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THE ROLE OF CONTINUOUS ARTISTIC EDUCATION IN IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT
M. V. Pankina S. V. Zakharova
Art accompanies humans throughout their life, and is a tool for learning and reflection about the world, and for self-realization. Art has great potential for the development of environmental consciousness. For professionals, the ecological paradigm should be the basis of professional ethics.
Key words: art education, design-education, greening, environmental
consciousness.
Depictive activity transfuses personal development from early childhood till old age, since any person, even if he or she has not become a professional in the sphere of art, is a viewer, user and buyer of art objects and environmental design created by architects and designers. Artistic education has different tasks at each age: From motor development, the development of spatial and creative thinking, imagination, the emotional sphere, and shaping the world view of small children, to mastering expertise, knowledge and skills in vocational education or art therapy, and hobbies and self-realization in adults, being the members of artistic hobby groups who took to artistic creativity in a mature age.
Environmental content must become part and parcel of continuous artistic education. Both information and axiological concepts can be brought home to students or viewers in the most organic way by means of art. For a child, art is a method of learning the world. While drawing and viewing works of art, he or she learns how to analyze, generalize, to depict images realistically or to transform and stylize them, and most importantly, to feel and shape his or her attitude to the outside world. Contact with artistic and moral values, not just those already "established" in culture, but also those created by the child him- or herself in creative pursuit, influence the shaping of his or her personality more than readymade knowledge.
School students gain environmental knowledge in the cycle of natural sciences (the subject "Ecology" has been abolished successfully). Natural science, biology and geographic education programs tasked with "instilling a responsible attitude to nature" provide analytical knowledge, are permeated with the idea of nature's usefulness for man, and determine the expertise, knowledge and skills of interaction with natural objects. They do not touch upon in any way the interaction between society and nature at the spiritual level. It is known that a person possessing environmental knowledge does not need to behave in an environmentally conscious way. He or she must have an appropriate attitude to nature for that. Permanent application to reason, and underuse of the emotional and imaginative sphere, deaden one's sensory perception and intuition, distort a child's attitude to nature, and his or her understanding of interdependency between all living things. Artistic training sessions during the pre-school period, in the
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supplementary education system, during lessons of humanities (in particular, graphic art and world art) in general secondary school can shape an attitude to nature, purposes and motives of interaction with it, the readiness to act positively, and to choose environmentally conscious strategies of activity. Scientific and humanities knowledge supplement each other harmoniously. Children gain experience of non-pragmatic interaction with nature.
In the process of studying the history of graphic art, one can see changes in the human attitude to nature: the first recording and worship in the cave drawings of primitive men, then the claim that man is the highest and the best creation of nature in ancient Greece, and finally, the liberty and boldness to change and interpret the creations of nature (whether men, animals or plants) in contemporary art (e.g., Cubism, Surrealism, Avant-gardism). In the process of consequential studies of the evolution of interaction between society and nature, students gradually shape their own views of the world around, nature and specific natural objects in particular. Information becomes relevant for a school student because it is affective. An adult viewer performs the same creative and spiritual work when studying works of art, object and environmental design, and architecture. The symbols that are encoded in images, ornaments and plastic shapes are understood even on the subconscious level. In works of art, artists reflect their world view, interpret real objects, transform them into images and express their social attitudes by artistic means as they talk to viewers. More often than not, artists were inspired by images of natural objects. For centuries, everything created by man was eco-friendly by definition. The principles of interaction with the environment were adequate to nature and did not inflict significant damage to it. For millennia, the level of social, technological and scientific development permitted men to consume necessary volumes of natural goods without inflicting substantial damage to nature.
The world outlook of people was always reflected in the decorative and applied arts and the principles of space organization. Human artistic activity was not only pragmatic and aimed at satisfying the essential needs; it is also a peculiar sphere of accumulation and transfer of knowledge. This concept is a theoretical basis for archeological and architecturological research when scientists study history, customs and rites of ancient peoples by spatial forms. Whereupon it should be noted that visual language has an advantage over the verbal one, since it is more universal and is understood without translation, on the subconscious level. Forms of material culture (clothes, customs, architecture, etc.) may change over the course of time, but symbols (especially graphic ones) or ritual actions continue to be reproduced thoroughly from generation to generation. The interpretation of those symbols may undergo changes, and their original meaning may be lost; however, their shape remains completely or almost unchanged. Probably, this takes place because information transmitted between people in verbal form may be rather significantly distorted because of its subjective understanding by a specific human being. However, the shape (a material symbol) is easier to perceive than the content, since it is perceived visually. The symbols we see in ornaments decorating household items, clothes, the shapes of domestic items, furniture and architectural forms are stylized images of natural objects and phenomena, natural and vital cycles. Whereupon similar shapes, patterns and symbols appear in arts and crafts of different nations. This is caused by the fact that those symbols originate
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from visually perceived objects of the real world (the horizon line, mountains, plants, animals, etc.). The principles of building ornaments (metric repetitions, rhythm, symmetry) repeat the principles of repetitions of cyclic natural phenomena (day/night, times of the year, birth/death, etc.) or the structures of natural forms.
In the process of professional artistic education (we shall elicit the design and the architectural one), apart from mastering artistic and design skills and projecting methodology, special priority must be given to the socio-cultural component of the profession, and to the formation of professional ethics, since all activity in those professions is connected with men, their physiological and psychological state, and architecture and design objects influence one’s environment. Designers and architects change the world visually, structurally, and functionally, and they shape the spatial enclosure surrounding man. Apart from space, they organize behavior, visual perception and communications. The artificial environment around man or, otherwise speaking, the interior, architecturally and artistically designed internal space of a building performs two functions: firstly, it acts as a source of information permitting us to find our bearings, to forecast action methods; secondly, it is a space in which men live [2].
Specialists that will create human life environment must understand their responsibility, and understand the socio-cultural role of design. Therefore, as we form the essence of professional training of designers and architects, it is necessary to introduce the ecological component. These authors have developed and tested an integrated, inter-subject course "Eco-Friendly Design" for several years [3]. Its content interprets the concept of "eco-friendly design as a social and scientific phenomenon, systemizes its sources, generalizes the principles and techniques of ecologization by which we understand a set of measures in the process of designing, production and functioning of an object, etc. [4]. The training course program permits shaping the personality of a future professional, his or her environmental consciousness, axiological concepts of the reasonable interaction between the environment and a man.
Eco-friendliness is communication with nature characterized by the possibility of contact between a human and his or her natural surroundings. This contact can be direct (physical), visual or psychological. Its contact is ensured by the availability of natural, artificial or, in exceptional cases, virtual natural forms. The "green" content of artistic education at various stages permits solving the tasks of shaping personal environmental consciousness, an ecocentric conscientiousness, and an eco-friendly mindset in professional activity.
Bibliography
1. Дерябо С.Д., Ясвин В.А. Экологическая педагогика и психология. - Ростов н/Д.:
издательство Феникс, 1996. - 480 с.
2. Медведев В. Ю. Сущность дизайна: учеб. пособие. - 3-е изд., испр. и доп. - СПб.:
СПГУТД, 2009. - 110 с.
3. Панкина М.В., Захарова С.В. Экологический дизайн: учеб. пособие. - Бийск: Изд. дом
«Бия», 2011. - 186 с.
4. Панкина М.В. Феномен экологического дизайна: онтологический анализ: моногр. /
М.В. Панкина. - М. : Наука: информ, 2014. - 156 с.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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