The Expressive Object

"The blase critic may permit his trained modes of technical response - ultimately always motor - to control him to such an extent that, while he skillfully apprehends how things are done, he does not care for what is expressed" (p. 102).  Dewey gives us two conditions which must be met in order to perceive art as having qualitative meaning, on the part of the audience: "There must be indirect and collateral channels of response prepared in advance in the case of one who really sees the picture or hears the music.  This motor preparation is a large part of aesthetic education in any particular line" (p.102).  On the other hand the artist must fuse "meanings and values extracted from prior experience" (p.102) into the artwork itself.  I think the challenge to the arts educator, as is the ethical challenge of any educator, is to prepare channels of response (technical motor experiences) in a way that does not bias the meanings and values of an expressive object. 

Since "nature... does not present us lines in isolation" (p.104) I think the task of teaching is impossible to be completey free from bias.  Perhaps this is along the lines of what Paulo Friere meant in Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach when he wrote that teaching was political.  "Different lines and different relations of lines have become subconsciously charged with all the values that result from what they have done in our experience in our every contact with the world about us" (p.105).  To me this suggests that the technical content I use to teach should have meanings and values I consider to be of high quality, that I can honestly appreciate.  And ethically I think I should discuss this aspect of material with students.  It's powerful when Dewey writes "[lines] seem in direct perception to have even moral expressiveness" (p.105).