Abstract
Art design education in China has nearly 30 years of development history. Due to China’s vast territory, a large population, regional economic development, and social resources are extremely unbalanced, resulting in the uneven development of art design education in various regions. Art design is not only a practical and artistic comprehensive discipline, it also spans more majors. It contains almost all aspects of urban and rural construction, beautification, so its scientific and effective design scheme indirectly affects the future development process of urban and rural economy. First, this paper analyzes the impact of urban and rural economic development on art design teaching. The research results show that it has a great influence and a wide range of influence on art design teaching, including enhancing the naturalness of art discipline, promoting the creativity of art design discipline, and promoting the historicity of art discipline. Second, this paper also analyzes the role of art design in promoting regional economic development. For example, we should make full use of regional cultural differences, expand regional historical elements, pay attention to art design talents, and ensure the supply of funds.
1. Introduction
Innovation is the driving force of a country’s economic growth. Renowned economist Romer made this prediction 20 years ago. However, in today’s world, the development of innovative industries is more closely linked to the development of a country. It is of great significance for China to pay attention to the current development status of the world’s innovative industry and accurately grasp the development trend. And innovative industry has become one of the most important quintessences of urban competitiveness. In order to speed up the adjustment and upgrading of industrial structure, enhance the image and status of the city, improve the comprehensive competitiveness of the city, and realize the soft path of innovative industries, the key is to have the system and talents as the guarantee and backing. We should not only ensure platform construction, but also include personnel training and system innovation. As an important force in the innovation industry, the great art discipline plays a major role in the adjustment and upgrading of the industrial structure. At the same time, how to play a more active role in the tide of innovative industry is also worth thinking [1, 2]. As an important part of quality education, art education is an important means to implement quality education.
At the beginning of the 20th century, due to the continuous expansion of industrial production scale in European countries, some schools for training design talents have been unable to adapt to the new requirements of design education. Therefore, with a series of new reforms to promote the development of German modern design, it has also established a decisive position in the field of modern design [3, 4]. Nowadays, China’s art design education in colleges and universities has a lot in common: many companies are reluctant to recruit fresh art design graduates. This reflects the fact that the practical operation ability of students does not meet the market demand. It can be seen that the current art design education has been difficult to adapt to the new situation. First, there is a certain gap between the old teaching system and the new situation and environment. Second, there is a big gap between traditional arts and crafts education and modern design in concept and thought [5, 6].
The quality of students is a prerequisite to determine the quality of teaching. At present, art students in China are mainly enrolled according to arts and sciences, which has broken the current situation that art students only have arts. It has also greatly expanded the scope of enrollment, and the proportion of science and technology students is gradually increasing. Besides, it should be said to adapt to the current trend of social development. However, under the current situation of art enrollment in China, many art students only pay attention to the basis of painting, thus neglecting the study of cultural courses [7, 8]. Most of the students’ parents also lack knowledge and understanding of art design professional. They failed to discover the child in all aspects of the talent, just think it is easy to learn at the fine arts college, and even some students sit for the college entrance examination in time at the request of the parents to choose art. Reference [9]. “To study art for college entrance examination” has become a shortcut in today’s society, so modern middle schools have added art classes, special classes, so as to improve the enrollment rate they pursue. A large number of targeted training classes as well as all kinds of fine arts training institutions are organized in response to the college entrance examination. The serious influence of the arts class examinee’s artistic accomplishment also brings higher art education, affecting the overall quality and level of the art design education in China [10, 11]. The development of art education is not only conducive to promoting the all-round development of individuals, but it also enriches people’s spiritual and cultural life, promotes the development of cultural diversity, and promotes social harmony.
In Shandong province, for example, the number of applicants for the fine arts examination broke through 100,000 in 2007. In the following four years, the number of examinees declined continuously [12]. In 2011, the number of applicants was only 39683, nearly 60000 fewer than the peak. The decrease of students makes some colleges and universities unable to recruit high-quality art students. Compared with some developed big cities, this phenomenon is more obvious in remote local colleges and universities, and even enrolled students do not register or drop out.
