26.3 Visual Arts: Art History, Multiple Heritages & Art Criticism

Overview & Exam Relevance

The visual arts competency expects teachers to understand how different heritages use the elements and principles of art to create art and convey meaning. Teachers also need to promote appreciation of art forms of multiple heritages within and outside the Western tradition and to build visual literacy, including the various purposes and uses of art. This section covers major Western art movements, the art of diverse world and Texas heritages, the purposes of art, and art criticism using Feldman's method.

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Art History, Movements & Cultural Traditions

The TEKS require elementary students to investigate artworks across historical epochs and diverse cultural traditions, understanding how art reflects societal values, technological eras, and human experiences.

KEY ART HISTORICAL MOVEMENTS FOR THE TExES EC-6
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├── PREHISTORIC (c. 40,000-10,000 BCE): Cave paintings (Lascaux); hunting rituals & natural pigments.
├── RENAISSANCE (c. 1400-1600): Linear perspective, humanism, anatomy, chiaroscuro (Da Vinci, Michelangelo).
├── IMPRESSIONISM (late 19th c.): Fleeting natural light, en plein air, visible broken brushstrokes (Monet, Renoir).
├── POST-IMPRESSIONISM (late 19th c.): Expressive color, structural form, emotional intensity (Van Gogh, Cézanne).
├── CUBISM (early 20th c.): Multiple simultaneous perspectives, geometric fragmentation (Picasso, Braque).
├── SURREALISM (1920s-1930s): Dreams, subconscious automatism, illogical juxtapositions (Dalí, Magritte, Kahlo).
├── MEXICAN MURALISM (1920s-1950s): Public monumental frescoes, indigenous labor, social justice (Rivera, Orozco).
└── TEXAS FOLK ART: Functional craft, retablos, textiles, visionary environments outside academic institutions.

• Prehistoric Art (c. 40,000-10,000 BCE): Paleolithic cave paintings (such as Lascaux and Chauvet in France, Altamira in Spain). Ancient hunter-gatherers utilized natural mineral earth pigments (charcoal, red iron ochre, manganese oxide) mixed with animal fat to render dynamic silhouettes of bison, horses, and mammoths. Art historians hypothesize these works served shamanic hunting rituals, spiritual storytelling, or celestial observation.
• The Renaissance (c. 1400-1600): Originated in Florence, Italy, marking a cultural rebirth of classical Greek and Roman humanism, scientific observation, and mathematical rationality. Key innovations included linear perspective (Brunelleschi), anatomical precision through cadaver dissection, triangular composition, and chiaroscuro modeling. Master artists: Leonardo da Vinci (Mona Lisa, The Last Supper), Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel ceiling, David), and Raphael (The School of Athens).
• Impressionism (c. 1870s-1880s, France): A radical departure from traditional academic studio painting. Driven by the invention of portable metal paint tubes, artists worked outdoors (en plein air) to capture the fleeting, ephemeral optical effects of natural sunlight and atmospheric conditions. Characterized by rapid, visible, broken brushstrokes, unblended pure color placed side-by-side on the canvas, and modern scenes of everyday leisure. Key artists: Claude Monet (Water Lilies, Impression, Sunrise), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt.
• Post-Impressionism (c. 1880s-1900): Artists rejected the purely optical, fleeting surface observation of Impressionism, striving instead for greater emotional depth, symbolic meaning, and structural permanence. Vincent van Gogh utilized expressive, swirling impasto brushwork and emotive color to project internal psychological states (The Starry Night). Paul Cézanne deconstructed natural landscapes into underlying geometric cylinders, spheres, and cones, directly anticipating Cubism. Georges Seurat developed Pointillism (Divisionism), applying tiny, distinct dots of pure color that visually blend in the viewer's eye (optical color mixing).
• Cubism (c. 1907-1914): Pioneered in Paris by Pablo Picasso (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) and Georges Braque. Cubists dismantled traditional single-point linear perspective that had governed Western art since the Renaissance. Instead, they fragmented three-dimensional forms into geometric facets and planes, depicting objects from multiple simultaneous viewpoints on a single two-dimensional surface.
• Surrealism (1920s-1930s): Influenced heavily by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories on dreams and the unconscious mind. Surrealists bypassed conscious rational control through automatism (spontaneous, uninhibited creation) and depicted hyper-realistic, dreamlike dreamscapes featuring bizarre, illogical juxtapositions of everyday objects. Master artists: Salvador Dalí (The Persistence of Memory, featuring melting pocket watches in a desolate desert) and René Magritte (The Son of Man). Frida Kahlo is often grouped with the Surrealists, although she rejected the label; her deeply personal, symbolic self-portraits blend dreamlike elements with Mexican folk imagery.
• Mexican Muralism (1920s-1950s): Following the Mexican Revolution, the government commissioned monumental public murals on civic buildings to educate a largely illiterate populace, instill national pride, celebrate indigenous Aztec and Maya heritage, and depict the historic struggles of industrial and agricultural laborers. Known as Los Tres Grandes (The Big Three): Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Rivera's vast, narrative fresco murals integrated vibrant Mexican folk aesthetics with political narratives.
• Texas Folk Art and Diverse Cultural Traditions: Art created by self-taught artisans outside formal academic art academies, reflecting the cultural heritage, community traditions, and functional materials of Texas. Examples include traditional quilting bees, hand-thrown stoneware pottery, Hispanic retablos (devotional folk paintings rendered on sheets of tin or wood portraying Catholic saints or miraculous interventions), papel picado (delicate perforated tissue paper banners hand-cut with intricate symbolic motifs for Day of the Dead / Día de los Muertos), and visionary outsider art environments.

