Postmodern Principles: In Search of a 21st Century Art Education

The elements and principles of art are enshrined in most art education textbooks today (Crystal Productions, 2000; Hobbs & Salome, 1995; Ragans, 2000; Wachowiak and Clements, 2000). They are presented as the essence of artmaking. If not literally engraved in stone, the big seven (elements) + seven (principles) are reified in print, achieving theoretical unity, not through persuasive argument, but through seemingly endless repetition in formally oriented textbooks or, during the last decade, as government-mandated standards. In this article, the author identified 15 categories or principles that described the students' artwork and related contemporary art practices. Noticing the criss-crossing and overlapping similarities of some of the categories, she has since edited and consolidated the list to highlight eight important postmodern artmaking practices. These "newly discovered" postmodern principles are often the fusion of a visual form and a conceptual artmaking strategy. They are hybrids of the visual and the conceptual. This hybridization is itself a hallmark of many postmodern cultural productions, eschewing the boundaries imposed by outmoded discipline-based structures. (Contains 5 notes.)