The government’s emphasis on art education directly affects its investment. The government’s investment in education mainly focuses on some hardware facilities or it is based on meeting the needs of exam-oriented education. Therefore, under the condition of a certain total amount, the investment in art education is insufficient. It is mainly manifested in the lack of necessary equipment for art education, the lack of professional site construction, and the weakness of teachers [13, 14]. Many local governments often reduce or even ignore the budget of resources needed for art education when they are planning school districts, purchasing equipment, or introducing talents. In addition to the premise of meeting the needs of exam-oriented education, the lack of finance at the township level is an important source of the lack of investment in art education [15, 16]. In China’s rural areas, there is a serious imbalance between administrative and financial power, which is also an important factor that makes it difficult to improve the public service level in rural areas in a short period of time. The absence of public finance in rural areas has already brought restrictions to the work of the government at the township level, while the reduction and exemption of agricultural tax has cut off the main source of public finance in rural areas, which has caused more tension in the rural public finance, which is not rich at first, and thus insufficient investment in education on the whole [17]. However, art education is specialized in manpower and material resources, which make the cost of carrying out art education high. In addition, the government’s understanding of “dispensable” art education cannot provide a large amount of manpower, material resources, and financial resources. This has become the main factor restricting the development of art education in rural areas [18, 19].
In view of the fact the development of art education is not ideal in practical work, especially at the primary level in rural areas. It can be seen that in every period of social development, there are relations between economy, culture, and politics, and economic development is always the most basic and fundamental factor. Economic development promotes the development of politics and culture, while the development of politics and culture also acts on economic development. As a manifestation of cultural ideology, art design also has a certain relationship with economic development. This paper takes artistic design as the main research object and analyzes the profound relationship between it and economic development, in order to make the development of artistic design better adapt to the development of social life.
2. Differences of Art Design Teaching between Urban and Rural Areas
This paper also discusses the feasible path to promote the development of art education in rural areas from the aspects of policy support, school positioning, resource allocation, and teacher construction, so as to achieve the purpose of improving the level of art education in rural areas. Students from both urban and rural areas are very fond of art design teaching, believing that art design teaching is a relaxing course without the pressure of examination. High school students said that art design teaching is one of their favorite classes, so they do not have to concentrate on lectures.
Urban and rural students generally believe that art design teaching is a minor subject, which does not need to be studied seriously, and they think that art design teaching content will not be used in the future. Due to the long term, art design teaching is “less important,” so that the course is conducted without having to learn. Even if they learned later in life, it will not be used in this kind of idea.
Students in both urban and rural areas know that learning arts can be a shortcut to college. Over the years, the number of art examinees has become larger and larger, and their influence has expanded year by year. Learning art has become a shortcut for students to enter college. Part of it is due to the talents and hobbies, and part is to study for college entrance. It can be said that this is also meets a lot of college students' dream. Figure 1 shows the phenomenon of cultural classes crowding out music classes in urban area and it was investigated, accounting for the fact that 32% is often, 45% is sometimes, and 23% is never. Besides, Figure 2 shows the phenomenon of cultural classes crowding out music classes in urban area was investigated, of which 49% of students said they were often, 38% said they were sometimes, and 13% said they were never.
In addition, urban students can fully realize and benefit from the new curriculum reform. Rural students have not realized the impact of the new curriculum reform and have no great experience of the reform of art design teaching. After the new curriculum reform, the urban high school teachers closely follow the pace of reform, which makes the students feel the vitality injected by the new curriculum reform.
Therefore, from the perspective of an art educator, this study uses the theory of public service and combines relevant national policies to discuss the problems existing in art education in rural areas. Urban students can not only relax their body and mind, but also receive ideological and moral education in the teaching of art design. Rural students directly experience the entertainment of art teaching, not other functions. Urban high school teachers not only teach art knowledge for students in art class, but also teach moral education. Rural teachers have traditional classes and dare not innovate.
Urban students have a deep understanding of artistic specialties, and there are many convenient learning opportunities and space to showcase themselves. However, rural students have little understanding of artistic specialty, and there are many misunderstandings. Besides, there is no perfect teaching equipment and there is also teacher shortage. In addition, urban high school students have many opportunities to showcase themselves and exercise themselves, and almost all students can get the opportunity to exercise. Abundant campus activities have built a good platform for students, and professional teachers have laid a solid foundation for students’ growth, providing fertile soil. However, only a few students in rural high schools study art and have few opportunities to showcase themselves. A survey on how much the students liked the art design lesson was conducted, as shown in Figure 3. Sixty-five percent of students said they liked it very much, 21% students said they liked it, 10% students said they did not care for it, and only 4% students said they did not like it.