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Art of Multiple Heritages

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Purposes and Uses of Art

Art can be functional (pottery, quilts, architecture), ceremonial or religious (masks, altarpieces), commemorative (monuments, memorial murals), narrative (telling a story or recording history), persuasive (posters and advertising), decorative, or expressive (communicating feelings and ideas). Asking "Why was this made, and for whom?" helps students understand art in its cultural and historical context.

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The Texas Art TEKS & Feldman's Critical Inquiry Method

The Four Strands of the Texas Art TEKS (Grades K-6)

The Texas State Board of Education organizes the elementary Visual Arts TEKS into four integrated learning strands that must be balanced throughout the academic year:

1. Foundations: Observation and Perception: Students develop visual literacy, learning to observe natural and human-made environments, identify visual details, and name the elements of art and principles of design in the world around them.
2. Creative Expression: Students communicate personal ideas, imaginative thoughts, and felt emotions by producing original artworks across a variety of 2D and 3D media, demonstrating safe tool handling and craft competence.
3. Historical and Cultural Relevance: Students examine artworks across diverse global cultures, historical eras, and local Texas heritages, understanding how art documents history and reflects community values.
4. Critical Evaluation and Response: Students learn to respond to, analyze, interpret, and evaluate artworks (both their own, their peers', and historical masterworks) using age-appropriate visual arts terminology.

Edmund Feldman's Four-Step Model of Art Criticism

To scaffold higher-order thinking during the Critical Evaluation and Response strand, Texas teachers utilize Edmund Feldman's structured four-step critical inquiry method. This protocol prevents students from jumping prematurely to uninformed opinions ("I don't like it") by guiding them systematically through objective observation to reasoned aesthetic judgment:

FELDMAN'S FOUR-STEP CRITICAL INQUIRY METHOD
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├── STEP 1: DESCRIPTION (Objective Observation)
│   └── What do you see? Inventory subject matter, lines, shapes, colors, medium.
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├── STEP 2: ANALYSIS (Organizational Relationships)
│   └── How is it organized? Examine how principles of design structure the elements.
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├── STEP 3: INTERPRETATION (Meaning & Expression)
│   └── What is the artist communicating? Deducing mood, themes, symbols, message.
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└── STEP 4: JUDGMENT (Aesthetic Evaluation)
    └── Is the artwork successful? Assessing artistic merit using reasoned criteria.

