Re-imagining the Art School: Paragogy and Artistic Learning

154 Pages·2019·1.711 MB·English

by  Neil Mulholland

CREATIVITY, EDUCATION AND THE ARTS
Re-imagining the
Art School
Paragogy and Artistic Learning
Neil Mulholland
Creativity, Education and the Arts
Series Editor
Anne Harris
School of Education
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
This series emerges out of recent rapid advances in creativity- and arts-
informed research in education that seeks to reposition creativity studies
within (and in conversation with) education as a multi- and interdiscipli-
nary field.
This series takes as its starting point the interrelationship between
arts-based research and a growing neuroscientific, cultural and economic
discourse of creativity and creative industries, and the need for education
to play a larger role in these expanding discourses. It also takes as a priori
an invitation to creativity scholars to move more robustly into theorizing
the work of arts- and creativity-based research work, bridging a histor-
ical gap between ‘science’ and ‘art’, between ‘theoretical’ and ‘applied’
approaches to research, and between qualitative and quantitative research
paradigms.
The following are the primary aims of the series:
• To publish creativity research and theory in relation to education
(including schools, curriculum, policy, higher education, pedagogy,
learning and teaching, etc.).
• To put education at the heart of debates on creativity, re-establish
the significance of creativity for learning and teaching and develop-
ment analyses, and forge links between creativity and education.
• To publish research that draws on a range of disciplinary and theo-
retical lenses, strengthening the links between creative and arts edu-
cation and geographies, anthropology, creative industries, aesthetics
and philosophy, history, and cultural studies.
• To publish creativity research and theory with an international
scope that explores and reflects the current expansion of thought
and practice about global flows, cultural heritage, and creativity and
the arts in education.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14926
Neil Mulholland
Re-imagining the Art
School
Paragogy and Artistic Learning
Neil Mulholland
Edinburgh College of Art
The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland
Creativity, Education and the Arts
ISBN 978-3-030-20628-4 ISBN 978-3-030-20629-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20629-1
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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Cover image: Light Bleeds: Bauhaus Hallway (2019) Photogram © Kim Coleman and
Caitlin Tomlinson
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S e ’ i
erieS ditor S ntroduction
It is my pleasure to welcome this new contribution by Neil Mulholland
to my Creativity, Education and the Arts book series here at Palgrave
Macmillan. The series seeks to deepen the conversation and synergies
between education, arts and the vast body of literature on creativity,
design, digital technology and creative industries, and creative econo-
mies. Neil Mulholland’s book does that beautifully, if indirectly.
Drawing from art history and in particular speaking back to the
humanist approach to the notion of ‘art school’ in the atelier tradition,
this book suggests new ways of approaching the pedagogy of art educa-
tion, and its central role in contemporary creativity discourses. The rich
detail and critical pedagogical approach adopted by Mulholland reminds
readers that what are now widely theorised as creative skills and capacities
have deep roots in the traditions of post-secondary visual art education
and design, through its structures, practices and epistemologies.
Most importantly for this series, Mulholland’s book leads us carefully
and critically through the multiplicity present in art education, and the
ways in which that multiplicity has positively and generatively impacted
contemporary notions of creative practice, creative education and the
market of so-called creative innovation. Mulholland’s primary focus here
is on the European tradition, which is appropriate to the flows of early
twenty-first-century creativity discourses as well. Readers will find in this
book a comprehensive and accessible account of the ways in which art
school practices have led and informed educational innovation past and
v
vi SERIES EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
present, and the ways in which its project still suggests comprehensive
skills-based and real-world training for a rapidly changing sociality and
workforce.
Enjoy this important new contribution to Creativity, Education and
the Arts, and celebrate with me the ways in which it suggests new ways of
looking at art in education in universities and beyond.
Melbourne, Australia Anne Harris
May 2019
For Jenny, Bo and Sonny.
P
reface
Why was this book written?
Re-imagining the Art School assesses the organisational development of
the humanist ‘idea of the art school’ from the post-rationalist perspec-
tives of constructivist and connectivist educational learning theory. It
examines how recent internal (‘porous’) and external (‘para’) reforms
have transformed the production of subjectivity in art schooling, and
pioneers the application of theories and methods of para-academia and
paragogy in art education.
The Bauhaus transformed art schooling in the early twentieth century
by embracing the latest reform movements in pedagogy. Over a century
later, many art schools are still, unwittingly, recycling its modernist ped-
agogy. While most art schools doggedly pursue self-knowledge, many
have adopted more porous approaches to resourcing and performing
artistic learning, supporting interdisciplinarity and mutuality.
Para-academia and the not-for-profit art world have challenged the per-
ennialism of the art school’s normative anti-curriculum and the market fun-
damentalism of the ‘ruined’ academy. Paragogy—tactics for peer-to-peer
learning—equally promises to transform twenty-first-century art education.
Considering para-academia and paragogy as tertiary art education’s con-
temporary reform movements, Re-imagining the Art School presents a set
of working principles that students and educators can adapt to compose
and perform their own curriculum.
ix
x PREFACE
Who is it for?
Re-imagining the Art School will be of primary interest to readers
engaged in contemporary post-secondary art education, where ‘art edu-
cation’ is broadly conceived as a form of organisational knowledge that
is reproduced in many facets of the artworld. The book’s readership
extends to educators working in any sphere interested in the organisation
of peer-to-peer learning practices.
Edinburgh, Scotland Neil Mulholland