This paper highlights inadequacies of a creative arts curriculum that claimed to have been informed by postmodern theories, without careful consideration of how these might or should impact on teaching and learning interactions. In particular, the relationship between intentionality and interpretation addressed in this case study is of concern for…

In this essay, I argue that although philosophers of art have legitimately examined and emphasized the role of sight and hearing in respect to art appreciation, for the most part they have neglected the role of touch. I develop the idea that while sight and hearing form the melody line of art appreciation, touch is its bass line, one that is…

Five models of the accountability of artists are presented. They differ sharply, ranging from the view that art and artists are accountable to the public and the institutions that sponsor them to the view that art is a totally self-contained universe and that artists are responsible only to themselves. None of the models resolves this conflict.…

Article focused on the lack of information on the contemplative experience in dance. (Author/RK)

Briefly sketches what Britain's Arts Council does and discusses the problems it faces in evaluating the arts, the challenge to its practice of democratizing the arts, and, finally, its strategy for aesthetic education. (Paper presented at the Aesthetic Education Conference, London, September 1980.) (Author/SJL)

This paper makes two principal assertions: first, that Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria" is a valuable and hitherto neglected resource for aesthetic educators and, second, that the distinction Coleridge makes between fancy and imagination affords the aesthetic educator a unique insight into the differences between the popular and fine…

The medium-specificity thesis that says each art form has its own domain of expression and exploration is discussed. This thesis has significance for educational policy, e.g., when art forms try to form their own academic departments or divisions, they will assert their autonomy using medium-specificity arguments. (RM)

The Native American Church meeting is one contemporary inter-tribal form of the ancient peyote spiritual tradition, represented throughout much of North America. With its deeply integrated elements of artistic expression, the cultural context of the peyote ceremony affords an approach to the major issues of Native American aesthetics. Is some…

Aesthetics, as a distinctively "philosophical" exercise, whether with respect to research or to teaching, is supposed to be about the "theory/theories" that underpin the works of art in these various fields. Given this, "applied aesthetics" demands a preliminary explanation. First of all, the phrase might refer to an analysis of a particular work…

Article evaluated a leading aesthete, critic, teacher, and scholar who refused to submit to the canons of his age. (Author/RK)

Levi disputes Bell's belief (AA 511 929) that bourgeois culture has nothing intellectually respectable to counerpose to the adversary culture. (Editor)

The author maintains that art is a social product and that, in the teaching of or about the arts, the social setting in which the arts exist must be acknowledged. She discusses British developments in the sociology of art. (Paper presented at the Aesthetic Education Conference, London, September 1980.) (Editor/SJL)

A prevailing assumption of Western theorizing about art is that each work of fine art is to be attributed to a single individual, "the artist" who created it. Art education, particularly in art history, reflects this assumption. Despite the "New Art History" of the 1980s that revised and diversified the canon, education in art history remains a…

From philosophic literature, the author details six humanistic functions art can perform in modern Western society. He considers the ways that art can keep the imagination alive, preserve our capacity to form human relationships, bring order to the world, promote communality and continuity, and give a meaning to life. (SJL)

Using the theater as an example, four successive stages of affect can be distinguished in any work of art: detachment from ordinary life, enjoyment of the decorative aspects of the work, emotional enrichment through empathy with its content, and, finally, spiritual fulfillment through comprehension of its meaning. (Author/SJL)