Art lessons as a core subject in digital societies?

Not everyone becomes a designer, even if the market share of the cultural and creative industries is constantly growing and today makes a significant contribution to the overall economy of modern societies. In Germany alone, more than 249,000 companies employing around 1.59 million people generate more than 145 billion euros through the creative design of cultural spaces. The gross value added of the cultural and creative industries is therefore already higher than the figures for the chemical and energy industries. It takes a closer look at the economic importance of mechanical engineering and the automotive industry, which owe their outstanding position on the global market not least to the creativity of their employees. The figures for the cultural and creative industries do not even include the creative minds in industry who, together with the scientific and technological specialists, make the global success of modern products and services possible. Creativity characterizes the search for the products, production methods, buildings, infrastructures, services and communication technologies of the future, a competition that determines the success of an economy and the prosperity of society worldwide.

The cultural and creative industries are made up of various core areas whose employment figures are subject to varying degrees of dynamic development. The software and games industry, the press market, the advertising market and the design industry are followed by the architecture market, the book market, the film industry and the music industry in the midfield. The broadcasting industry, the performing arts market and the art market follow at the back of the field. Of course, these statistics say nothing about the quality of creative output. But who can say with certainty today that creative creations from graphics, painting and sculpture will have greater cultural-historical relevance for future generations than cities, buildings, furniture, clothing, print media, photos, films, cars, airplanes, computers, smartphones or programs? In addition, the commissioned work occupies a central position in the liberal arts, where the ideas of the client, competition commissions, collectors or gallery owners can provide a framework comparable to that of applied art.

Art didactics can teach young people a critical and constructive attitude towards the effects of global consumption mechanisms if it shows how we can use our creativity to use the world’s limited resources responsibly. ‘Design thinking’ and ‘design ethics’ belong together when creative strategies are taught in art lessons, even if the latter is still an almost undiscovered field of research in Germany.

The educational potential of art as a school subject

The great educational potential of art as a subject lies in the diversity of aesthetic and cultural practices and their interconnectedness with all other fields of thought and action in modern societies. The visual, performing and applied arts are all relevant here, as works of art, design objects and buildings educate, represent and utilize in equal measure. The exhibition or collection of a work of art creates a purpose in the same way as living in a house or producing a commodity. Proof of this is provided by the impressive collections of cultural history museums from all over the world, in which there is hardly a work of art on display for which no purpose can be specified. Art includes all fields of artistic design, from sculpture, painting, drawing and graphics to arts and crafts, design, theater, dance, film, architecture, urban planning and media design. Today, all areas of modern society are so complex that successful and meaningful participation is only possible if the individual has acquired a basic understanding of the diverse codes of the cultural space.

It is therefore becoming increasingly urgent for art lessons to deal with the outstanding works of all design disciplines, in particular with their significance in terms of the history of ideas, technology, social, economic and communicative aspects. The traditional core area of ‘fine arts’ is formed by disciplines such as sculpture, drawing, painting and graphics, arts and crafts and architecture, which are practiced today in both free and applied forms. In addition, there are other historically evolved cultural practices such as the textile arts, book art, jewelry art, but also new time-based arts such as film, video, performance, media art, conceptual art or scenic writing, which are symbiotically linked to ‘performing arts’ such as drama, theater and dance. The disciplines of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, urban planning, conservation and restoration as well as building conservation and monument preservation have emerged from the art of building.

Modernity, driven by increasing industrialization, has displaced many old trades and marginalized the arts and crafts, while hundreds of new professions have been created in the planning, conceptual and technical fields. Craft professions and creative vocational training include such diverse activities as product designer, visual marketing designer, media designer, photographer, glass designer, interior decorator, goldsmith, ceramist, painter and varnisher, stonemason, bricklayer, restorer or gilder. On the other hand, there are design courses such as industrial design, ceramic and glass design, game and learning design, audiovisual design, communication design, fashion design, textile design, stage design, costume design, multimedia design, VR design and game design. The focus of design courses is on complex design, while the craft teaches skills for practical implementation. Art lessons should draw on both fields of practice, i.e. teach creative idea production and practices for their implementation. Today we can plan a lot, but never everything in advance, which is why every complex design task, such as the production of buildings, films or productions, is dependent on the cooperation of everyone involved in the work. In a complex communicative process, complete works of art are created in which a large number of participants with different tasks, methods and content have to work together as a team. The skills and abilities for complex design are a key competence that can be taught nowhere better than in the school subject of art.

