Chewing Visual Culture

Chewing Visual Culture:
Exploring Decorations of Three
Different Cultural Restaurants
Presented at 2009 NAEA
Convention in Minneapolis, MN,
April 17-21
Chewing Visual Culture:
Exploring Decorations of
Three Different Cultural
Restaurants
Hung-Min Chang
Northern Illinois University
• Key reasons for doing this
study include:
-- Art education researchers
advocate integrating
cultural diversity into art
curricula. (Bailey & Desai, 2005;
Freedman, 2000)
-- Visual culture in different
cultural restaurants is a
direct source of
presenting the diversity of
culture.
-- Learning about visual
culture helps better
understand our cultural
identity. (Freedman & Stuhr, 2004)
Purpose of the Study
• To explore meanings of decorations at
three cultural restaurants
Literature Review
-- General educators have emphasized
the importance of visual culture in our
everyday lives. (Evans & Hall, 1999; Giroux & Simon, 1989;
Mirzoeff, 1998)
-- Art educators have advocated
broadening the domain of art
education by integrating visual culture
into the field. (Barnard, 1998; Duncum, 2001; Freedman, 1994,
2000; Freedman & Wood, 1999; Stankiewicz, 2000; Stuhr, 1994; Sturkin &
Cartwright, 2001)
-- Art educators have emphasized the
relevance of context and place and its
influence on cultural understanding of
art and artifacts. (Bland & Hoffman, 1993; Hicks, 1990;
Neperud, 1995)
Methodology
• Location of data
-- Vietnamese restaurant: Bea’s
Wok’n Roll
-- Chinese restaurant: Yen Ching
-- Mexican restaurant: Rosita’s
Methodology
(cont.)
• Data collection
-- observation
-- participant-observation
-- photographic
-- informal interviews
-- collection of artifacts
Analysis
Items of the decorations
representing their cultures:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Fine art: traditional and
contemporary art work
Folk art: lion sculpture, Buddha
sculpture, clay sculptures of
warriors, Mexican ceramic,
potteries.
Artifacts: flower vessels, Mexican
hats
Everyday objects: Dining utensils,
kitchen utensils, Bottled
condiments, place mats
Family photos
Exteriors of the restaurants
Colors
Learning from Visual Culture in
Different Cultural Restaurants
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Selling the unique cultures
Creating pleasant environments
Personalizing the owners
Highlighting exotic spaces
Unfolding social relationships
Indicating history
Selling the Unique Cultures
Creating Pleasant Environment
• Besides the taste of food, art, visual style,
and restaurant design are vital elements of
selling. Visual qualities energize the thirst
for dining in these culturally different
restaurants.
Seven different stone masks hung on the wall of Rosita’s
were just for creating a “feel.”
Personalizing the
owners
All the three restaurants displayed family photos.
Highlighting Exotic Spaces
1. Classical or typical artworks:
2. Typical cultural items:
clay sculptures of warriors
the octagonal lamps with various Chinese paintings
Chinese zodiac place mat
3. Visual objects
from the
original
cultures:
Rosita’s Mexican hats (sombrero) were bought from
Mexico by the owner.
4. Folk art:
calendar
sunstones
Buddha sculpture
Calendar
sunstones is a
good example of
Mexican fork art.
5. Exteriors of the restaurants:
The green flying eaves and huge red doors with lion handles and
many knobs are typical features of traditional Chinese buildings.
The bright and bold colors of Rosita’s exterior present Mexican features.
Unfolding Social Relationship
A pair of Chinese knots with bamboo was sent by the owner’s mother-in-law.
A beer company sent a beer poster with four Chinese calligraphy words
indicating a felicitous wish of making money.
The painting was
done by an exemployee who
created an
imaginative
streetscape
highlighting the
image of “Rosita’s.”
Rosita’s one old black and white photo of its exterior of the oldest section was
sent by the merchants they did business with.
Indicating (Local) History
In Bea’s Wok’n Roll, an old black and white photo hung by a certificate seemed
to record the moment the owner had just begun the restaurant.
Rosita’s provided Northern Illinois University
art majors with the opportunity to create a
Mexican streetscape wall painting.
Suggestions
In teaching art teachers can
use visual culture in
different cultural restaurants
in the following ways:
• to challenge students to
think about stereotypical
exoticism of “other” cultures.
Suggestions (cont.)
• use as a narrative base for a
continuous discussion of the
role of visual cultural imagery
and objects in the development
of cultural identity.
• as a metaphor to explore visual
signs that are significant to
specific locations to understand
their own and others’ cultural
heritages.
Conclusion
In looking at cultural objects,
students become
“anthropologists” and critical
analysts of culture, learning to
question the objects around
them, to find meanings in them,
and to understand them as
cultural expression (or
metaphors for cultural
properties).
(Marshall, 2002)