#elliot eisner

[artandinnovate]

"Art is literacy of the heart." -Elliot Eisner

[visual-poetry]

art is literacy of the heart.

elliot eisner

[robingiebes]

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[facultdispositioo1-blog]

Literacy is constructing, creating and communicating meaning in many forms of representation.

[paintmeetpaper]

Elliot Eisner: A hero

Almost a year ago, a real hero in the eyes of art teachers passed away on January 10, 2014. His name was Elliot Eisner and he was a Russian Jewish immigrant from the Ukraine.

He wasn't a hero in the artistic sense; he wasn't a masterful painter or sculptor. He didn't paint the Sistine chapel nor Doubting Thomas; Michelangelo and Caravaggio are heroes in their own right. He wasn't the first to understand and come up with a system for a 2-point perspective, since Masaccio had done that all on his own, unbelievably in 1428. He didn't come up wit ha functional dome design to top the famous Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, as this was Brunelleschi's arguably greatest achievement. The arts played a significant role in the day-to-day life of society, and it was heroes such as Michelangelo and Masaccio who paved the way for capturing the essence of life in art form.

Elliot Eisner was not a master of art. Instead he championed the importance of excellent art education in school. And not necessarily for the sake of higher test scores (because we've heard that argument that engaging in art has improved standardized testing results). And not for the sake of promoting art careers either, though you know I'll always advocate that there are in fact an absolute plethora of art jobs out there, and once you've build up your skills, you can do pretty much anything, from fashion or product or graphic design to architecture, art curator to art teacher. The possibilities are endless, really! But I digress.

Elliot Eisner talked about art for art's sake. He argued that actual art-making has benefits of its own, intellectually and emotionally, and he came up with a cohesive list of 10 lessons the arts teach, which are now proudly posted to the National Art Education Association website (an organization most art teachers belong to). Many teachers across the US even hang the 10 lessons in their classrooms. Feel free to read through them here. Among the lessons, the arts teach students that small differences can have large effects; the arts celebrate multiple perspectives; the arts teach children to make good judgements about about qualitative relationships; and the arts teach children to say what cannot be said.

Elliot Eisner was displeased that even when the arts were part of school, they were, in his words, "ornamental" and not "substantive". Instead, he advocated for an art curriculum that would be on par with math and and science. He argued that students should "make art, appreciate it, understand it, and make judgements about it". He brought art education to the talking board. And that is why he was considered a hero among us art teachers!

Liza

[observando]

Art is literacy of the heart.

Elliot Eisner

[indierav-blog]

We need [academic] programs that pay much more attention to the imaginative, to the playful, to the stimulation of curiosity, to the pursuit of unanswered questions, to the opportunity to work at the edge of incompetence.

~Prof. Elliot W. Eisner, What Do the Arts Teach?

[a-ltrove]

Art is literacy of the heart

Elliot Eisner