Rhetorical Aesthetics as ART-ument

Running Head: RHETORICAL AESTHETICS AS ART-UMENT                   Rhetorical Aesthetics as ART-ument Terre Layng Rosner Northern Illinois University and The University of St. Francis  

 

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Abstract By definition, graphic design education is the pedagogy of aesthetic discourse differing from fine arts education in its basic intent, which is to persuade an audience—similar tools are used but the purpose is typically to motivate an audience to attend an event, buy a product or use a service (Berryman, 1990, Layng & Layng Rosner, 2004). On the other hand, the normative definition of art is “the quality, production, expression or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance…the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings; a museum of art; and art collection” (Dictionary.com). If graphic design education requires the student producer to be driven to audience conditioning then it would seem necessary to have some knowledge in the practice of ethical, persuasive discourse. In other words graphic design necessitates using a deductive argument to be efficacious. “…deductive argument is an argument of such a form that if its premises are true, the conclusion must be true too. Properly formed deductive arguments are called valid arguments” (Weston, 2009, p. 37). A simple syllogism can be provided to frame my concern about this issue. If art is kind of discourse and discourse is a kind of rhetoric then art is a kind of rhetoric. Therefore a pedagogy that integrates art education with rhetorical argument in the practice of ART-ument would accommodate the knowledge building necessary for the postmodern student citizen of “artistic education” (Siegesmund, 2013, p. 301). Keywords: art education, rhetorical aesthetics, ART-ument, syllogism, graphic design, art-I-fact

 

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Rhetorical Aesthetics as ART-ument Art education, specifically design education, seems to have adapted into a practice of teaching individuals able to act as producers of media in a market based economy. In the 1830’s Friedrich Froebel introduced multiple media in art instruction and approximately 30 years later Walter Smith established the first training program for professional art teachers in the United States (Efland, 1990). The British Arts and Crafts movement heralded in the concepts of form follows function, “Beauty they proclaimed was to be found in simplicity rather than complexity. The industrial system had to be abandoned and guild system of manufacture and education had to be restored” (p 152). As a practice this meant that students would be trained and educated to respect materials as items of manufacture and whether the constructivists fully understood this or not, ultimately as a lucrative tool to be used for manipulating a public to become mindless consumers. The commodification of art education, particularly as it applies to graphic design, tends to be the result of this type of formalist curriculum (Efland, 1990, Stankiewicz, 2001). In the 1890’s Walter Crane further cemented such practices by establishing design education as a “foundational study in the training of artists and designers” (Efland, 1990, p. 153). Efland points out that after the Drawing Act of 1870 was in place, art pedagogy “was the product of class based education” (p. 113). A salient argument, in that if students are charged to create artifacts for a public without a thorough understanding of the ramifications of their work then they are doomed to act as automatons in a larger hegemonic machine. In this essay, I intend to narrow the topic of arts education to simply a part of the whole—namely graphic design education. Inherent in this part is the concept of persuasion. By definition, graphic design education is the pedagogy of aesthetic discourse differing from fine arts education in its basic intent, which is to persuade an audience—similar tools are used but the purpose is typically to motivate an audience to attend an event, buy a product or use a service  

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(Berryman, 1990, Layng & Layng Rosner, 2004). On the other hand, the normative definition of art is “the quality, production, expression or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance…the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings; a museum of art; and art collection” (Dictionary.com). If graphic design education requires the student producer to be driven to conditioning an audience then it would seem necessary to have some knowledge in the practice of ethical, persuasive discourse. In other words graphic design necessitates using a deductive argument to be successful. “…deductive argument is an argument of such a form that if its premises are true, the conclusion must be true too. Properly formed deductive arguments are called valid arguments” (Weston, 2009, p. 37). A simple syllogism can be provided to frame my concern about this issue. If art is kind of discourse and discourse is a kind of rhetoric then art is a kind of rhetoric. Therefore a pedagogy that integrates art education with rhetorical argument in the practice of ART-ument would accommodate the knowledge building necessary for the postmodern student citizen of “artistic education” (Siegesmund, 2013, p. 301). Background Accepting the exponential advances of technological tools for design production beginning with desktop publishing in the late 1980’s, allowing laypersons typically trained in neither art nor communication to produce artifacts that ultimately influence visual culture, should be considered. Thereby artifacts are often produced and distributed particularly in the case of graphic design, without appropriate training and education in artistic or communicative practices. Addressing this dilemma, Neperud (1995) reacts to the apparent weaknesses in design education as practiced in formalism, “Individual actions, language, and art were seen as ineffective in altering society; modernism failed to create significant meaning, isolated as it was from society” (p. 5).

