Honore Daumier is probably best known as a politically motivated artist. Born in Marseilles in 1808, the French artist lived through one of the most turbulent eras of his country's history. With his artistic prowess and biting wit, he recorded the 1848 revolution, the rise and fall of the Second Empire, the Crimean and Franco-Prussian Wars, and…

This article draws attention to three important aesthetic ideas--ideas which have become, in the early twenty-first century, so widely endorsed in Western culture that they have become the stock platform of much theorizing and teaching about our experience of art and its relation to the rest of life. All of these ideas sprang from Beat thought in…

"A primary task ... is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience."--John Dewey, "Art as Experience" (1934)Dewey's primary task has resurfaced in the visual culture movement and is a…

The Jigsaw Mural Project provides a way for young children to work on a large-scale and permanent mural, in a manner that allows them to work on the floor and without the use of ladders. It is also a chance for art educators to work with students as teacher and collaborator in one. This project took place with preschool children ages two through…

Undergraduate programs across the nation are increasingly offering interdisciplinary study programs as markers of their commitment to educate individuals for the demands of contemporary life. Yet, as students engage in interdisciplinary learning projects, an unaddressed question looms large: how to adequately assess student interdisciplinary work.…

Musicians and visual artists are appointed to work as specialist teachers in Cypriot primary schools because of their artistic expertise. However, little information is available concerning these artists and their work in schools, including the perceptions of the pupils. This paper reports on an investigation into the nature of the pupils'…

Images can be and have been used in various ways, and by their man-made nature they cannot be considered independent of their providers' intentions. Yet, identifying such intentions is complex, and requires a critical look supported by relevant information on what is being represented, how, and why. In this article, the author illustrates some of…

From papier mache to plaster and paper to moulage, making masks is a popular activity for both art educators and students around the world. Masks have been and are currently used by many cultures/societies for specific cultural rituals and spiritual, metaphorical, role-playing, and theatrical reasons. In short, their use and their creation are…

This article examines the process of graphic representational development in paint in the context of the theoretical assumptions of traditional developmental stage theory. Consistent with current theory and research in art education and cognitive psychology, a model of painting development is proposed that is multidimensional rather than unitary,…

In this article, the author describes how she conducts her art classes. She relates that she begins all of her classes by asking prompting questions and presenting basic information such as a definitions of art terminologies to her students. The author believes in brainstorming with her students, an effective way for creating a dialog with her…

In this essay, the author furthers the argument that critical commentary on the Rajput and Muslim miniatures of India has focused on a rather odd use of labels and categories, perhaps to an even greater extent than has been the case with much of the rest of the criticism of the art of South Asia. She first examines the use of the term…

During its own time, French Impressionism was viewed as a sweeping revolution in painting, a radical departure from the existing traditions of European art. Today, Impressionism is recognized as a major frontier in art history and the threshold of the modern art movement. In this article, the author discusses the development of the Impressionism…

The teaching of human anatomy has had to respond to significant changes in medical curricula, and it behooves anatomists to devise alternative strategies to effectively facilitate learning of the discipline by medical students in an integrated, applied, relevant, and contextual framework. In many medical schools, the lack of cadaver dissection as…

Teachers of the visual arts have long considered the importance of how to collect and display their students' work. Throughout history, bulletin boards have covered classrooms and school hallways neatly displaying children's art work. This article briefly summarizes how documentation functions within the Reggio Emilia approach and then discusses…

Although visual art is considered a subject deemed by the federal government as part of the core curriculum, many elementary schools do not include this subject into the current core curriculum of studies. This review of literature provides insight through current qualitative and quantitative studies on the effectiveness of including visual art…