Art as Unlearning
Towards a Mannerist Pedagogy
Theorizing Education Series

Art as Unlearning makes an argument for art?s unlearning as a manneristpedagogy. Art?s pedagogy facilitates a form of forgetfulness by extending what happens in the practice of the arts in their visual, auditory and performative forms. The concept of learning has become predominantly hijacked by foundational paradigms such as developmental narratives whose positivistic approach has limited the field of education to a narrow practice within the social sciences. This book moves away from these strictures by showing how the arts confirm that unlearning is not contingent on learning, but rather anticipates and avoids it.

This book cites the experience and work of artists who, by unlearning the canon, have opened a diversity of possibilities by which we make and live the world. Moving beyond clichés of art?s teachability and what we have to learn through the arts, it advances a scenario where unlearning is uniquely presented to us by the diverse practices that we identify with the arts. The very notion of art as unlearning stems from and represents a fundamental critique of the constructivist pedagogies that have dominated arts education for over half a century.

This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education, philosophy of education, history of education, pedagogy of art and art education. It will also appeal to educators, art educators, and artists interested in the pedagogy of art.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Undoing Mona Lisa

Chapter 2: Art, doubt, and error

Chapter 3: Learning with art

Chapter 4: Art’s Deschooled Practice

Chapter 5: Willed forgetfulness

Chapter 6: Art’s false "ease"

Chapter 7: The ventriloquist’s soliloquy

Chapter 8: A mannerist pedagogy

John Baldacchino is Professor of Arts Education and the Director of the Division of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Focusing on art, philosophy and education, his books include Education Beyond Education (2009) Makings of the Sea (2010) Art’s Way Out (2012) and John Dewey (2014).