2.1. Economic Differences Lead to Inadequate Introduction and Training of Teachers
A good teacher is the premise for students to learn, he or she is a strong guarantee for students to acquire knowledge and improve skills. With the rapid expansion of art design education in all parts of the country and the subsequent expansion of college enrollment, the number of art design students has increased, and there is a general shortage of teachers. It is also due to the limitation of local environment that excellent graduates and high-level talents cannot be attracted. This situation makes the teacher-student ratio in many schools far exceed the allowable level of art design education. No matter what professional courses are taught, there are only a few teachers repeatedly, which brings too much burden on professional teachers. Thirty to forty percent of students in a class are like herding sheep, so it is difficult to ensure the quality of teaching and even more difficult to have time for scientific research. Even more absurd is that in order to balance the teaching, some schools let many people who are engaged in pure art education such as Chinese painting and oil painting fill the art design teacher team to take the basic course of design. The teaching quality can be imagined due to the lack of design literacy and professional knowledge.
Second, local colleges and universities recruit students, who had just done the test on short-term training in painting. It will be only slavish and they even do not know that the understanding of their own professional deficiencies enough. For the unceasing transformation, it promotes the creative design more at a loss. Some of the students after admission were disconsolate, they did not understand the lecture without the teacher’s correct guidance, and so learning interest is not high. Over time, they have formed the situation of modern art design college students with poor artistic imagination and creativity and more concrete and conservative way of thinking. In order to study the effect of urban and rural location on study resources, the data are investigated and the corresponding predicted value is shown in Figure 4. As can be seen, the urban students have a better condition of study resources.
2.2. Economic Differences Lead to Inadequate Teaching and Experimental Facilities and Imperfect Social Market
Art design is a profession with strong practicality and high requirements for hands-on ability. However, due to various reasons, some local colleges and universities do not pay attention to the art design major, and lack of investment in experimental equipment, let alone update, making the art design experimental teaching become the weakest link in the teaching of design education. Such relatively backward experimental equipment cannot meet the innovative design concept of art design, as a result students cannot personally participate in the production process of the art design major, and the students trained by these colleges can only be “armchair.”
Conversely, regional economic development will also affect art design. It can enhance the naturalness of the discipline of environmental art. With the acceleration of economic development in various regions, the scale of urban construction is getting larger and larger. Therefore, the discipline of environmental art design has been innovated in concept in this era. In order to satisfy the urban resident population life and aesthetic requirements, the modern environmental art design personnel to afforest, humanities, sculpture, water, and fitness to join in the planning scheme, at the same time, combined with the feature of regional development in time and factors such as natural environment condition in environmental art design, in the city under the background of the original culture, natural and social organization, can make economic and environmental development sustainable.
Second, regional economy can also enhance the creativity of art design disciplines. People living in modern large cities have higher and higher requirements for comfort. Therefore, environment art designers must timely enrich their professional knowledge, and on this basis, constantly improve innovation, use science and technology to make environmental art design more innovative and diversified. While meeting people’s needs, it also accelerates the development of environmental art design discipline and improves its knowledge system. At the same time, innovative design will become bolder and more unique with the development of discipline and technology.
Third, regional economy can enhance the history of environmental art discipline. In the process of urban development, social activities make our cities more modern, but the improvement of urban infrastructure should also preserve the unique culture formed in the process of urban development. These humanistic histories are of very high research value and should be preserved. Therefore, in environmental art design, the historical and cultural background of urban development should be presented more comprehensively through the integration of historical elements. For example, Suzhou’s urban gardens are not only full of cultural deposits, but also make people’s life and nature harmonious and unified, adding natural and cultural beauty to basic life. These distinctive cultural features distinguish cities from each other.
There are some problems in art design courses in urban and rural areas. Both urban and rural high schools have ignored the importance of art design courses. The professional skills of art design teachers are reduced. Due to the lack of attention from the school, the status of art design teachers is also reduced. Art design teachers relax their self-discipline and their professional skills are gradually weakened. The understanding of modern educational technology is not profound and cannot be well applied to teaching.
The existing problems have been accumulated over a long period of time and cannot be solved overnight. Many of the problems are left over from history, and many need the intervention of the government and other relevant departments to alleviate them, such as the lack of teachers in senior middle schools in counties. Art design courses have long been regarded as “minor subjects.” These problems are “difficult and complicated diseases” and cannot be solved once they are discovered. It requires long-term persistence and strong support.
