The Visual Arts in the Civilization Classroom

Although the visual arts have long been a feature of civilization courses, instructors do not always exploit their full potential. This paper presents a checklist to help teachers identify the relevant aspects of the arts for study. Its goal is to facilitate comprehensive treatment of works of art by focusing on three areas: the aesthetic dimension, the social context, and the artist’s own experience. The checklist is followed by a series of activities which encourage students to integrate the various aspects of the arts while practicing their language skills. In recent years civilization teachers have increasingly realized that their courses should aim at a comprehensive view of the foreign culture. Beginning with the environmental and economic factors that condition a people’s lifestyle, the civilization course might ideally go on to treat the evolution of the political and social institutions as well as the values and dominant ideas of each age as they have found expression in art and literature. Given the curricular limitations on such an ambitious enterprise, periodic reassessment of our methods and content is a must. I wish to reexamine here an integral part of civilization courses—the visual arts, including painting, graphics, sculpture, architecture, and interior design. To use the distinctions of the visual anthropologist Sol Worth, the range I will be treating is not limited to “high culture” as found in museums but also includes the popular arts, along with what he calls “the visual mode in our personal or professional presentation of self” (as seen, for example, in interior decoration).1 I have selected the visual arts not just for the aesthetic pleasure they provide but because they can serve as focal points around which all the other components of a civilization course converge. A well-chosen example of art is uniquely suited to illustrate the economic, C A R R , F O R E I G N L A N G U A G E A N N A L S 1 6 (1 9 8 3 ) 2 political, and ideological forces at work in a culture; moreover, the work of art has both the personal stamp of the artist who fashioned it, and the collective or social dimension shaped by the audience for whom it was created. Since most civilization teachers have their primary training in literature and language studies, their first impulse, when seeking out illustrative material for their courses, is to turn to written texts, whether literary or historical documents. However, the visual arts often have as much, or more, to offer. Like literature, the visual arts communicate values, but they generally permeate a culture, even a literate one, more deeply. How many more people will visit Notre Dame cathedral than will ever read Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris? Contact with architecture and the popular arts is unavoidable, even if a person never sets foot into a museum or reads a book. In addition, the personal involvement of historical figures like Spain’s Philip II in the design of the Escorial is no isolated exception: events and personages of great historical significance are time and again related directly to the visual arts. From the students’ point of view, a work of art is frequently more immediately accessible than a literary work, especially the excerpts so often used in civilization courses. The visual arts also can engage the attention more firmly, while making a vivid impression on the imagination. I am not arguing that the visual arts should replace literary texts in our courses. However, because civilization teachers may feel more comfortable dealing with literature, there is a tendency to overlook the advantages of the visual arts. Thus, a review of their potential and of appropriate teaching strategies is timely. The first part of the paper will draw on the work of art educators, critics, and social historians of art to present a checklist I have found useful in my civilization classes.2 The second section consists of a series of strategies aimed at involving students actively in the comprehensive study of the arts. They can supplement more traditional modes of class presentation while giving students the opportunity to practice their language skills.