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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DEWEYS AESTHETICS IN ART

EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Kazuyo Nakamura
Faculty of Education
Hiroshima University

Abstract. On the occasion of Deweys sesquicentennial anniversary, Kazuyo Nakamura explores

Deweys aesthetics, which holds the plurality of art and culture in high regard. Nakamura develops a
theoretical foundation for art education in the present age of globalization based on educational insights
drawn from Deweys aesthetics. The theme of this essay unfolds based on three topics: Deweys view
of the educational value of art in general education, the fundamental viewpoint of art in relation to
democracy, and the discussion of the educational aspect of individuality and community with respect
to the experience of art. Based on Deweys aesthetics, this essay presents new perspectives on art
education that emphasize the realization of personal values, development of intelligent visual literacy,
and enhancement of the quality of communication of art, in the context of globalization.

Introduction
In 1919, John Dewey was invited to lecture at the Imperial University in
Tokyo. Along with his wife, Alice, he traveled around Japan, visiting many
places.1 Their letters from Japan to their daughter Evelyn reveal their cosmopolitan
temperament, which was unusual at a time when Western empires were the main
agents of globalization. Instead of viewing Japanese culture from the standpoint
of their own culture, they attempted to understand and experience things for
what they were in Japan, as inherently Japanese.2 The letters also reveal their
serious interest in Japanese art and culture; during their short stint in Japan,
they participated in several tea ceremonies, visited Kabuki and Noh theaters, and
frequented museums and art stores.
Deweys attitude toward Japanese culture reveals the central place that artistic
and cultural pluralism occupies in his work on aesthetics; Deweys work in this
area can in fact be viewed as one of the most significant factors for advancing art
education on a global scale. On the occasion of the sesquicentennial anniversary
of Deweys birth, I intend in this essay to shed light on Deweys aesthetics by
attempting to gain a perspective on art education for schools in the present age of
globalization.
Scholars have noted that the globalization of our time is not a new
phenomenon. In the case of Japanese education, globalization was initiated in the
Meiji era (18681912), when schools underwent modernization through adopting
the Western system.
1. John Dewey and Alice C. Dewey, Letters from China and Japan (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1920).
2. For example, the letter they wrote on April 15 in Kyoto contains the following observation: The
paintings on the walls are mostly ruined, but the kakemonas and the screens and the makemonas, those
are wonderful and I am glad to say that we have got over seeing them as grotesque, and we feel their
beauty. Dewey and Dewey, Letters from China and Japan.
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Globalization at present is very different from the time when it implied

Westernization. Today, globalization is characterized by new global cultural
networks of interconnections and interdependence.3 This kind of globalization
has significantly transformed several aspects of educational practices. In Japan, for
example, these changes include an education network that extends beyond national
boundaries.4 This can be seen in the construction of foreign affiliated schools; the
accessibility of significant interactions with different cultures in schools, which
can be primarily attributed to the increased movement of people across national
borders; the increase in the number of international activities included in the
school curriculum; and the rising influence of global educational organizations
such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), conducted
by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).5
In this new situation, the normal activities comprising art education in schools
that pertain to globalization have expanded. The most pressing issue currently
facing the field of art education, however, concerns how these activities can be
carried out in ways that promote the formation of a personality type capable of
functioning well in a world of accelerated globalization. I attempt to tackle this
issue here by drawing insight from Deweys discussion on art, developed mainly
in his book Art as Experience. As noted in Philip Jacksons study, Dewey talked
about gaining an experience of art that is educative in nature.6 Further, Deweys
aesthetics addresses the educational aspects of individuality and community; he
devoted much effort to articulating a type of experience by means of which
an individual can develop an intimate relationship with the social and cultural
environment. Deweys aesthetics thus specifies a direction for art education that is
capable of enhancing human relationships and personalities in ways that improve
human life on a global scale, without lapsing into particularism or universalism.
The theme of this essay can be outlined in three stages. First, I consider
Deweys view of the educational value inherent in art; my purpose in this
discussion is to develop the view that art education plays an integral role in general
education within a global context. Second, I examine Deweys fundamental views
3. David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformation:
Politics, Economics and Culture (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999).
4. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Report of the Investigative
Commission on Promotion of International Education in Elementary and Secondary Education (2005),
http://www.mext.go.jp/b menu/shingi/chousa/shotou/026/houkoku/05080101/001.htm.
5. The new education policy stated in the course of study for elementary and secondary education
announced in 2008 was formed by taking into account PISA results.
6. Philip W. Jackson, If We Took Deweys Aesthetics Seriously, How Would the Arts Be Taught? in The
New Scholarship on Dewey, ed. Jim Garrison (London: Kluwer Academic, 1995); and Philip W. Jackson,
John Dewey and the Lessons of Art (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1998).
KAZUYO NAKAMURA is Associate Professor of Art Education at Hiroshima University, Kagamiyama
1-1-1, Higashi-hiroshima, 739-8524, Japan; e-mail <knakamur@hiroshima-u.ac.jp>. Her primary areas
of scholarship are aesthetic education and the philosophy of John Dewey.