The status of art design courses in Chinese schools is generally not high, and art design courses are not valued. The importance of thinking can be reflected in the saying, “As far as the thought is, so far can go.” If we continue to hold the idea that art design is a “minor subject” and a useless minor subject, we cannot reverse the status of art design. It is necessary to establish a new ideology to further promote the development of art design courses.
Urban teaching facilities are relatively perfect. The art design teaching equipment in urban schools is much superior compared with other schools. No classroom is equipped with projectors and sound, which can make students experience the charm and fun of multimedia art design teaching. Art design teachers have a certain professional level. All art design teachers have bachelor’s degree and graduated from professional colleges. And they have many years of teaching experience. The art design curriculum system is not perfect. Chinese high schools do not have a profound understanding of the art design curriculum reform, and cannot complete the art design teaching well in accordance with the requirements, which leads to the absence of teaching modules, the lack of entertainment and integrity of art design courses, and the lack of fun for students.
Art design appreciation classes in urban middle schools have been fully covered; Rural high schools only open for the first year of high school. Abundant resources of urban art design teachers; Rural senior high school art design teacher resources shortage. Although the teaching equipment is very perfect, the teaching equipment of urban high schools is newer, higher level, and more comprehensive than that of rural high schools. Urban art design teachers are more skilled in multimedia teaching operation and have innovative consciousness for PPT production; Rural high school art design teachers are more conservative. Comparatively, the campus art activities in urban high schools are more abundant. Influenced by the number of students, there are more students with special abilities in urban high schools.
Then, the correlation study is studied as follows. We establish a regression analysis using the number of students per 10,000 population () as the dependent variable and per capita GDP(x2) as the independent variable to calculate the logarithmic regression equation:
Taking the cubic root of index X3 into consideration, perform regression analysis on the transformed data, and we can get the regression equation
The logarithm curve model is fitted by natural logarithm transformation of X4,
Through the regression analysis program, we obtained the fitting curve model as follows:
In addition, we can also obtain:
The regression model is obtained through iterative operation of nonlinear regression program:
3. Art Design Promotes Regional Economic Development
3.1. We Should Make Full Use of Regional Cultural Differences
In the rural areas of China, due to the influence of the economic and cultural environment, the government and other public departments pay less attention to education, especially art education, and the burden of educational development and reform is mainly provoked by schools. China is a vast country with a wide span from east to west and distinct climate differences from north to south. In the course of historical development, each region has formed its own unique cultural history and social environment, and there are also great cultural differences between different regions and different ethnic groups. Therefore, in order to highlight the uniqueness of each city, environmental art designers must make full use of regional cultural differences, take geographical and climatic environmental factors of the north and south into consideration, and integrate more national characteristics and elements into the design scheme through scientific design and combination, so as to enhance the cultural vitality of urban development. At the same time, in order to highlight the modern development of the city, it is necessary to integrate more scientific and technological means and make innovations on this basis while preserving the history. Following the design principle of adapting measures to local conditions, so that human society can live in harmony with the natural environment and promote each other. We can promote the regional economic development of the city without wasting natural resources. As can be seen in the colorful map of the results shown in Figure 5 that the shortcomings of rural areas are mainly manifested in the lack of necessary equipment for art education, the lack of professional site construction, and the weakness of teachers. Many local governments often reduce or even ignore the budget of resources needed for art education when they are planning school districts, purchasing equipment, or introducing talents. However, education is related to the future, the national economy, and people’s livelihood, and is an important part of China’s basic public services.
3.2. We Should Incorporate and Expand Regional Historical Elements
Unique regional development history has created unique local conditions and customs, cultural customs, therefore, in the process of urban economic development, we should pay attention to provide a more perfect and modern economic environment for the urban population. We should also pay attention to preserve the original historical buildings and cultural practices of the city, because the development of the region is based on the human spirit. Only by respecting the history of urban development and paying attention to the protection of traditional culture can the city develop efficiently without losing its individuality. At the same time, the protection of historical development marks is tantamount to the protection and development of urban culture, so it is necessary to integrate new ideas into these traditional cultures and innovate on the basis of historical integration. Only in this way can urban development based on regional historical and cultural elements become more scientific and more vigorous. The radar map is shown in Figure 6. It can be concluded that local governments should build teaching places where there is a shortage of teaching places and purchase teaching equipment to diminish the insufficient teaching equipment. Besides, schools with poor development should strengthen supervision and guidance to provide advice on art education in schools.
