Learning to See

In “Learning to See: A Fulbright Semester Teaching Painting in Beijing,” I write of the cultural gap I experienced in the student-teacher relationship and of some surprising gaps I encountered in my students’ knowledge of course material. I posit that the student-teacher relationship is shaped by specific societal conditions in present-day China. I claim the knowledge gaps in my students’ art education are the dual consequences of the Chinese patterning their education system on the Russian model and of the historical fact that China did not experience Modernism as it unfolded in the twentieth century. I give examples of how the deficits manifested in my students—in their inability to navigate nonrepresentational space and the difficulty they have describing, analyzing, and articulating their perception of two-dimensional compositions.