With the digitalization of modern societies, a large number of media professions have emerged in which the ‘design of communication’ is practiced and theoretically reflected upon. Study programs such as Print and Media Technology, Media Informatics, Mobile Media, Online Media Management, Media Economics, Media Publishing, Information Design, Advertising and Market Communication, Computer Science and Media, Crossmedia Publishing & Management, Media Management or Corporate Communication are based on fundamental skills and abilities for visual communication, aesthetic perception, artistic imagination and presentation skills in writing and images. The theoretical field of reflection, organization, evaluation and mediation of artistic practice ranges from art history and art education to new fields of activity such as art management, art and cultural mediation or cultural journalism.

Art teaching can benefit greatly from the diverse professional fields of action of creative disciplines if practices and theories from different disciplines are selected according to criteria such as socio-cultural relevance, exemplarity and diversity and taught in teacher training courses. The many paths to art and the understanding of art show that and how we can preserve and renew our material and spiritual culture in all design disciplines. Works of art from all creative fields are the archive of cultural tradition, cultural education and a model for new cultural creations. They shape our self-image, our sense of community and our identity. Their methods are always highly relevant, highly productive and the driving force behind our cultural progress.

Consequences for teacher training and teaching art in schools

Contemporary art teaching must represent the unity of all the arts in such a way that a cross-section of the design courses at our colleges, universities and art academies is represented. As a university lecturer myself, I witnessed the controversial discussion process at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, which went hand in hand with the renaming of the title. In the end, it was clear that both faculties no longer wanted to be perceived as a ‘university of art and design’, but rather as a unified university of art. The liberal and applied arts are united under the umbrella of an art academy, which promotes mutual awareness and creative dialog in theory and practice.

This approach can only be realized with a reform of teacher training, as a result of which far more practical disciplines than before should be given space. The art teacher training program includes not only graphic art, painting and sculpture, but also contemporary fields of practice in design, architecture and arts and crafts. In addition, there is a need to expand all interdisciplinary teaching areas such as design fundamentals, creativity, manual and digital presentation methods, the psychology of perception, art history, cultural sociology, cultural philosophy, cultural economics and artistic research.

This principle must be defined and regularly updated by those responsible in the subject sciences, subject didactics and education policy with the involvement of teachers. Any other selection principle must deal with the accusation of arbitrariness, which is ultimately the reason for the lack of social acceptance. In my opinion, this is above all a question of political will, which must remedy the structural deficits in teacher training as quickly as possible so that the subject of art can meet the demands of modern societies.

Art teaching can only meet the diverse demands of modern societies if the necessary conditions are created at the university, art academy and school. The current division of the teacher training course in art into 1/3 educational sciences, 1/3 first subject and 1/3 second subject is a historical relic that no longer does justice to the complexity of the theoretical and practical field. As a result, all teachers of art as a school subject are permanently overburdened and are no longer able to adequately teach many of the important contents of today’s curricula, such as design with digital media or an introduction to architecture and design. It is not enough for us to adapt the curricula of art as a school subject to the requirements of modern societies, we must also create teaching skills and space for this in teacher training! This would also significantly increase the social acceptance of all art teachers. Teacher training in art requires the full subject so that the content and skills described here, which are often already mandatory in curricula, can be taught on a didactic and practical basis. In my opinion, school art lessons need the same amount of time as German right from the start, with blocks of whole days and project weeks. I will explain why I use German as a reference in the next section.

Visual communication as a central task of art didactics

In addition to creativity, every individual needs basic skills and abilities for ‘visual communication’ at school and at work. This descriptive form of human language includes many other didactic approaches such as ‘visual literacy’ or ‘image literacy’. In my opinion, the extremely problematic reduction of the content and methods of visual communication to the aspects of agitation, propaganda, advertising and marketing obstructs the path of conveying aesthetic cultural education in the sense of vivid linguistic competence. Visual and verbal language are together at the center of all experience formation, information design and knowledge transfer, which is why we must understand and teach visual communication skills and abilities analogous to the native language.

All the terms in our vocabulary remain empty and meaningless if we do not associate any vivid ideas with them. Visual communication includes the development of visual perception skills, imagination and a variety of manual and digital representation skills. Visual perception is a comprehension ability that is comparable to listening or reading word language. A viewer makes sense and meaning of the world of appearances through active interpretation, which only then confronts him in the form of images, objects or spaces. The vivid imagination, in turn, is based on a repertoire of pictorial objects and their meaningful relationships, which we have to acquire through active forms of appropriation, analogous to the repertoire of our verbal language.

Reading and interpreting are equally the most important forms of our imagination, thinking and creation. The multitude of vivid illustration skills serve us not only to illustrate words and texts! Graphics, images and pictorial narratives are a language of their own, the knowledge of which is indispensable in theory and application practice for visualizing information, imparting knowledge and creating orientation. We construct cities, buildings and objects, create images, sculptures and films that also teach us how to read and use them. The entire cultural space functions like a descriptive archive of socio-cultural practices and theories if we have learned to interpret and use it in this way.

