David Pariser, PhD

What is art education in the 21st century?

"I think that, in terms of the basics, it's about creating people who are comfortable using the tools of art for their own purposes.  In the 21st century, that covers a huge range of media and approaches, but essentially, art education's basic task is literacy. You give people tools for being analytic, and you give them enough information - enough of an overview - that they can come to some conclusions of their own, which they can also defend."

"I would also say that the criteria for judging whether something works or not artistically haven't changed that much.  I don't care if you're using a cryogenic, multi-million dollar computer as a tool, ultimately you're still going to end up with something which has to be judged.  And those criteria really don't change - it's still the same organism doing the processing. I'm not saying you can't make great art on the web, for example, but it's still going to be consumed by the same organism that was consuming, say, Renaissance frescoes."

What do you consider to be your strengths and research interests?

"My strengths are that I am oriented towards the wider world of ideas; I have an eclectic taste and I dip into things widely.  I'm interested in the 'big issues', such as the evolutionary and biological roots of art; linking art and our experience of art to biology and neurology. I'm also interested in empirical work, framed both in psychological terms and sociological terms, that looks at art - the creation and the reception of art." 

"In terms of research, I am very interested in schools; I'm very involved in the department's specialization program, and I go into the schools quite often.  I'm interested in looking at the "delivery system" of art education.  The world of art education for me is art in the schools because ultimately the real engine behind education are the teachers in the classroom."

Two questions that interest me:

1): What can we learn about artistic development from looking at the juvenilia of great artists? Thanks to an SSHRC Leave Fellowship in 1984, I was able to investigate this question by visiting the sites where much of the juvenile work of three significant artists is kept. The article below was the culmination of this area of study. Pariser, D. (1995b). Lautrec- gifted child-artist and  artistic monument: Connections between juvenile and mature work. In Claire Golomb (Editor). The development of artistically gifted children. Selected case studies. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. 31-77.This.examined the relationship between Lautrec's choice of themes and styles in childhood-and his mature style and choice of subject matter.This was an initial examination of the relation of childhood artistic precocity and mature success.The following article was also an opportunity for me to synthesize the material I had gathered on various aspects of exceptional artistic development and performance. Material that spanned the work of autist-artists as well as great artists' juvenilia.  Pariser,  D. (1997). Graphic development in artistically exceptional children. In, Anna Kindler (Editor) Child development in art. Perspectives and interpretations.Reston VA: National Art Education Association: 115-131.A comprehensive review of several types of graphic exceptionality: Autistic children like Nadia  and Stephen Wiltshire, two famous  child artists: Precocious artist-children like Picasso and Lautrec, and Non-Western artist-children like the young girl Wang Yani, whose brush painting performances in the 1980's took North America by storm.

2) In what ways can we restructure the prevailing (linear, single terminus model) of graphic/representational development so that it better reflects the observed diversity of representational purposes and outcomes that characterise drawing performance and development ? My interest in the trajectory of art-historical and individual graphic development has been nourished by the work of Arnheim who long ago suggested that there is no "progress" in art- only an exploration of multiple representational avenues-each of which can generate effective representations. More recently, the work of Kindler and Darras has applied some of these insights to the study of graphic development. The work of Willats, likewise has provided a technically robust method of looking at the same issue by analysing the structure of drawings themselves. For this reason, I consider my 1995 article on Piagetian research significant. Pariser, D., (1995a). Not under the lamppost. Piagetian and Neo-Piagetian Research in the arts. A review and critique. The Journal of Aesthetic Education. 29 (2) :93-108. This was a continuation of my 1983 critique of notions found in Gablik's Progress In Art. Here I indicated the reasons why the Piagetian model, though very powerful in terms of clarifying the development of scientific/logical thought is not aptly applied to aesthetic and artistic development.Here also I  developed the contrast between single-terminus and muliple-terminus models of graphic development.

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David Pariser principal research interests are: the development of drawing abilities and how drawing is taught in different cultures, cross-cultural aesthetic response to the art work of children and adults, observing life in classrooms and making explicit art teachers' expertise, expanding notions of graphic representation, and the use of narrative and documentary film and video as texts for study in art education.

He is currently involved with a research project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, that examines the cross-cultural validity of a model of aesthetic development. Other research interests include the development of anomalous drawing abilities in children, and in the trajectory of graphic development in the lives of world-class artists.

Since 1997 Pariser has been the Director of Student-Teaching Internships for the BFA Specialization program. He has also offered workshops and undergraduate art education courses to early childhood education students. At the graduate level he offers seminars in research in art education, as well as special topics courses in art education and related areas such as cognitive and social psychology and ethnography. He serves as a thesis advisor to masters and doctoral students.

Awards

Gaitskell Award for contributions to Canadian art education. (2007). Address titled: Just Remember, Wherever you Are, There You Are, or how Postmodern Rhetoric Impoverishes Art Teaching. Published in The Canadian Art Teacher, (2008) 8 (1) , 24-33
 
Elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association. (Division 10 Psychology and the Arts). (2000)
 
Esther Katz Rosen award administered by the American Psychological Association. With Susan Rostan and Howard Gruber: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Development and Asessment of Artistic Giftedness, (1999)
 
Visiting Scholar, Project Zero, Harvard  University, (1983)

Education

D.Ed, Harvard University