Study On Art Education In The Modern Aesthetic Context

Art has changed greatly since Marcel Duchamp. The aesthetic question of the boundary of art and non-art provides connection between the three major topics in this paper:aesthetic context,modern art and art education, and points out therelationship between them. The paper argues that as modern art develops, from artistic facts and its explanation emerges a new aesthetic context, which also confounded art education. To provide a context for the problem,the introduction reviews the process of connecting art and aesthetics, especially the evaluation on the relationship between art and beauty in the Philosophy of Art by Gangji Liu: the nature of art is beauty understood in a broad sense.The paper concludes that, beauty used to be thecriterion of art. The fact that in modern art the two are no longer directly connected does not mean that modern art should not pursue beauty, nor does it mean that art education is no longer aesthetic education. In modern aesthetic context, aesthetic judgment still needs to guide art education to restore the appreciation of beauty.The first chapter is the analysisof the modern aestheticcontext. The paper argues that modern society has entered a 'post-aesthetic' era. Economic and cultural development has brought about more refined citizens, especially in terms of their aesthetic ability. In modern society, people have already incorporated the pursuit of beauty into the environment they live in,so they no longer need artwork as a mere provider of aesthetic pleasure as much as our ancestors. Thus art has to seek to serve other functions like inspiring, questioning and challenging. Some argues that art has come to an end. However, it is only the end of its aesthetic function. Culturally,'post-aesthetic'essentially means that aesthetic is a problem already finished. Another characteristic of modern aesthetic context is the theorization of aesthetics. As art sought to develop and define itself, it clashed with the boundary of beauty, and widened the boundary of art itself, which threatened its own definition, forcing philosophy to intervene and face the problems brought by the development of art. Aestheticians fought to give answers to those questions and brought aboutthe philosophy of art.To provide a historic context for the discussion about the dilemma of modern art education, chapter2reviews the history of art education in both China and the west. Section2.1examines the traditional, post-1949, and modern art education in China. Traditionally, there was official academic education, unofficial mentor-apprentice model, as well as painting and calligraphy education of intellectuals. After1949, art education gradually became systematic. But at the same time art served a political function. Then the paper analyzed the transition of modern art education in China. Section2.2reviews the traditional and current art education in the west. Before the born of official art academies, there were several patterns of art education. Until Renaissance it was mainly the mentor-apprentice model in mills inherited from Middle Ages, which focused on meremechanical replication of reality. Then the paper reviews the development of art education from the born of the first fine art academy, and the current education theories and practices in developed countries. Then it moves on to the post-modern art education practice and the influence of visual culture.Chapter3examines the relationship between changes in aesthetics, art development and art education. The mid to late eighteenth century saw the establishment of art system, the born of aesthetics, and the maturity of aesthetic awareness. Various art forms flourished vigorously since Renaissance, so did the art and aesthetics theories. Batteux(1746) was the first to establish an organized art theory and different categories of art. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten then introduced the modern sense of'beauty' as a complement. But Baumgarten's theory, focusing on the emotions, still belonged to the system of philosophy. It was Kant who really establishedand organized the theory of aesthetics. The establishment and disintegration of modern aesthetics reflectsthe process of art shifting from autonomy to heteronomy, and then back to autonomy.Heteronomy and autonomy are the findings and summary of the modern aesthetics. Autonomy as a major characteristic of modern art reveals the major distinction between modern and traditional art: art used to be an active part in everyday life, while modern art is an independent area. Autonomy is also the crucial characteristic of modern aesthetics. Independence gives rise to the tension between modern society and culture, the outlookof modern art and the manifold modern aesthetics. The shift to heteronomy of modern art and aesthetics has a great impact on art education, but it does not change its nature. By expanding its function and increasingly focusing on the fate of human kind as well as the concern for the society, it has prepared the way to more possibilities. This is not a deviation from appreciation of beauty.On the contrary, it is preciselyartists pursuing beauty, and the transcendentresurrection of the aesthetic function of art. Creativity is the driving force of art. It is also the core of humanity. Art encourage people to be more creative and more conscious about the application of this creativity.Chapter4argues that art education is still aesthetic education in its nature. Section4.1reviews the responsibility and characteristics of human science, and argues that art, as a part of the human science, intensivelyreflects the nature andthe quest of human science. Artistic refinement is about emotion, interest and coordination skills, with an object of better character. The study of human science enablesindividualsto search, confirm and self-improve, that is, to know themselves better, and art is the most direct way to do that. Art can transcend the constraints on human mind by reason, language, self-interest and objectivity and subjective, and reveal the