| In the last decade the field of art education has revised its aims for teaching art. The prevailing emphasis is on an approach to the teaching of art that includes the four disciplines of aesthetics, art criticism, art history, and art production. This approach has become known as discipline-based art education, and its goal is to develop students' abilities to understand and appreciate art.;One of the fundamental assumptions of discipline-based art education is that content for study can be derived from a broad range of the visual arts with an emphasis on what can be learned from works of art. As students learn to interact with works of art, refining their perceptions and responses, they will be able to gain access to the powerful meanings and messages of works of art.;In this study I examine whether the concept of aesthetic experience is an appropriate goal for art education. In the past, practices in art education were based on modernist theories of aesthetic experience posited by writers such as John Dewey and Monroe Beardsley. These theories focused on a distinctive way of experiencing objects and a distinctive kind of object. Aesthetic experience was marked by a pervasive emotional quality and immediately felt relations of order and fulfillment. Consequently, the present practice of interpretation in art education is characterized by describing and analyzing the elements and principles of design and emotive content.;According to contemporary theorist Arthur Danto, works of art are about something; they are created to present a view of the world and to affect our attitudes and visions of the world. Danto offers a theory of art that changes what we attend to, which are the non-exhibited qualities of a work of art. Danto's view is that the material constituent is just part of the work of art, that we must look beyond the object to historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts in order to comprehend meaning. In this respect, Danto's theory of art provides a better foundation for interpreting and understanding works of art. |