 

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Essentially, Neperud calls for the viewers of art to become engaged in the “discursive process of discerning meaning,” (p. 5). Focusing on the design educator, Freedman (2003) thoroughly

discusses visual technological ramifications in our culture and proposes that teachers must provide analytical direction to these student producers. “Such postmodern visual experience cannot be effectively translated in a traditional curriculum framework…as a result of increased interactions with visual technologies and other popular visual culture, students need increased critical guidance that teachers can provide” (p. 139). She effectively calls for a new kind of curriculum that embraces critical analysis and an avenue for students to understand visual argument as it influences a public. Layperson production notwithstanding, we can assume that if teachers would have the opportunity to impart education and training in ART-ument for their students that those students, in turn, would ultimately create a more responsible, ethical and intentional impact on our visual culture. Let me digress here for a moment to explain designing by intent rather than designing by default (Berrymann, 1990). The previously described scenario proposing that with advances in technology just about anyone, trained or otherwise, can produce designed artifacts for a public is possible, defines a lack of design education and therefore promotes designing by default. Rather, as art educators, we should look for heuristic avenues to drive students to design by intent, creating artifacts that are persuasive in a purposive way. Studio art education has officially been a part of higher education curriculum since the first MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) degree was matriculated at the University of Iowa in the mid1930’s (Efland, 1990). Meanwhile, art education programs in higher education have been embedded equally in Art schools and Education schools since WWII, such as at NYU (New York University), Teacher’s College at Columbia University, the University of Chicago and Stanford University and has conferred both Ed.D.’s and Ph.D.’s (p. 226). Communication studies encompassing rhetoric have been a domain in higher education since the first journalism  

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program was established in 1908 by Walter Williams at the University of Missouri (Lester, 2006) and the first Communication Studies Department was established at Emerson College in Boston, MA in 1884 (Emerson College website). Both disciplines have endeavored to educate and train creative professionals to work in practical rhetorical aesthetics, however once again, technological advances in the tools used to produce designed artifacts and mediated messages have dramatically changed the learning outcomes needed in the concomitant industries (Schwalbe,  2010, Why  design  education  matters.  2014). Gallagher, Norris Martin and Ma (2011) confronted this phenomenon as they analyze the shifting landscape of design education. …We suggest that an even stronger argument can be made for the interrelatedness of rhetoric and the visual arts, particularly in the field of design…two intellectual traditions—rhetoric and visual design—that have developed separately. Despite this separation, we argue that what emerged as two distinct fields of study are intricately related, as reflected in their assumptions, goals and functions. For instance, scholars in design and rhetoric define their practices and object of study similarly. In addition, they have similar values and goals particularly related to the possibility of changing and imperfect situation and instigating a level of social consciousness. Furthermore, both fields work toward human advancement in both functional and moral senses” (p. 27) In other words, rhetoric is an art and all arts are acts of production. Gallagher et al. propose a premise that because communication and image making share the ideas of vivid representation therefore the theories of rhetoric become one with the theories of design. Further, they recognize a need for supplementing design education with a thorough grounding in the “basic rhetorical  

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concepts of cooperation/influence/persuasion (the general purpose of rhetoric) and exigence (a problem or gap, marked by some urgency that calls for the rhetoric)” (p. 32). Discussion In general, there is a distinction in most higher education communication programs between the discipline of rhetoric and that of mass communication. This essay does not attempt to categorize where the historical study of rhetoric should live nor its evolution in higher education curriculum. One may find rhetorical studies housed equally in Communication, Literature and/or English programs. Similarly, graphic design as a discipline has been located in several areas of higher education (sometimes as separate programs addressing strikingly similar curricula) such as Mass Communication, Fine & Performing Arts, Architecture or even Computer Sciences. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to establish where either rhetoric or graphic design should be situated but it can be noted that where the program is housed may make a difference in how important a subject the university or college of origin considers it. For example, if graphic design is housed in a school of architecture it may be identified as an integral partner in forming the public sphere particularly as it relates to visual culture. However, if it is housed in Mass Communication, it is often considered a sort of add-on skill that is necessary to make things pretty not necessarily fundamental to the pedagogy of the domain. In a series of design dialogues among leading educators of the arts, Christopher  Scoates,   director  of  Cranbrook  Academy  of  Art,  attempts  to  explain  how  design  should  be  situated   and  adapted  by  future  creative  students.  “This  convergence  of  content  and  media  is   challenging  the  traditional  relationships  among  all  those  in  the  larger  cultural  sphere   including  designers  as  well  as  artists,  curators,  museum  directors,  filmmakers,  producers,   and  musicians.  I  strongly  believe  in  the  commitment  to  new  art  and  new  ideas  and  I  will   encourage  debate,  exchange,  and  collaboration  within  and  beyond…[advise  for  incoming    

