Employing the concept of a rhetoric of emotions, European Premodern fine art is revisioned as popular culture. From ancient times, the rhetoric of emotion was one of the principle concepts informing the theory and practice of all forms of European cultural production, including the visual arts, until it was gradually displaced during the 1700s and…

While visual art appeals to the sense of sight, both recent art and popular visual culture appeal to the whole sensorium, the sum total of the ways we experience the world. Common assumptions about the senses regarding their number, their relative importance, and their relation to one another are problematized in light of recent psychological and…

In defining popular culture as inherently pleasurable, including the pleasures of transgression, the author argues that while art teachers now critique popular visual culture for its often-dubious ideologies, they are yet to come to terms with its transgressive pleasures. Teachers fail to engage with its carnivalesque, subversive qualities because…

While rejecting modernist philosophical aesthetics, the author argues for the use in art education of a current, ordinary-language definition of aesthetics as visual appearance and effect, and its widespread use in many diverse cultural sites is demonstrated. Employing such a site-specific use of aesthetics enables art education to more clearly…

The effects of violent media fare upon young people are of great concern for educators and parents alike. Recently, some visual art educators have attempted to deal with the issue under the rubric of visual culture. Adopting a critical position toward media violence, they have developed programs that attempt to encourage in their students a view…

Studying imagery, irrespective of the kind, must focus equally upon its aesthetic attractiveness, its sensory lures, and its oftentimes dubious social ideology. The terms "aesthetic" and "ideology" are addressed as problematic and are defined in current, ordinary language terms: aesthetics as visual appearances and their effects and ideology as a…