Theoretical and methodological background to learning of composition at higher artistic education institutions

Abstract

The article suggests the theoretical and methodological background to learning of composition at higher artistic education institutions based on holistic approach that allows combining and balancing the established approaches to training the subject matter and formal composition. With the holistic approach, teaching composition to students will be effective if based on interaction between methods of working from life, from memory, and by conception or imagination and problem-based and formal analytical methods. Together with solid capturing of basic composition laws, rules, devices, and techniques and the specificity of psychological practices of visual perception, students will have to practice the main types of academic work in composition in long-term compositional drawings and short-term drafts and sketches. Effective implementation of the unity of theoretical and practical will require incorporation of the creative process specificity at each of the interrelated stages of working at composition (search, conception, and compositional idea incubation, reification, and final sketching). Student training content organization is implemented by movement from formal composition with its focus on forming devices to subject matter composition that determines the logical sequence of class assignments with their gradual complication. Training exercises as such should be designed as «triggers» of students’ creative thinking. Assessment of student progress by teacher involves analysis of compositional solution conformity with the content of assignment, unity and advisability of used compositional techniques, culture of visual presentation, singularity and independence of compositional solution, and growth of student’s professional skills. Such comprehensive approach ensures the independence of searching for interrelation between the artistic content and art devices by students and enables the solid capturing of compositional knowledge in the process of practical work and its conversion in a tool of future artist’s professional artistic activities.