Verbal and visual communication skills and abilities are therefore a prerequisite for successful and responsible participation in modern media societies. The visual form of language and media competence is a core area of art, which is why pupils in the school subject of art must learn to read and write vividly from the outset, and even more so than before, which also goes hand in hand with the teaching of aesthetic, cultural and ethical values. Everyone should learn to present simple and complex facts and processes clearly! The mediation process should begin with analog media such as sketching, drawing, graphics, collage, models, painting, dance and theater, and later be continued in combination with digital media such as photography, film, animation, print media, app and web design.

The descriptive form of perception, abstraction, organization, presentation and communication of information forms a core component of modern knowledge societies. The constantly growing importance of interactive media such as websites, applications and Internet platforms not only serves to convey information, but also generates completely new social practices, economic flows of goods and cultural activities. Acquiring the skills and abilities to interpret and illustrate complex findings in the form of sketches, drawings, illustrations, photographs, films, process graphics, functional diagrams, infographics, animations and interactive applications is part of everyone’s general education today! The prerequisite for participating in the shaping of modern societies can only be acquired through a comprehensive educational process due to the large scope and high degree of complexity.

The design of the cultural space reflects the dialog process between people and the environment, as each generation learns through observation, asks its own questions and searches for contemporary answers to solve individual and social problems. Looking at a work of art can be just as educational as reading a book if we can correctly interpret the complexity of the message, critically assess its value and express our resonance in both visual and verbal form.

To make it even clearer what I’m getting at in this article, I’d like to play a little mind game with you. What do you think of this argument for the general education subject of art: “Art lessons make a significant contribution to the visual, artistic and media-based education of pupils. It familiarizes them with the forms of descriptive communication and art as a means of understanding the world and conveying reality, of interpersonal communication, analysis and reflection, but also of problem-solving and creative design.”

If you google this short text, you will find it with a few changes under “Key ideas for skills acquisition, central tasks of the subject German”.
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I have only replaced the five words in bold, which demonstrate the connection and difference between the two primary forms of communication of human perception, imagination and creation: “German lessons make a significant contribution to pupils’ linguistic, literary and media education. It familiarizes them with language and literature as a means of understanding the world and communicating reality, of interpersonal communication, of analysis and reflection, but also of problem-solving and creative design.”

There are subject-specific peculiarities in the verbal and descriptive form of our language competence, especially with regard to history, repertoire, methods, media and techniques. More important, however, are the similarities, as our imagination, thinking and actions are only revealed by our abilities and skills to verbalize and illustrate complex ideas and processes. In addition, it is skills in words and images that will determine the future of “digital societies”.

Art is omnipresent and concerns us all

Parents often say things like this: “Why does my child need art, he’s not supposed to be a painter!” The child is probably not supposed to become a mathematician, writer or physicist either, but similar to politics and educational science, most parents also rate the benefits of these school subjects for general education much higher. This fact is particularly problematic for the acceptance of art as a school subject, as parents’ assessments are very quickly transferred to the children’s appreciation, commitment and learning success.

Today, art is seen in large parts of society as a leisure activity for the bourgeois elite, which creates an existential problem for the school subject of the same name. The formative function of visual perception in everyday life or self-initiated aesthetic learning processes such as shaping one’s own identity in social networks are far too rarely regarded as artistic processes by teachers and pupils alike. Most pupils spend far more time on these informal learning processes and are much more committed to their work than they are to many tasks in art lessons. Even many progressive approaches to the expansion and renewal of art practice, such as Pop Art or Action Art, are nowadays communicated conventionally in museum form and understood less as living reminders of the need for a constant revolution in the art world. The established reception of art, which is rejected by large sections of the population, can be found in the cultural section of bourgeois newspapers or cultural programs, which can be seen far away from the main viewing times. Interest in art and culture programs, such as the recognized art and culture scene, is shown by 4-6% of the population, although these figures do not reflect curiosity about contemporary art, but interest in art and culture in general.⁶

We must take note of these figures, as they say nothing about the cultural value of contemporary art, but they do say something about its appreciation among large sections of the population. In the mass media, the concept of art merges with the elitist structures of the art market, where the name and market value of the artist shape the contemporary meaning of most works of art. Collecting art promises membership of an elite club.
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In the eyes of many people, outstanding art is defined by its price, a serious misjudgement that says a lot about society but undermines the acceptance of the subject in large sections of society. In the logic of the art market, art history also becomes a style-forming show of superstars whose works we consume and whose biographies we admire. This obscures the view of the many creative artists of the present who produce the wealth of ideas of modern societies undetected and who live among us in everyday, often precarious situations. Let’s go on a search!