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of art in relation to democracy in order to consider ways of advancing art education

in the age of globalization toward democratic ideals. Third, I explore the role of
individuality and community in Deweys aesthetics in relation to the notion of an
aesthetic experience. This is aimed at devising approaches to art education that
can prove effective in developing the childs ability to express him- or herself in
ways that can enhance the quality of the community in a context of globalization.

The Educational Value of Art

Deweys discussion of these issues in Art as Experience is constructed on
the platform of his empirical naturalism. He intended to open new possibilities
for human experience by reestablishing the continuity between meaning, value,
and spirituality, on one side, and the physical, biological, and sensuous, on
the other. He thus hoped to heal the break that occurred as a result of the
development of modernism. Dewey criticized several theories of art based on
dualism, including imitation theory, illusion theory, and cognitive theory. In
chapter 12, for example, which is entitled The Challenge to Philosophy, Dewey
took up Platos metaphor of a ladder and launches a critical attack on the idea
of a structure that involves successive rungs leading from raw sense experience
upward, but with no provision for returning from the highest stages where beauty
is encountered back to perceptual experience at the lowest stage.7 In order to
present an alternative to Platos account, Dewey sought to open up a new kind
of discourse about the experience of art as involving interpenetration of the
physical and biological aspects of human experience with those aspects that are
dependent on cultural influences (AE, 2829). Deweys naturalism is based on
the idea that the transformation of a biological organism can be realized through
cultural influences. Moreover, in Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, in the chapter
entitled The Existential Matrix of Inquiry: Cultural, Dewey stated that even
the neuro-muscular structures of individuals are modified through the influence
of the cultural environment upon the activities performed.8 Using Deweys view
about how human experience is constructed, the following observations about the
inherent qualities of art can be identified. They will provide valuable insights into
the processes involved.
One such insight is that the roots of art are found in the immediate experience
of the senses, through which humans develop relationships with the world and by
means of which the life of the biological organism emerges. Art stimulates emotion
and gives a qualitative unity to situations, thus allowing for the development of
the aesthetic experience. Dewey identified this quality as the emergence of nature
in the sense of habitual as well as in that of primitive and native (AE, 69), which
undergoes transformation by means of artistic expression.
7. John Dewey, Art as Experience (1934), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 19251953, vol. 10, ed.
Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 295296. This work will be
cited as AE in the text for all subsequent references.
8. John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 19251953,
vol. 12, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 49.

