According Michelle Marder Kamhi in her article entitled Rescuing Art from "Visual Culture Studies" the purpose of Visual Culture Studies is to "broaden the sphere of Art Education to include every kind of visual artifact, but she states this in an extremely negative way. According to Kamhi, VCS blatantly disregards the essential differences between works of visual art and other types of cultural artifacts; she then goes on to state that visual art only encompasses forms such as painting and sculpture (fine art) that are two or three dimensional and concretizes ideas and values in an emotionally compelling form, excluding the decorative arts, crafts and various fields of design. In reading just the first few paragraphs of the article I came to believe that Kamhi has a very ill-informed, narrow minded view of what art is and was literally screaming at the article as I was reading it. In my opinion, she makes completely unfounded claims regarding the decoding and deconstruction of art, and her ideas also downgrade the various art forms she discusses.
How can decoding and deconstructing images for the information and symbolism they contain/provide be a negative? The author states that this decoding keeps the viewers from seeking meaning in an image, but my question is this: "How do we find meaning without first decoding and deconstructing the image or work of art first?" It is through careful deconstruction that we, as viewers, find symbolism and examine the many parts that make up an image which leads us to the emotion and meaning behind any particular work of art. If, as viewers, we simply stop at the decoding stage, then yes, we will not be able to discover any deeper meaning, but that is not the case. After deconstructing an image, as the teacher or facilitator asking a simple question such as "How does what we've found here help us to understand the meaning of this work?" provides a quick transition from decoding to finding meaning.
After her objections to decoding images, Kamhi goes on to state that art forms such as Installation art, Pop art, and Video art "have nothing essential in common with the traditional visual arts and therefore should not be classified or studied with them as 'art.'" After including photography in her list of what is not "visual art," she explains why, stating that a work of art is the product of an artist's personal engagement with the subject matter and being painfully selective. Apparently, "true" artists constantly ask themselves "Does this say what I think it should?" and have a personal relationship with the art that they create, which is valid statement, but when she compared these visual artists to commercial artists she made one of those unfounded claims I mentioned earlier. As a designer and someone who has created commercial art, yes the focus is often on the client's needs, but it doesn't mean that commercial art can't also be personal; in every commercial piece or ad I have ever created, I was constantly making personal choices and creating my "take" on what the client wanted, and those factors contributed to my personal engagement with the Art I created (yes, I'm claiming it was Art :-)).
Kamhi then began her assault on the medium of Photography discussing her belief that the photographer only exercises some selectivity and control, but the image is actually formed by the actual process. She goes on to say that because a photograph is an "actual record of reality" that it is not art, and attempts to use the famous Dorthea Lange photo "Migrant Mother" to prove her point. Yes, the photograph is a record of a specific time in history, but it manages to explore/communicate social issues while ALSO appealing emotionally to the viewer. By her own claims earlier in the article, visual art creates an emotionally compelling form, so how is this photograph not Art? Her own example completely contradicts the points she is trying to make in her article!
The last section of this article, that I also took issue with (let's be honest, I took issue with 99% of this article) is the section on Natural vs Symbolic meaning. Symbolic meaning in any image is not a negative as she claims, as symbols can have just as much emotional power as the natural subject matter. Again, she is assuming that we stop at the symbolism of an image and will never look any deeper. Stating that "Teachers who emphasize the need to help students 'decode' images place an undue emphasis on symbolic content" made me wonder if she has ever been in an art classroom, or for that matter ever truly looked at an image or work of art?
As I sure you can imagine, class discussion was quite lively. We participated in a role playing game which involved various class members taking a turn at being Kahmi while participating in a class discussion pertaining to 'what constitutes art'. Each person who adopted Kahmi's role automatically donned a 'prunish' expression on their face.
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