truth. In a word, beauty inspires the truth. Meanwhile, it also inspires goodness. Therefore, art cannot deviate from its essence of pursuit of beauty. To achieve that, we may borrow the multiple-fieldsart education in US. Discipline-based art education aims at helping student develop complete understanding of art. It consists of four fields:art creation, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics. Art creation helps students advance their ability to create artwork. Art history guides students through the changes of art in a traditional cultural context. Criticism helps student evaluate artwork in a critical eye. And aesthetics deals with problems in a metaphysics way. The four fieldsinteract with each other and togetherform the framework of the art education. Among them aesthetics is the nexus since it helps peopleunderstand themselves better, which isone of the most important purposes of art education. The critical attitude is inherently in accord with the open-mindedness of art education. In fact, the theoreticians in the west have alsoseen the consequences of the dereliction of aesthetics from modern art, and have called for restoring aesthetics. The paper analyzes the popular speculative art theory and argues that it provides rooms for those who do not posses artistic skills and those who do not have a deep understanding of art history or aesthetics.And itslimitations have gone from anti-aesthetics in earlier years to the recent abandonment of beauty in art. Recently, a few scholars have called for restoring aesthetic, as they had been tired of this empty, kaleidoscope artwork with nothing beautiful in them. The paper analyzes the theory of Susan Sontag, Thierry de Duve and that of Jean Clair and Jean-Marie Schaeffer. Jean Clairbelieved that there had been an'updated' aesthetic judgment since the seventies and argued for a pristine restorationof art. He started from Hegel's idea of progressive history, while Jean-Marie Schaeffer started from the speculative art theory. They criticized speculative art theory from two different perspectives and argue for the resurrection of aestheticseparately. All of the scholars mentioned above turned to Kant, whose crowning work established the modern philosophy of art. As Sontag and Clair pointed out, the restoring of aesthetic is not absolute, nor it is simply going back to the old way. It is restoring an'updated'aesthetics.Chapter5argues for the reconstruction of the concept of modern art education under the aesthetic context. Modern art education in China has deviated from aesthetic as we cater to the artistic culture, phenomena and style that appeared in the post aesthetic west world, and we seem to forget that education should have souls. The essence of art education is aesthetic. It is decided by the nature and the aim of art education and should not change simply because a new art from has come along. In the west, no matter how art form and teaching approach change, the humanizing qualities of art education have always remained. When Utilitarianism guides our education, we have lost them, resulting in problems at every step. Almost all students in art academies have come from training programs designed specifically for the entrance exams, which have made education a business. The most important problem, however, is the ambiguity of the goal of our training. Therefore, we have to pay attention to help students reconstruct four levels of relationship:the relationship between body and soul, and between self and others, which emphasize improving oneself through harmonious interaction with others, cultures and social institutions; relationship between self and objects, which emphasize a spontaneous pursuit of beauty in everyday life reflected by relations with articles of daily use and designing them; relationship between human and the environment, which sees the environment as a constant changing whole that encourages us to experience it and live harmoniously within it.Chapter6argues for the reconstruction of modern art education under the aesthetic context. First is the reconstruction of education system, in which we should focus on and try to balance the universality and the particularity of the art education. Universality should not prevail over particularity, nor should particularity obscure universality. We should emphasize the role of aesthetics and pedagogics, since they both reflective in their nature. The reform and reconstruction of art education involve knowledge and reflection about education. At the same time it is essentially the reconstruction of aesthetictaking into account the different nature of specific fields. Thus, we should adjust our goal of training, and aim at cultivating students with aesthetic character. Secondly, we need qualified faculty members, and make the profession a long term one. Thirdly, in designing the curriculum, we should try to beacademic, aesthetic, systematic, forward-looking and open-minded. With our current resources we could take pedagogics in US as an example and break the discipline into four fields: art creation, art history, art criticism, and aesthetics. As art theory has been deemed a discipline, we should abstain from theUtilitarianism that centered on techniques, and should maintain the art education as part of the human science. Lastly, we should improve our teaching method and infrastructure. As modern art develops, art has become rather experimental. Modern art demands more and more diversity in terms of materials and medium, which in turn presses schools to provide art students with digital media labs, traditional workshops, and labs and studios where they can get more familiar with various materials. Therefore professional art education needs relatively more space and low teacher-student ratio if we want to maintain the quality of our education.Conclusion: No matter how art forms and materials change the aesthetic nature of our art education should not. In the modern aesthetic context, art education should always be clear about its purpose, which is the restoring of aesthetic in a transcendent sense.