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Copyright 2003 by the Studues inArt Education

National Art Education Association AJournal of Issuts and Research XlI
2003, 44(3), 290.296 :}

Commentary:
Vilsual Culture, Visual Brain, and (Art) Education
Anna M. Kindler
The HongKong Institute ofEducation zit

,l

Corrcspondence Many art education scholars have argued in recent years that visual i1
regarding this culture, as an important cultural phenomenon, is worth addressing in the
commentary should be context of schooling because of its great social impact and relevance to the
addressed to the author
at the School of
lives of young people (e.g., Barbosa, 1991, Duncum, 1990, 2001;
Creative Arts, Sciences Freedman & Stuhr, 2001; Garoian, 1997; McFee & Degge, 1977;
and Technology, The Neperud, 1995; Tavin, 2001; Wilson, 2001; Wilson & Wilson, 1977). v
Hong Kong Institute of
Education, 10 Lo Ping
However, there are' also other reasons for a more inclusive vision of art
Road, Tai Po, New education that I have recently attempted to bring to light (Kindler, 2001).
Territories, Hong I have tried to rationalize the importance of visual culture in the educa-
Kong. E-mail: tional enterprise on the basis that it provides a very fruitful ground for
kindler@ied.edu.hk
development of visual intelligence because of the richness of pictorial reper-
I:
An earlier version of toires that it embraces. I see visual culture as central to visual education, a
this paper was
presented as a keynotc
cognitive endeavor that would encourage a more complete and engaged
address at the participation in the visual world than what art education champions today.
International
Symposium on the
Conceptions of Development and Visual Culture
New Prospects of Art As any other domain of education, art education has as one of its
Education, National prerogatives encouragement of human development and learning.
Taivvan Normal Consequendy, how we conceptualize this growth is central to curriculum
University, Taipei,
September 27-29, decisions, nature of pedagogical interventions and ways in which success is
2001. assessed.
Art education has long been committed to linear notions of artistic
development. From Lowenfeld's stages (1947) to the U-curve models
(Gardner & Winner, 1982; Davis, 1997a, 1997b), artistic development has
been conceptualized as a growth within a rather narrow set of understand-
ings and abilities. Aside from the fact that these models focus on develop-
ment within a single graphic medium (drawing), rely on culturally-selected
endpoints and define development in terms of people's ability to conform
to particular sets of aesthetic preferences (e.g., visual realism, expressive
quality, etc.) that may or may not be relevant under different historical
and socio/cultural conditions, they do not adequately account for the fact
that pictorial behavior, as a semiotic activity, may be guided by different
purposes and may be subject to different perspectives of interpretation.
Over the past two decades, these uni-linear models have been critiqued
by numerous researchers (Golomb, 1994; Kindler & Darras, 1994, 1997;
Pariser, 1997; Wolf, 1994; Wolf & Perry, 1988) and exploration of their
shortcomings lead to the call for freeing conceptions of artistic develop-
ment from the constraints of linearity and single endpoints (Wolf and

Studies in Art Education

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Commentary: Visual Culture

Perry, 1988; Golomb, 1994; Kindler & Darras, 1998; Kindler, 1999). An
alternative model of development, accounting for a much broader range of
pictorial behaviors (some of which have traditionally been classified as art
while others have better fitted the realms of "communication" or "visual
culture") has emerged and brought to light problems with art education
curriculum and pedagogy that maintain narrow focus on only very selected
aspects of human pictorial activity (Kindler & Darras, 1994, 1998).
While this model offers a good rationale and theoretical foundation for
a possible paradigm shift, the tradition of art education practice is heavily
biased against some of the pictorial repertoires that this model acclaims as
valid. For example, in North American art education the imagery prevalent
in visual culture of children and young people who grow up in media-satu-
rated environments has traditionally remained excluded from, or seen as
less worthy of exploration than the traditional forms that defined Western
art. Prejudice against imagery created based on cultural models derived
from these traditions (e.g., cartoon or manga drawings), drawing conven-
tions of initial imagery that are seen as primitive or immature, synthetic
map-like graphic representations or images that are constructed at the
intersections of graphic marks, gestures and vocal or verbal clues has been
enshrined in this tradition.
This prejudice and exclusion from curriculum is particularly disturbing
because these kinds of imagery are often at the heart of pictorial worlds that
children and adolescents spontaneously create in their lives (Kindler, 1999).
They constitute the imagery that people have a "need for"- imagery that is
not guided by artistic intentions but rather by the need to represent,
express, communicate, process for oneself or share with others events, ideas,
or emotions that are significant in one's life. It is the imagery that often has
a magnetic interest to children and young people, imagery that is enthusias-
tically consumed, spontaneously created, and personally satisfying while,
regretfully, remaining mostly irrelevant to the concerns of art education. In
our eagerness to judge and dismiss, we have failed to inquire into the fasci-
nating questions: What specifically makes this imagery so appealing to our
students? Why do they have the need for it? In what contexts, conditions
and circumstances does this imagery perform important function in their
lives? What these preferences and interests can teach us about the ways in
which students process visual information, and how this insight could help
us encourage development of their visual intelligence?
It is important to note that the same pictorial repertoires can and have
been used at times by artists throughout history and across cultures. It is
the dimension of the "kunstwollen," along with culturally grounded social
acclaim that fund classification mechanisms that define art and non-art
and that account for the shift in status of different kinds of pictorial
imagery. In other words, the debate of whether these diverse pictorial
repertoires should be explored within the discourse of art is essentially a
cultural argument.