3.3. We Should Attach Importance to Environmental Art Design Talents and Ensure Funding Supply
A successful environmental art designer not only requires the designer with high artistic accomplishment, but also one who has a strong sense of social responsibility. He may also have rich knowledge reserves and can accurately grasp the public’s aesthetic consciousness, keeping up with the trend of the opportunities. At the same time, he may not forget to include innovation, bold practice, so as to establish a unique regional environment. Of course, regional construction is also inseparable from the strong economic backing, without economic security all plans and decisions are empty talk. All design and construction are subject to the constraints of funds, only sufficient funding sources, coupled with an excellent artistic design scheme. There can also be finally collision-independent, excellent environmental design cases. That is the more excellent urban construction planning, the more beneficial to the development of regional economy. The time versus frequency is plotted in Figure 7. That is, in terms of finance, the government may consider giving corresponding support, purchasing corresponding teaching equipment and resources for rural schools, and providing basic tools or equipment for the development of their art education. Therefore, the development of education is not only the responsibility of schools, but also an important responsibility of the government.
In a word, people’s continuous pursuit of practical beauty is the source power for the development of art design, and this source power is also the biggest power to promote social and economic development, which is exactly the saying that “science and technology is productivity.” The level of science and technology can most effectively promote the progress of social and economic level. It is not difficult to find the development course of science and technology, art and economy. Technological life is also a combination of various forms of art and serves the real life of human beings. To put it in the simplest terms, in the development of today’s society, if a commodity not only has certain practicality but also has certain artistry, otherwise it will be widely welcomed by the public, and the economic value of the commodity will inevitably increase, and the specific income will continue to increase. In this case, artistic design can be regarded as having certain economic value. To rise to the social level, the prosperity of art design on the one hand, that all the things on the social level increase at a certain artistic value, makes its overall value higher, at the same time, the continuous development of art design also brings our country a multitude of creativity, the creativity for the economic development of China has played a huge role in promoting, it has brought about tremendous innovation. Therefore, we can think that art design can promote the development of China’s social economy to a certain extent.
In the development of recent years, the new era of development characteristics is the revolution of knowledge economy, the economic development of all aspects needs to rely on the knowledge content and knowledge as the main social labor main reference standards, at the same time, it is knowledge economy that provides opportunities for the development of art design and the basis of further development. In the development process of art design, it does not simply pursue the projection of the real world, but requires the harmonious and unified expression of creativity and emotion, which is one of the most indispensable factors in the current social and economic development. Therefore, we will incorporate the art design into the social and economic development when they need to be consistent with the direction of development of the knowledge economy, pay attention to the creative design in the art design and emotional expression, not blindly to show off the objective world, in the process of the design of concrete should be positive to join their ideas, we should try to be different, only then can it have a certain position in the knowledge economy and obtain certain economic benefits. The prediction of the results is shown in Figure 8.
In the current social development, the art design should bring in innovation with the aid of certain means of science and technology, software, computer peripherals, such as computer, plot, and so on. At the same time, the development of art design is not isolated and one-sided, it needs to constantly absorb and draw lessons from existing scientific achievements, making the whole design better fit with the time development, really meeting the main needs of the people. For example, in the ancient times of mankind, only stone chisel technology, and red clay as the material so the production of rock paintings. The murals have a certain bold and unrestrained style. The generation of oil extraction technology so that the Van Eyck brothers invented oil paint, Da Vinci could leave Mona Lisa eternal smile. In the process of the development of contemporary society, the continuous popularization of information technology makes art design reflect more modern science and technology elements. Therefore, in the future design development process, we should actively combine art design with advanced science and technology. At the same time, art design can have certain innovation and can also adapt to the development, so that it can better meet the pursuit and the real needs of consumers.
4. Conclusion
It can be seen from this paper that the difference between urban and rural areas has an impact on art design education. Thus, it is the common responsibility of schools and society to narrow this gap and speed up the construction of local social spiritual civilization. The research results show that it has a great influence and a wide range of influence, including enhancing the naturalness of art discipline, promoting the creativity of art design discipline, and promoting the historicity of art discipline. Besides, it is also found that regional economic development has enhanced the naturalness of art, promoted the creativity of environmental art design, and promoted the historicity of art.
Although this paper studies the difference between economic level and urban and rural art education, the factors considered by the author on urban and rural differences are not comprehensive enough and need to be further improved in future work.
Data Availability
The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.