Art Education: Exploring Dewey's Perspective on 20th-Century Art

This essay examines the evolution of art education, focusing on the influence of John Dewey's philosophy on 20th-century art. It explores Dewey's perspective on impressionism and the avant-garde, as well as his potential views on art movements he did not witness, including new media art. The essay highlights the integration of dance in museums and the impact of technology on artistic expression. It also discusses the role of education in shaping artistic techniques and providing new flavors to the arts. The versatility of contemporary dancers in exhibitions and the lasting cultural impact of new media arts are also discussed, providing a comprehensive overview of art education and its transformations.

ART EDUCATION

Arts and education has been the sectors which has gone through numerous and drastic
transformations since its discovery. Arts is one of the foundations which has been changing
with time and time has been providing it with some new flavours and colours which has
always enhanced it through each stage. Education has been the other ingredient of
enhancement and it has been providing different sectors with multiple options for
improvising and developing the techniques. Education being the creator of all the elements
has provided each segment with some innovative and creative techniques (Liao, 2016).
Though arts has a different perspective of education and arts has nothing to do with education
but education has been one of the factors which has been contributing arts and its
enhancements at every era. The technological usage in the arts has been the contribution of
the education sector. On the other hand, arts has been one of the factors which has provided
education with a feature of being organised and simple. On acknowledging “Dance in the
Museum writing” it has been observed that various artistic pieces has been described in
exhibitions such as Danser Sa Vie in Paris(2011), Dance/Draw at ICA Boston, and many
more, these has been providing with some extravagant choreographies (Chalmers, 2019). As
it has been mentioned that the works or pieces of arts has taken place under the auspicious act
of visual arts curatorial projects along with spaces which indicates how dance at this juncture
in history has become all but inescapable for the visual arts. This revels the foresight that the
ancestors had, even without being educated, they acknowledged the art of dancing and
different forms were also recognised which has been followed till date and it is expected to
continue. This also conveys that the people long back knew the transformation that would
take place in the future and had been presenting it in the formation in which they have been
excellent. The presentation has been such that it would last for 1000s of years and it could be
cherished by multiple generations. The absolute versatility in techniques and readiness to
perform that the contemporary dancer is trained in makes her a privileged worker for all sorts
of exhibitions (Gibson & Ifenthaler, 2017). As is well known, since Marina Abramovic’s
famous retrospective at MoMA, The Artist Is Present (2011), or Tino Segahl’s Kiss at the
rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (2011), dancers are the most usable
and expendable bodies available for work whenever “performance” needs to be activated.
The new media arts has been invented through the technological advancements and it also
carries a scope of lasting over many years, as the intentions of the pieces has been the same
that is to provide with immense culture to our future generations (Chalmers, 2019). The
description and the acknowledgement of John Dewey and arts in the 20th century has been

quite informative and it actually provided the basics which would help in framing the future
of arts.
References
Chalmers, F. G. (2019). Dragon Boats and Other Waka: Implications for Art Education in
Aotearoa/New Zealand. In Art, Culture, and Pedagogy (pp. 257-271). Brill Sense.
Chalmers, F. G. (2019). The origins of racism in the public school art curriculum. In Art,
Culture, and Pedagogy (pp. 17-28). Brill Sense.
Gibson, D. C., & Ifenthaler, D. (2017). Preparing the next generation of education researchers
for big data in higher education. In Big data and learning analytics in higher
education (pp. 29-42). Springer, Cham.
Liao, C. (2016). From interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary: An arts-integrated approach to
STEAM education. Art Education, 69(6), 44-49.