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Anna M. Kindler

Brain Research and the Possibility of Visual Education

The last two decades have contributed immensely to the understanding
of processes that account for seeing and processing of visual information-
processes that are fundamental to encounters with art and participation in
visual culture. If we accept that "all visual art is expressed through the
brain and must therefore obey the laws of the brain, whether in concep-
tion, execution or appreciation" (Zeki, 1999, p. 1), it is certainly of great
importance to art education to be appraised of and benefit from these new
insights.
The key shifts in thinking about visual perception and cognition relate
to the concepts of "visual brain" (Zeki, 1999) and "visual intelligence"
(Hoffman, 1998). These new theories contradict the long-standing notion
that seeing involves a process of imprinting an image onto the retina that
only later on becomes transmitted to the brain to be de-coded, analyzed,
and interpreted. They posit that seeing is not a matter of passive percep-
tion, but rather an active act of construction that involves visual brain and
requires visual intelligence manifested in the ability to construct one's
visual experience. One of the main challenges in this construction is the
ability to overcome the fundamental problem of vision, the fact that "the
image at the eye (retinal image) has countless possible interpretations"
(Hoffman, p. 13). Visual intelligence can be described as a brain's ability
to search for constancies, essentials, and non-changing aspects of visual
world that allow us to interpret the ever-changing retinal images in consis-
tent and coherent ways. In other words, our visual brain reinvents a chair
in front of us as a chair irrespectively of the fact that the retinal images of
the chair significantly differ as we turn our head or move around the
room. The brain overcomes the problem of the appearance that changes
momentarily to arrive at a "sensible essence" (Riviere, cited in Zeki, 1999,
p. 1).
Both Hoffman and Zeki argue that the brain's quest for these essentials
and the task to obtain the knowledge about the world and recreate it as it
is can be paralleled to the tasks facing fine artists (and I would add
designers and others who contribute to the development ofvisual culture):
"seeking of knowledge in an ever-changing world" (Zeki, p. 12).
One of the most exciting advances in neurosciences that could lend
support to the notion that various pictorial repertoires involve and provide
opportunities for different kinds of learning (and thus an education that
accounts for this diversity would be a richer enterprise) has to do with the
evidence coming from research concerned with mapping of neural activa-
tion zones in relation to different pictorial tasks. There is a growing
evidence, for example, that "different modes of painting make use of
different cerebral systems" (Zeki, p. 215). For instance, it has been docu-
mented that abstract works activate more restricted parts of the brain than
art that is representational or narrative in nature. This happens because of
the general organization of the visual brain "in which each of the parallel

292 Stuidies in Art Education

 Commentary: Visual Culture

processing systems consists of several stages, with each stage constructing

the figure at a given level of complexity." (p. 208). For example, some
areas of the visual brain located within the inferior temporal cortex are
specialized in object recognition and are activated only when presented
with stimuli that lend themselves to such tasks. Similarly, art that involves
a kinetic dimension will activate areas that remain dormant in experiences
involving static imagery: whether representational or non-objective. This
information suggests that the inclusion in our curriculum of pictorial
imagery that relies on the involvement of movement and gesture may have
unique benefits for students.
Zeki argues that modularity of the visual brain can be related to what he
calls "modularity of visual aesthetics" (p. 205) and suggests that in fact it
may be possible to speak of distinct neurologies of non-objective, represen-
tational and narrative imagery. Perhaps even more importantly, it has been
suggested that artists trained in their craft have the ability to override some
of the pre-wired mechanisms. For example, artists who use their knowl-
edge to deliberately paint something differently from the ways in which
they see it have two subdivisions of the frontal cortex of their brain that
naturally become active under different sets of circumstances to communi-
cate with each other (Zeki, 1999). So it is possible to argue that engage-
ment with visual imagery through the exploration of its enormous range of
possibilities can allow for forms of neural interactions and dynamics that
otherwise would not be achieved.
Clearly, there is still much to be learned about the human brain and its
function as it relates to pictorial representation, including those aspects of
it that we have learned to call art. However, iesearch evidence that the past
two decades or so have afforded sends a powerful signal that our field
should carefully tune to this knowledge. The fact that "what happens in
the brain of one individual when he or she looks at art is very similar of
what happens in the brain of another" (Zeki, p. 218) makes these findings
potentially useful and relevant across diverse cultural contexts. Perhaps it is
within this territory of neuroscience that we can find a ground for discus-
sion of universal issues in a cross-cultural conversation about art education?
The vision of visual education that I am excited about is certainly inclu-
sive of a broad spectrum of visual culture that has been at the center of
attention of'colleagues who have argued its importance based on social
relevance or cultural arguments. However, I think that we should also be
concerned with a broadly defined visual culture because it is constructed
with and embodies a wide range of pictorial repertoires within which
human growth can be achieved and presents an array of choices of areas
where visual imagery does matter. Immersion in visual culture offers an
exciting opportunity to the visual brain to engage in cognitive activity at
every step of this experience-not only through the invitation of socio-
cultural interpretations that these encounters afford but also through the
very processes of image construction that are intrinsic to them. Experiencing