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students]  explore  the  margins  where  disparate  disciplines  come  together”  (Why  design   education  matters.  2014,  p.  98).  This  notion  of  disparate  disciplines  coming  together   shapes  an  enthymeme  for  rhetorical  aesthetics.  Our  postmodern  exercises  to  transform  and   depart  from  formalism  in  design  education  disguise  the  epistemetic  source  of  the  problems   students  face  when  creating  an  ART-­‐ument.  Succinctly,  when  we  instruct  our  students   about  how  to  create  the  various  forms  of  design  communication  are  they  actually  aware  of   the  implications  of  the  persuasive  argument  they  are  making  in  art-­‐I-­‐fact?     Implications What  artifacts  will  survive  as  a  testimony  to  the  kind  of  culture  we  have  created?  As   educators  by  definition,  we  have  some  responsibility  in  teaching  our  students  the   repercussions  of  what  they  leave  behind.  If  the  artifacts  created  by  our  students  are  merely   to  promote  the  economic  cycle  of  consumerism  born  through  planned  obsolescence  then   haven’t  we  failed?  I  contend  that  instead  of  teaching  our  students  to  merely  create   mediated  messages  via  graphic  design  that  instead  we  charge  them  with  forming  art-­‐I-­‐ facts.  They  can  be  inventing  instances  of  intentional  rhetorical  aesthetics  embedded  within   layers  of  persuasive  argument  where  they  actually  understand  the  “art  that  I  committed  as   factual”  or  art-­‐I-­‐facts.  This  is  not  merely  a  plea  to  ethics  alone  but  to  a  deeper  and   necessarily  richer  undertaking  building  knowledge  in  both  designer  and  therefore   audience.  Furthermore,  a  relationship  is  formed  between  the  designer  and  the  designed,   which  entails  student  understanding  the  rhetoric  of  artistic  persuasion  through  the   material  of  the  artifact.  In  fact,  practicing  ART-­‐ument  requires  the  client  problems  and   designed  solutions  be  related  hermeneutically.  In  this  sense,  teaching creatively and teaching for creativity are distinct but also intimately connected (Jeffrey and Craft, 2004). "These are

 

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values that may underpin many teachers’ creative practices, but we would argue, they can, to some extent, be distinguished from the study of a teacher’s pedagogy…however, we suggest that the institutionalization of these values is better researched by focusing on the relationship between the creative teaching of the teacher and the creative learning of the learner” (p.17). Potentially a concrete process can be identified to depict the creative flow of constructing an ART-ument (see Figure 1). In the chart, there are three main areas of concern that determines the cycle using rhetorical aesthetics as a basis for art-I-fact creation and distribution: Ethical, Rhetorical and Reflexive. Surrounding these wedges are the active considerations embedded in the development of a mediated, graphic message. Define, research, assumptions and cooperation are Ethical concerns in preproduction warranting that the designer delve deeply into the needs of the client with respect to the results of the intended message. If the student designer can recognize the denotation of the message and weigh that assumption with the impact of audience connotation then the ramifications of the message can be appropriately defined and judged. Cooperation acted upon, as a relationship between the designer, client and audience will ensure some modicum of responsibility conferred to all parties in the process. Siegesmund  (2013)   aptly  describes  how  an  ideal  art  making  experience  should  transform  students  into  multi-­‐ dimensional,  empathetic  citizens.  “Aesthetic learning is (sic) an intellectual attentiveness to how we are in the world and how we are in relation to others around us: a capacity for empathy as demonstrated through caring behavior” (p. 302). Rhetorical concerns, the second wedge is the crux of the ART-ment, in the sense that persuasion, exigence, and art-I-fact construction frame the core discourse for all graphic design production. If we accept that building an argument is a process of reasoning fashioned to convince through discourse/composition then it is imperative that a rhetorical situation be established by addressing its exigence. Unarguably a responsibility for graphic designers and all those who form the spaces in  