1. Description (What do I see literally?): The viewer conducts a completely objective, non-judgmental inventory of observable visual facts. Students state the artist's name, title of the work, date, medium, and catalog all recognizable objects, figures, lines, shapes, colors, and textures without guessing the meaning.
   • Guiding Questions: "What literal objects or figures are shown? What colors are used? What types of lines do you observe? Is this a painting, print, or sculpture?"
2. Analysis (How is the work organized?): The viewer investigates how the artist used the Principles of Design to structure the Elements of Art. This stage focuses entirely on composition, spatial arrangement, and visual relationships.
   • Guiding Questions: "Where is the focal point, and how did the artist emphasize it? How did the artist create balance (symmetrical or asymmetrical)? Where do you see visual contrast? How do repeating colors or lines create movement across the canvas?"
3. Interpretation (What is the artist communicating or trying to say?): The viewer generates hypotheses regarding the expressive meaning, mood, symbolism, emotional resonance, or cultural message of the work, grounding every claim in specific evidence gathered during description and analysis.
   • Guiding Questions: "What mood or feeling does this artwork evoke? What do the symbolic objects represent? Why did the artist choose these specific dark values or warm hues? What story is being told?"
4. Judgment (Is the work successful, and why?): The viewer formulates a reasoned, defensible evaluation of the artwork's aesthetic merit, technical craftsmanship, and cultural significance based on established philosophical criteria (e.g., Formalism—evaluating pure compositional design; Emotionalism—evaluating emotional power; Instrumentalism—evaluating moral or social impact).
   • Guiding Questions: "Do you consider this work successful? Why or why not? What criteria are you using to evaluate it? How does it contribute to our understanding of its historical era?"

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Classroom Instructional Strategies & Scenario Application

Classroom Context: Mr. Delgado is leading a 4th-grade visual arts unit on Mexican Muralism and expressive composition. He displays a large reproduction of Diego Rivera's The Flower Carrier (Cargador de flores, 1935, oil and tempera on Masonite, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). It shows a peasant man on his hands and knees beneath an enormous basket of flowers strapped to his back while a woman behind him tries to help steady the load.

Instructional Scaffolding (Feldman's Model in Practice):

1. Step 1: Description: Mr. Delgado prevents students from calling the painting "sad" or "pretty." Instead, he asks: "What literal objects and figures do you see?" Students catalog the man in white clothing and a yellow hat, his posture on hands and knees, the yellow sling holding the basket, the woman leaning in behind him, the gigantic bundle of brightly colored flowers, and the simple background.
2. Step 2: Analysis: Mr. Delgado asks: "Where is the focal point, and how did Rivera use the elements and principles of design to make it stand out?" A student observes that the bright, saturated flowers create strong color and value contrast against the man's plain clothing and the background. Another notes that the enormous scale of the basket dwarfs the kneeling man, so the visual weight of the flowers dominates the upper part of the composition.
3. Step 3: Interpretation: Mr. Delgado guides inquiry into meaning: "Why did Rivera paint the beautiful flowers so massive and heavy that the man is kneeling under their weight?" Students infer that the painting comments on the hard, dignified labor of Mexico's working poor, who carry the burden of producing beauty and goods that others enjoy.
4. Step 4: Judgment: Students assess whether Rivera successfully communicated his message about human dignity and labor using evidence from the formal design.

Studio Connection & Safety Scaffolding: Following the discussion, students create their own cut-paper collages illustrating a person in their community performing dignified work. Mr. Delgado enforces safety protocols by distributing blunt safety scissors and water-based glue sticks bearing the non-toxic ACMI AP seal, avoiding solvent glues, and modeling clean table management.