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In his essay Affective Thought, Dewey discussed the nature of art:

[T]he fact that the spectator and auditor click so intimately and intensely in the face of
works of art is accounted for. By their means there are released old, deep-seated habits or
engrained organic memories, yet these old habits are deployed in new ways, ways in which
they are adapted to a more completely integrated world so that they themselves achieve a new
integration. Hence the liberating, expansive power of art.9

Dewey described how the nature of art is to be found in the spirit of the artwork
itself because of its ability to enliven and animate the organism (AE, 197), and he
identified this ability as crucial in transforming what is habitual, primitive, and
native in relation to the organism.
Another important insight concerning the nature and experience of art is that it
stimulates an immediate development of imagination in the perceiver. According
to Dewey, the work of art has a unique quality, but it is that of clarifying and
concentrating meanings contained in scattered and weakened ways in the material
of other experiences (AE, 90). That is, art activates imagination by extracting the
essential elements from other experiences, some of which may have become lodged
in the subconscious, and then builds them up into a whole by consolidation in
order to obtain a single quality. Because of this power, art can thereby help to
enhance the perception of the qualitative world, which is something that ordinary
experience is unable to achieve. Dewey went on to explain that art enables us to
share vividly and deeply in meanings to which we had been dumb, or for which
we had but the ear that permits what is said to pass through in transit to overt
action (AE, 248). In contrast to simply being about presentation and description,
from this perspective the function of art is more about an expansion in which
meaning is fully realized through a process of heightened awareness.
Deweys thoughts on the nature of art can also be found in his major educational works, such as The School and Society and Democracy and Education,10 as
well as in shorter essays on art education, including Imagination and Expression,
Art in Education, and Appreciation and Cultivation.11 Taking into account
the ability of art to arouse emotion and imagination, Dewey proposed that art
should not be treated as an educational luxury, included only in a superficial way as
part of the school curriculum; it should instead play a significant role in the development of a critical eye by means of which the individual can come to appreciate
9. John Dewey, Affective Thought (1926), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 19251953, vol. 2, ed.
Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984), 107108.
10. John Dewey, The School and Society (1900), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 18991924, vol. 1, ed.
Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976); and John Dewey, Democracy
and Education (1916), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 18991924, vol. 9, ed. Jo Ann Boydston
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980).
11. John Dewey, Imagination and Expression (1896), in John Dewey: The Early Works, 18821898,
vol. 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972); John Dewey, Art
in Education (1911), in John Dewey: The Middle Works, 18991924, vol. 6, ed. Jo Ann Boydston
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978); and John Dewey, Appreciation and Cultivation
(1931), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 19251953, vol. 6, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1985).

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many types of value. An especially significant aspect of Deweys account is his

identification of the emergence of emotion as evidence of personal participation.12
When emotion is transformed into a sense of meaning, the quality of the emotion
is enhanced as appreciation of value. This enhancement leads to a refinement of
personality. Dewey explained this more explicitly as follows: Transformation of
the coarser, instinctively organic emotions into subtler and more delicate forms,
of the glaring hues of black and white, red and green, into variegated tints and
shades, is a large part of the process of refinement of personality.13
Dewey went on to discuss the significance of this emotional dimension, both
in relation to the development of the personality and in terms of the context of
the entire curriculum, by launching a critical attack on learning and teaching
that fails to take account of the desires and emotions of the child. He stated in
Democracy and Education that the formation of habits is a purely mechanical
thing unless habits are also tastes habitual modes of preference and esteem,
an effective sense of excellence.14 In his essay Appreciation and Cultivation,
Dewey further maintained that the trouble is that material is not committed
to heart; it is only entrusted to some portion of the cerebrum. In consequence,
personal cultivation is not attained.15
For Dewey, the emotional and appreciative phase of learning and teaching is
an integral part of the formation of personality that should play a part in every
type of school activity. In this sense, Dewey, among others, argued that since art
contributes to increasing the power of appreciation, it should be a vital part of
general education.