The significance of art for modern societies stands and falls with the definition of the term, which is why I would like to argue for an expanded concept of art based on my experience in didactics, theory and practice of design. Scientists identify themselves with their knowledge and consequently call themselves biologists, physicists, philosophers or sociologists. Artists should identify themselves with their skills and describe themselves as painters, draughtsmen, directors and architects. It is just as paradoxical to distinguish between an artist and a designer as it is to distinguish between a scientist and a chemist. Of course, we can have several forms of expression and create works in different disciplines; this is also often the case in the sciences and leads to an enumeration and weighting of professions. While the content and methods of the subject discipline are taught in the science teacher training courses, prospective art teachers have to deal with an immensely larger theoretical and practical field. The school subject of art needs to be reduced to the essentials, the goals of any general education, the intellectual, ethical and aesthetic shaping of the personality.

Perhaps the path to contemporary art didactics begins with a brief return to the beginnings of art teaching, as the introduction of a new school subject requires a high degree of acceptance within society. The foundation of art as a general education subject is rooted in the didactic potential of drawing. While we open up the ‘paths to science’ via reading and writing, we can open up the ‘paths to art’ in a methodically comparable way via drawing, insofar as this involves the formation of our visual perceptual ability. Drawing is still the basis of all the arts today, if we understand and convey it as a descriptive form of our language. Drawing is one of the most important cultural techniques of mankind alongside word language, as it begins with the recording of phenomena, continues with the discovery of our world of symbols and reaches the greatest complexity through the visualization of knowledge and stories, ideas and concepts as well as constructions and manufacturing processes. Our drawing techniques and illustration tools have developed and diversified extremely quickly over the last hundred years. Drawing is done in every artistic discipline, whether with pencil, brush, model, body, camera or computer interface. Many people can express their perceptions and ideas better through drawing skills than through the means of verbal language. The didactics of drawing thus opens up new ways for more effective inclusion and integration. Everyone should learn to draw, sketch or construct abstractly and concretely, to improvise or work purposefully, to draw freely from the imagination or precisely reproduce a template in order to visualize their own ideas, concepts and processes.

In the world of work, the learning process continues in the applied drawing techniques, which in a broad sense cover all professional fields. In my professional career as a stonemason, I had to learn to draw sculptural forms in the material with a hammer and chisel. As an architect, I learned to sketch ideas and concepts, to graphically visualize imaginative spaces and to technically draw instructions for a variety of project participants. As a media artist, I have experienced how light can be used to move people emotionally, change their perception and open up new perspectives on familiar environments. Finally, as a university lecturer, author, speaker, conference leader and artistic director of major exhibition projects, I have to outline my ideas for experts and laypeople on an almost daily basis, using a variety of media and visualization techniques. Each drawing technique has its own aesthetics, its technical and material limitations, its potential for expression in terms of content and form, and its media-specific design methodology. In many places, art teaching practice has already begun to recognize and use the methodological potential of drawing in its practical, media-specific forms.

Aesthetics is a project of the Enlightenment. Its founder, Alexander Baumgarten, saw it as the vivid form of our cognitive approach to the world. According to Immanuel Kant, the enlightened person should escape their self-inflicted immaturity by finding the courage to use their intellect without the guidance of another. Thanks to the almost unlimited possibilities of reproduction and media presence, art has become a common good. All people are at least potential artists who can achieve maturity and the all-round development of their talents through their own creative self-activity and the formation of their perception. Art and science are the two fundamental forms of our access to the world. This is precisely the root of art didactics. Art is omnipresent! Art concerns us all! Art is where people are creatively active, where artistic means are used in the artistic process! What remains of the artistic process can be seen in the cultural education of the individual as well as in the work, the aesthetic manifestation of an endless search that constantly raises new questions, challenges new answers and stimulates new creative design processes. The aesthetic examination of the appearance of the everyday world is just as much a part of art lessons as knowledge of the outstanding works of cultural history. By revealing the history of ideas, the works of the past become relevant for understanding and shaping the present.

Everyone engages in some form of art reception in their everyday lives if we consider our engagement with the entirety of our material and intellectual culture, including arts and crafts, design and architecture. A look at the museum landscape and its visitor numbers shows that the reception of art practiced under the expanded concept of art already represents an important educational factor in modern societies.7 More than 110 million museum visits are registered each year in Germany alone, where the still rapidly growing number of now more than 6,000 institutions represents the entire cultural landscape, past and present. The public’s interest in museums is focused on the entire material and intellectual culture of mankind, the so-called art museums, such as museums of folklore and local history, natural history, natural science, technology, architecture, applied arts, arts and crafts, film and photography.

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