Grubb's Hub
Book Club
Welcome to Grubbs Hub Book Club!
Every month our Past President Dr. Grubbs will review a book that he recommends for art educators! Each review will also have an amazon link if you would like to purchase the book to read for yourself.
Grubb's Take:
Art Appreciation: Five Paradigms of Art History
by Dr. Jeffrey B. Grubbs
I have taught at several Universities which required me to teach their art appreciation course. I found it frustrating, because I never liked how they designed the course. If you had the opportunity to design an art appreciation curriculum, what would you keep and toss to the side? What is clear is it is impossible to teach everything, so choices will be made. Would you try to teach content chronologically, thematically or philosophically? Many art appreciation books focus most of their content thematically around the elements and principles of art and design and art materials, leaving limited art history content. What about the larger topics of the art world outside of the art museum such as visual culture and media studies? Are you going to bias western art for such a class? Non-western art so often gets overlooked for helping students appreciate art of others different from us. That is unfortunate.
Eventually, I was given the opportunity to design my own art appreciation course, and overtime I think my way of structuring to course content as been effective.
And after teaching that course for a decade, an opportunity to publish an art appreciation book developed. This fall my digital book Art Appreciation: Five Paradigms of Art History, will be published through Kendall-Hunt Press.
Even thought it is a designed for first year college students, the book is perfect for high school and middle school students as well, because the language is easy to read and there are pictures for everything taught.
The first chapter is broken into the five media families and then gives explanations and pictures of all art materials and techniques. In the back of the book there is a glossary in with 150 terms for easy access. The second chapter is on the elements and principles of art. It defines them and gives pictures for visual reference. Chapters three through eight is where I structure the book philosophically at first and then chronologically, teaching art history. What makes this appreciation book different than all others is that I philosophically structured the book through the five paradigms of art. In other words, all art can be explained by why it was created. The five paradigms are (1) Realism, (2) Expressionism, (3) Formalism, (4) Institutionalism and (5) Instrumentalism. Within each of the chapters, I explain the paradigm of art and then chronologically give short overviews of art movements which are important for that art paradigm. The chapters of Realism, Expressionism and Formalism are typical of what you may find in other art appreciation books, but the Institutionalism chapter is very unique. It clarifies the key players of the art world. Have you ever thought, “Who determines if that artwork goes in the museum?” or “Who determines that Van Gogh’s painting be worth $70 million dollars?” This chapter then does onto explain artists like Duchamp and others who challenged the definition of art. The Instrumentalist chapter was so big I had to split it in two. Chapter seven goes through various functional categories of art such as architecture, interior design, weapons and propaganda as well as other topics, while chapter eight needed to explain Instrumentalist art from a religious perspective. Functional art is not just tables and tools but art that has a been specifically created with a specific purpose. Religious art is created for the specific purpose of furthering that religion first and foremost. Therefore, chapter eight goes through the main religions and explains some of the art and how that art manifests that religions beliefs.
Ultimately, the book is designed with a basic structure of five paradigms. If you understand these five artistic purposes then you can conceptualize art of art history, from ancient cave art to current TV marketing propaganda. If you do order the book, let me know your opinion to how effective it was for you and your students.