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which we exist, is a need to employ reflexivity. Designers must embrace not only how messages created affect and influence our audiences but equally as important, the need to evaluate how that message can change the designer, the viewer and the designed itself. The third piece of the pie is Reflexive concerns, which include influence, evaluation and revision considerations. When student designers consider postmodern issues in challenging the assumptions and judgments of political and economic structures, including their own work and how it alters or affects visual culture, then they can begin to rethink their art-I-facts in postproduction. Ideally this can lead to the ART-ument process cycle beginning again with revised definition. Define

Revision

Evaluation

Research

Reflexive Concerns

Influence

Ethical Concerns

Cooperation

Rhetorical Concerns art-I-fact construction

Assumptions

Persuasion Exigence

 

Figure 1. The cycle of ART-ument depicting three main concerns—ethical, rhetorical and reflexive with 10 aligned considerations employed during the process

 

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Conclusion The results of such extensive introspection by students when producing for a market economy may be the slice of pedagogy missing in both art and communication education programs in higher education. Neperud contends that “Postmodernism has led, in effect, to an examined questioning of artistic or other discourse, which runs counter to blind acceptance of expert pronouncements…the meaning systems that apply to art take their place as part of the semiotic systems that structure society. The meaning of the art is dependent on and intertwined with the context of society” (Neperud, 1995, p. 6). Therefore we can extrapolate that the context of society is built partially, if not primarily, on what we see in media construction rooted in our visual culture. Should we not expect to revise our own assumptions about the value of what constitutes a set of learning outcomes mandated by government pressured economically, politically and socially? Our meaning making is constructed and lives in our visual culture. Surely, this is a call to educators for meeting our obligation for teaching our students the critical concepts of reflexive responsibility regarding their actions and concomitantly their created artifacts. Options for the future of art education as it applies to university curriculum may be reaching out to our neighbors. Smith-Shank allows us to look at a holistic view of this proposed educational direction. “Today, a particular culture’s visual and inevitably ideological messages can easily

cross borders that once were tightly controlled by geography, wealth, and language. Whether the exponential increase and globalization of signifiers is good or bad is debatable, but it is a fact of post-modern, or perhaps even post-post modern life, and it is my opinion that we are fortunate to be part of a paradigm shift as significant as the European Renaissance or the Enlightenment” (Smith-Shank, 2007, pg. 3). A kind of neo-postmodern Enlightenment nestled in crossing domain silos to engage a relationship that allows for artists, particularly graphic designers, to practice ethical, persuasive syllogisms--art is discourse and discourse is rhetoric and rhetoric is

 

RHETORICAL AESTHETICS AS ART-UMENT argument therefore art is argument. To ignore that all art is discursive dismisses the fact that artists are always making argument.

 

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References Berryman, G. (1990). Notes on graphic design and visual communication (3rd ed.). Menlo Park, CA: Axzo Press & Crisp Publications. Dictionary.com LLC. (2014). Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/ Efland, A. D. (1990). A history of art education: Intellectual and social concerns in teaching the visual arts. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Emerson college website. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.emerson.edu/ Freedman, K. (2003). Teaching visual culture: Curriculum, aesthetics, and the social life of art. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gallagher, V. J., Martin, K. N., & Ma, M. (2011). Visual wellbeing: Intersections of rhetorical theory and design. MIT Design Issues, 27(2), 27-40. Layng, J., & Layng Rosner, T. (2004). Media design: The practice of communication technologies. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, Prentice Hall, Inc. Lester, P. M. (2006). Visual communication images with messages (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson & Wadsworth. Neperud, R. W. (1995). Introduction: Transitions in art education: A search for meaning. In R. W. Neperud (Ed.), Context, content and community in art education: Beyond postmodernism (pp. 1-22). New York, NY: TC Press.

 

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Schwalbe,  C.  (2010).  Change  of  media,  change  of  scholarship,  change  of  universtiy:   Transition  from  the  graphoshphere  to  a  digital  mediosphere.  In  S.  Sonvilla-­‐Weiss  (Ed.),   Mashup  cultures  (pp.  178-­‐188).  New  York,  NY:  SpringerWien.   Siegesmund, R. (2013). Art education and a democratic citizenry. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 32(3), 300. Smith-Shank, D. L. (2007). Reflections on semiotics, visual culture, and pedagogy. Semiotica, 2007(164), 223-234. Stankiewicz, M. A. (2001). In Stewart M. G. (Ed.), Roots of art education practice: Art education in practice series. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, Inc. in Association with Oxford University Press Canada. Weston, A. (2009). A rulebook for arguments (4th ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Why  design  education  matters.  (2014).  Metropolis  Magazine,  34(3),  95-­‐98.