Realism, Symbolism, and non-objectivity

Some of the other teachers at my school didn't quite "get" the Jackson Pollock, Williem deKooning, and Mark Rothko stuff. Non-objective art is not something that everybody "gets." Granted, one of the reasons I started the semester with it is because many of the kids in painting class had not taken Drawing class, so I wanted them to be able to "succeed" even without a great skills base.

But I want people to understand and appreciate all art, even if they still don't quite like it or respect it, they should at least be able to "get it." Think of it as a continuum, at one end is naturalistic/realistic, at the other end is totally non-objective. Somewhere in between are varying degrees of abstraction. Maybe this will help. Scott McCloud has a great book called "Understanding the Comics." In it, he uses this illustration that I would think that Math, Science, and English teachers should all understand. He talks about non-objective and what I call "compositional" art in terms of "the picture plane." Essentially the picture plane is when you work exclusively with the elements and principles of design. Think of art that only deals with these, but does not show any images the same way you think of instrumental music.