Rural Art Cultural Change Influenced By Education

The phenomenon of calligraphy & painting popular in Tongwei is the result of local art cultural changes that occurred during the second half of twentieth century. The essence of this phenomenon is the reproduction of calligraphy & painting in Tongwei's rural society. It embodies a local society that collectively promotes Chinese traditional calligraphy & painting. Furthermore, local artists are in deep love with the art and have committed themselves to a practice of calligraphy & painting. In Tongwei, the practice of rural folk art is relatively weak, and other mainstream art forms have relatively no place.The agents of calligraphy & painting historically been literati, and in the contemporary era continue to be professional literati painters that belong to social elite. On the other hand, behind the phenomenon of calligraphy & painting made popular in Tongwei are artists who were born into peasant families. They are peasants as defined by the household register system. Many have faced the interrogation and quandary about the style, characteristics, and subject matter of their art works because "they" are not "congruent" with their "peasant" identity. Moreover, the inquiry on what kind of direction Tongwei art painting should take has become a conundrum that puzzles local artists. Depending on the elite attributes of the agents of traditional calligraphy & painting and the relationship between elite art and education, the phenomenon of calligraphy & painting popular in Tongwei has a predictable link with education. In order to find out solutions for resolving the difficult question about the direction Tongwei art painting should take we need to examine the relationship between art and education. This study is grounded on the "social science that starts from practice". The methodology of this study acknowledges Philip Huang's viewpoint that representational and objective structures are as likely to be disjointed as they are to be congruent. It reverts the interactive relationship between dominating and rural culture, even more, it restores some possible outcomes of culture reproduction, i.e. passively acceptance, rejection, taking up on the own initiative and even internalization. Based on this idea, education's function in cultural reproduction is making cultural interaction between dominating and rural culture instead of helping dominating culture's hegemonic reproduction. Using this underlying analysis the study used a grounded theory method and the investigation went to Tongwei rural society, endeavored in inquiry about the social causes of calligraphy & painting made popular. It inquired on the unique cultural phenomenon and the problem of local painting art development and its direction from the point of view of local art practicing agents. The study's focus was to inquire about what kind of art education is needed in rural places that are operating against the backdrop of Chinese urbanization.Using data and basic deduction, the study classifies the social causes that make calligraphy & painting popular in Tongwei into two categories, i.e. educational causes and non-educational causes.The educational causes include three aspects of reading culture, academic culture, and professional artists' teaching. The second representation of "reading culture" transmitted the "pure" art attribution of traditional calligraphy & painting as well as the elite art attribution as a kind of literati art in tradition which shaped Tongwei people's aesthetic consciousness to advocate for traditional calligraphy & painting art. Against the background of a modern higher educational system, the path towards recruiting, training, and assignment of academic culture transmitted the art attributes of traditional calligraphy & painting as well as the elite art characteristics in a contemporary era, therefore shaping Tongwei painters consciousness of specialization. Tongwei rural society is bound to traditional calligraphy & painting because of the second representations in reading culture, academic culture and local social need for social mobility and family revitalizing via education in traditional cultivating & reading culture. More important it is the representative agency of modern academic culture, and its dual identity consists of artistic and educational practice. Some professional artists that have had to live and work in Tongwei because of special circumstances or destiny have supplied professional basic training in painting such as sketch and color painting for numerous local art-lovers during the special historical stage of the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, they supplied earnest professional teaching on traditional Chinese calligraphy & painting with practices that served to improve the occasion and accordance of students' aptitude with semi-academic teaching patterns.Non-educational causes have done more and can be classified into three depending on the different functions. The first classification is "inspiriting causes" that include the strong support of Tongwei painting "art-lovers" art practice that came from officials and family. The second is "intensifying" causes that include the information, market, and local house characters. The isolation and occlusion of information to this environment limited other mainstream arts from entering into Tongwei as well as intensified the local people's identification with traditional calligraphy & painting. Tongwei's local art market limited the transmitting of other mainstream art forms at the local level as well as intensified traditional calligraphy & painting development in Tongwei. In Tongwei, only one piece of a wall on a local civil house has window and three other pieces of wall have characters that support and show a space for traditional Chinese calligraphy & painting art. This is one indicator that local people valued and loved calligraphy & painting art works. The third are other causes have illuminative function; such as picture-story books and illustrations in primary and middle school text books. General cultural establishment and conditions in Tongwei are very non transparent. For most art-lovers, except seen calligraphy & painting works in their own or neighbors' home, the picture-story books, illustrations in primary and middle school text books were the painting art forms that they were exposed to by tracing and learning as very young children and so it became their training ground.The functions of educational and non-educational causes are very different on the property, intensity, and character. On property, educational causes made pivotal constructional functions, but non-educational causes made accessorial, intensifying and illuminative functions. On intensity, educational causes made much stronger functions than non-educational causes. In addition on characters the functions of reading and academic cultures and professional artists' teaching in educational causes historically formed causality. However, the functions of those non-educational causes are isolated with each other and have no inevitable relations. The analyzes shows that because of the second representation of educational causes on calligraphy & painting, art managed to a higher coherency with the objective need of Tongwei rural society. Tongwei rural society not only embraced the art, but also internalized the art as the dominated art in "our culture". Therefore, it was education that conducted the Tongwei rural art culture changes, and so education is the pivotal cause that made calligraphy & painting popular in Tongwei.The problem was that by the end of the Cultural Revolution, those few professional artists that were left Tongwei, two of them passed away and although the remants of their art educational actions are still operating and continue to make calligraphy & painting popular. Artist still keep on painting but nobody helps Tongwei artists reflect on the historical based enterprise that was created by those professional artists or inquire on how to get rid of the puzzle of doubt about the lack of rural art breath and personality and possibility of obtaining a new life through rural art. The discussion and analysis on the coherency level between the representation and practice of education leads to the conclusion that generally, the ultimate reason for the problem is the low level coherency between higher art education and the practice in a contemporary era. It created diverse forms of institutional excluding mechanisms for rural art in higher art educational practice such as in the employment of teachers, curriculum and instruction, and recruiting, etc. The institutional excluding mechanisms have an overarching umbrella effect on the whole art field thereby badly limiting rural art development.This study concludes that it was education that conducted Tongwei's rural art culture changes. It was education that imposed this quandary about the art direction. Therefore, for extricating rural art out of this quandary, it will have to improve the coherency level between the theoretical representation and practice on rural art education-mainly in higher education. Specifically by reforming art education in higher education it will improve the position of rural/folk art by removing the diverse forms of institutional excluding mechanisms from rural/folk art. Reform includes changing regulations about teacher employment, curriculum, recruiting, instruction etc. inside higher art education. Meaningful reform includes setting and strengthening the contact between higher art education and rural culture towards paths leading to joint-education, developing assistance projects, and even creating an art academy. Reform efforts that are responsive should improve rural society's identification with the local art culture in practice and on a substantial sense, take various theoretical ideas from preponderant resources in the academic culture. A rural society like Tongwei needs to direct rural artists theoretically and critically to reflect on the reality of local art develop in order to harness their own natural and cultural art resources and walk out of the shackles of a so-and-so's style, so-and-so's characteristics and into an art path of representing life that expresses affection and allows them to control their own destiny. Further, it should be an art form that promotes the rural art development and prosperity.