Deweys Fundamental Viewpoints on Art in Relation to Democracy

Although Dewey did not discuss art directly in relation to democracy,
he nevertheless compared the attitude of the individual who embodies the
democratic ideal to that of a creative artist. Thus, the basic principles pertaining
to Deweys aesthetics correspond with those concerning his theory of democracy.
When discussing democracy, Dewey emphasized the development of human
relationships and personality rather than any political or governmental form.
This approach becomes more pronounced in his later works, for example, in
such essays as Democracy and Educational Administration and Creative
Democracy The Task Before Us.16 Dewey therefore considered in detail how
personal attitudes are formed that determine desire and purpose in all aspects of
life, as is evident in the following observation: In any case we can escape from this
12. Dewey, Appreciation and Cultivation, 113.
13. Ibid., 114.
14. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 244.
15. Dewey, Appreciation and Cultivation, 115.
16. John Dewey, Democracy and Educational Administration (1937), in John Dewey: The Later
Works, 19251953, vol. 11, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987);
and John Dewey, Creative Democracy The Task Before Us (1939), in John Dewey: The Later Works,
19251953, vol. 14, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988).

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external way of thinking only as we realize in thought and act that democracy is a
personal way of individual life; that it signifies the possession and continual use of
certain attitudes, forming personal character and determining desire and purpose
in all the relations of life.17 In order to realize this kind of democracy through
pursuing a personal way of individual life, Dewey specified three conditions:
faith in the capacities of human nature, faith in the capacity of human beings
for intelligent judgment and action, and faith in personal day-by-day working
together with others. On the basis of these faiths, Dewey explained how art
should be regarded.
Regarding faith in the capacities of human nature, Dewey clarified what
equality means. He stated that it lies not in natural endowment but in the
opportunity for developing ones own capacities.18 This idea, which is also reflected
in his aesthetics, suggests that, instead of emphasizing natural talent, as it is found
in the genius or preternatural capacities (as a potential source of creation), the
active involvement of the individual should take precedence.
From the standpoint of Deweys empirical naturalism, which defines experience as a matter of the interaction of the organism with its environment (AE,
251), the individual who determines how the interaction is to proceed constitutes
a significant factor in the creation of an object of art. In other words, the creation
of an object of art is the outcome of an experience conditioned by the individuals
reactions and responses to his or her environment. Likewise, in the appreciation
of a work of art, the individual plays an active role as a participant in contributing
to its meaning and value.
With respect to faith in human intelligence, Dewey argued that freed intelligence is necessary for freedom of action to be merited and directed.19 Reflecting
on this, he highlighted the operation of intelligence in both the productive and
appreciative activities of art by showing how the artist thinks as intently and
deliberately as a scientific inquirer would. In contrast to the traditional view
that defines thinking as dependent on mediated symbols, Dewey characterized
thinking in terms of relations between and among qualities. He added that this
type of thinking is typically found in the work of the artist:
To think effectively in terms of relations of qualities is as severe a demand upon thought
as to think in terms of symbols, verbal and mathematical. Indeed, since words are easily
manipulated in mechanical ways, the production of a work of genuine art probably demands
more intelligence than does most of the so-called thinking that goes on among those who
pride themselves on being intellectuals. (AE, 52)

Contrary to the traditional view, Deweys view of intelligence demands the

interrelated operation of emotion, actions, and judgments. In the field of art
17. Dewey, Creative Democracy, 226.
18. Dewey, Democracy and Educational Administration, 219220.
19. Ibid., 220.

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education, David Ecker and Elliot Eisner are among those who have explored this
kind of intelligence.20
Faith in cooperation is reframed as faith in peace. Dewey believed in the
possibility of cooperative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the
other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by the forceful
suppression of the other.21 The basis for this faith is to be found in Deweys
view of aesthetics, whereby the work of art exists as a language for the expression
of the other. Such a language involves a triadic relation between the artist, the
artwork, and the perceiver that realizes a communicative perspective beyond that
of the artists private experience. Dewey argued that an artwork such as a temple,
painting, or statue is not the work of art (AE, 167). It becomes the work of art
only insofar as it operates within the experience of others, and it is the perceivers
relationship with the product that is crucial; the artist, the product, and the
perceiver are therefore all reciprocally related within the creation of the work of art.
In addition, Dewey described the quality by means of which art is able to
communicate:
Art is the extension of the power of rites and ceremonies to unite men, through a shared
celebration, to all incidents and scenes of life. This office is the reward and seal of art. That
art weds man and nature is a familiar fact. Art also renders men aware of their union with one
another in origin and destiny. (AE, 275)

