Lawrence Schaedler- Bahrs

Art 133
Unit 2 Paper
2/21/17
Unit 2: Power
The struggle for Power is a constant variable within the human experience. Whether it be

Power over ones own mind and body as a self-struggle or power within a socio-political or

economic system, we all struggle to grasp the reigns and maintain control at some point in time.

The Big Idea of Power goes deeper than just maintaining control. It also lends to questions such

as who has power and why, who is denied power and why, and how power dynamics can be

shifted. The struggle for group power has a long standing role in visual culture and art itself.

Through works such as political propaganda, commercial advertisements, and even within

person works, struggles have been presented and interpreted. Even a simple portrait can invoke a

sense of struggle for power when its, say, the portrait of a slave as oppose to a master. This

presentation of struggle leads to a meaningful invested into the works by the creator as well as a

meaningful relationship developed with the work by the viewer. Barrett enforces the importance

of knowing and relating to art and visual culture, It is immensely important that we interpret the

images and designed objects with which we live. Images and objects present opinions as if they

were truth, reinforce attitudes, and confirm or deny beliefs and values. If the messages carried by

visual culture are not interpreted, we will be unwittingly buying, wearing, promoting, and

otherwise consuming opinions with which we may or may not agree with (7). There has been a

push to shift Art Education into the radical change of direction to visual culture education in

order to inform and allow the students to be informed about their current environment.

According to Hurwitz and Day (2007), the primary purpose of the visual culture approach is to
educate children and young people according to a social and political agenda based on concepts

such as democracy, power, oppression, global capitalism, liberation, and justice (80). Using

such concepts they can properly analyze and critique such visual culture and understand the

context thus develop a deeper connection as it applies to them.

In my classroom I would present concept of power in a similar fashion as to what we did

in our studio activities. We first observed and analyzed examples of power as presented in visual

culture such as ads and general pictures then we did a group activity to design our own chapter

concerning a concept or big idea of power of our own. The next studio activity consisted of us

making a subvertisement of our own to show a critique this power. I feel as though this is a

more than adequate way to go about applying and understanding. I would personally like to

adopt the radical change method as I believe that even classical art can be viewed in this light

with a focus on viewing art as a social critique and understanding the connections and struggles

behind it.

REFERENCES
Barrett, T. (2003). Interpreting Visual Culture
Hurwitz, A., & Day, M. (2007). Children and their art: methods for the elementary school.
Belmont, CA: Thomson.