Dissent has its own special place in art education. It has two stereotypical, polarized faces. The first is a classical institution modelled on Italian and French academies. As official places, they aimed at elevating art to the rank of science and making it an expression and instrument of power. The opposite image of the school is an oasis of intellectual freedom, a space for inventiveness, a place for applying unusual teaching methods and organizing the academic community. The most famous examples (...) are avant-garde acctivities. This historical division is unreliable in fact. Dissent or even rebellion can be an instrument of morality and principles that could be followed. Quite unexpectedly, a peculiar anarchism can be found in the first art academy run by the Carracci. The name ‘academy’ popularized among the Italian humanists and Marsilio Ficinno, drew attention to the informal nature of scientific associations, opposing the fossilized formula of the university existing since the Middle Ages. It is surprising then that Joseph Beuys just created the Free International University. The very name of school and its understanding indicate a significant dichotomy not only in art education, but also in art theory. The point is not that the model of education has simply loosened over time. The above-mentioned facts reflect great disputes about the essence of art, about its relationship with science, everyday life, and practical application. An analysis of specific programs will allow us to see the sense of the mutual connections between rebellion and principles in modernizing artistic education. (shrink)

Contemporary aesthetics, reaching the remotest limits of theory in its determined endeavours to embrace new artistic phenomena, often questions the very idea of beauty. According to Christian Enzensberger, however, all attempts at such questioning are doomed to failure. Beauty, as he claims, seems to be timeless. Still, beauty in contemporary art has its faults and, among others, it is accused of being something else that it purports to be. There is ample evidence to support this view: comparisons between the illusory (...) beauty with rich terminology borrowed from aesthetic pluralism; failed attempts at redefining beauty, its false comebacks under the guise of plagiarism and quotations, and, finally, it is more than obvious that beauty is being confused with other phenomena, not necessarily of aesthetic or artistic nature. Writers who would be able to persuasively combine the philosophy of beauty with modern and contemporary art are in great scarcity. Hans G. Gadamer and Odo Marquard can be counted as the rare exceptions. They refrain from offering subjective redefinitions of beauty, but instead they re-evaluate the concept of beauty in keeping with the tradition of aesthetics. (shrink)