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Anna M. Kindler

and creating visual imagery of different kinds can have significant cognitive
benefits in making a more complete use of different parts of the visual
brain and allowing for development of diverse strengths in creating and
relating to the visual world.
The potential impact of visual culture on human cognition has been
demonstrated in studies concerned with the IQ scores distribution over
time (Flynn, 1984, 1987). These studies, involving extensive data derived
from different socio/cultural settings and age groups consistently revealed a
significant increase in IQ scores over several decades. Needless to say,
diverse hypotheses were tested to account for the "Flynn Effect," including
the possible impact of improved nutrition, more extensive access to
schooling and exposure to formal education, test habituation, and even the
increase in the size of the brain related to the overall increase in the body
height (Darras, 2002). However, all of these factors proved to be, at best,
only partially responsible for the dramatic change. A close analysis of the
individual components of the test shed an interesting light on the possible
causes of this marked improvement on the IQ test performance. It demon-
strated that the gain occurred almost solely on items measuring visual/
spatial reasoning. It has since been suggested that the changes in the visual
and spatial universe are in fact responsible for the current generation
appearing "more intelligent" than their parents or grandparents (Neisser,
1998; Darras, 2002). Specifically, it has been argued that these increased
abilities of visual analysis develop in response to the experience with "visual
media" that permeate the world today. The proliferation of both static as
well as moving images in people's daily lives, exposure to photographs,
digital imagery, graphs, diagrams, pictograms, film, video, various forms of
advertising, and other manifestations of visual culture were identified as
possible causes for the global improvement on IQ tests (Darras, 2002).
Visual culture operates through the medium of visual brain and through
modalities that are founded in human neurobiology. Consequently, I
believe that we should be concerned with this realm of growth-not as an
alternative but rather as a necessary complement to the opportunities for
socio-cultural learning. I see this revised territory of education in pictorial
representation as inclusive of experimentation, teaching, and opportunities
to practice a wide range of pictorial repertoires. I regard this territory as a
place where students would not only have an opportunity to experience
this diversity but also have a chance to understand that different pictorial
systems of representation may have different salient dimensions, may
necessitate the use of alternative structures and devices that may at times be
contradictory to each other, and may require different teaching and learning
strategies in order to achieve desired levels of proficiency and success.
While research in recent two decades has delegated the theories of
"seeing eye" and "understanding brain" to the realm of myths, visual
education seems to be an adequate umbrella to cover a wide range of
cognitive endeavors that rely on the use of visual brain. There is no one

294 Stuidies in Art Education

 Commentary: Visual Culture

aspect of visual culture to which we can relate without the involvement of

this magnificent and still in many ways mysterious organ.
Research in neurosciences that maps brain areas involved in visual
problem-solving and creative visual thinking (e.g., Miller & Tippet,
1996; Elliot, 1986), explores activities of the cortical areas responsible for
the analysis and synthesis of forms, colors, and spatial relations or attempts
to understand the nature of a "fundamental thought" that constitutes
4
"a mental stimulation of the picture' (Changeaux, 1994, p.19 ). While
this research can help demystify the role that the brain plays in human
production and consumption of visual culture, an active involvement of
the art education community in such inquiry could make it more useful
to our field. With interdisciplinary collaboration being today more a
norm than exception, it is perhaps time for us to seek scholarly partnerships
with cognitive scientists to better understand neurological foundations of
the visual culture phenomenon and consider new ways to integrate it in
the education enterprise.
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TITLE: Commentary: Visual Culture, Visual Brain, and (Art)

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