United States and considers their impact on the field of art education. Stretching across virtually ever facet of contemporary culture, these ideologically charged battles over opposing moral values and fundamental belief systems are an intrinsic part of the ongoing struggle to define and control U.S.…

Studying imagery, irrespective of the kind, must focus equally upon its aesthetic attractiveness, its sensory lures, and its oftentimes dubious social ideology. The terms "aesthetic" and "ideology" are addressed as problematic and are defined in current, ordinary language terms: aesthetics as visual appearances and their effects and ideology as a…

Many challenges currently face art educators who aim to address aspects of popular visual culture in the art classroom. This article analyzes the relationship between performance art and the MTV program "Jackass," one example of problematic popular visual culture. Issues of gender representation and violence within the context of Reality TV and…

Art education has been in the midst of a transformation shaped by several factors, including changes in contemporary art theories, political and economic factors, and technological developments. Film, music videos, advertisements, video games and other forms of popular culture are shaping how students learn today. Discussions about video gaming…

Since the mid-1980s, arts policymakers in Minnesota have positioned "media arts"--defined as the "study and practice of examining human communication through photography, film or video, audio, computer or digital arts, and interactive media"--within the realm of aesthetic education and considered it one of six arts areas. This article explores the…

Music video is one of the most influential visual culture forms to hit youth culture since the advent of television. Although provocative, the value of studying such visual culture as the music video in art education is much more than providing mere spectacle or motivational tactic. As many teenagers know, music videos portray meaning. They…