Because of this uniting power, Dewey considered art as a valuable aid in breaking
down physical isolation and transforming the mechanical aspects of human
relationships. Rather than remaining isolated from one another as a consequence
of their membership in sects, races, nations, and classes, individuals are enabled to
communicate and participate with greater understanding within a larger society
as they acquire the language of art.22

Individuality and Community in ART AS EXPERIENCE

Deweys thoughts on the educational value of art developed while he served as
the director of the University of Chicagos Laboratory School from 1896 to 1904.23
They are expressed in essays and books related to his work in schools, including
The School and the Society and Democracy and Education. After meeting and
developing a friendship with Albert C. Barnes, an art collector and critic, Dewey
20. See, for example, David W. Ecker, The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving, Journal of
Aesthetic Education 21, no. 3 (1963): 283290; and Elliot Eisner, Educating Artistic Vision (New York:
Macmillan, 1972).
21. Dewey, Creative Democracy, 228.
22. The theme of art and the development of civilization is discussed in chapter 12, Art and
Civilization, in Deweys Art as Experience.
23. For the development of Deweys theory of art education, see the following essays: Kazuyo Nakamura,
Theory and Practice of Art Education in the Dewey School (1), Journal for Society of Art Education in
University 36 (2004): 289296; and Theory and Practice of Art Education in the Dewey School (2): The
Critical Analysis of Lillian Cushmans Practice of Art Education, Journal for Society of Art Education
in University 37 (2005): 295302.

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expanded and elaborated his ideas.24 The result was Art as Experience, published
in 1934. In this work, the topic of individuality and community which is a
major issue in Deweys philosophy of democracy is explored in relation to the
experience of art.
In Art as Experience, experiences that produce a refinement of personality
are characterized as aesthetic, and the issue of individuality and community is
built into the discussion of the experience. Dewey argued that art is a language
integral to the development of human relationships, since artistic experience
produces creative and constructive outcomes rather than mechanical repetition
of the past. He described the structure of artistic experience as follows: Without
an act of recreation the object is not perceived as a work of art. The artist
selected, simplified, clarified, abridged and condensed according to his interest.
The beholder must go through these operations according to his point of view and
interest (AE, 60).
This statement indicates that in order to be creative, the experience of the
perceiver of art must involve activities that are similar to those of the producing
artist. That is, an experience that is aesthetic cannot be produced solely by a
perceiver, a work of art, or the artist, since each is related to the others and
must necessarily work in unison. In this sense, when experience acquires certain
features (which will be described in what follows), it is transformed into an
aesthetic experience. This, in turn, leads to the enrichment of individuality and
community.
One constitutive feature of aesthetic experience relates to the concept of
an inclusive qualitative whole, which cannot be distinguished in terms of
units and is pervasive when an individual interacts with an artwork; it is a
qualitative unity that operates and controls the form of the interaction (AE, 196).
Dewey characterized this quality as emotionally intuited, impressive, and
immediately experienced, and he emphasized that this quality can only be
felt.
This type of experience is therefore mainly about the quality of the entire
interaction. It is not that the individual has an experience, to which is added the
objective elements of the situation where the real interaction supposedly takes
place. In this situation the various elements are emotionally colored and become
integrated into a whole by a single quality. Since this quality is identified as the
quality of the individuals life, it operates not only in the present situation but also
determines future activities. Sustaining this quality is essential because it forms
the foundation out of which the individuals personality can be refined.
As this interaction proceeds, the individual viewpoint or purpose takes its
shape from this quality. The quality is modified and refined into an experience
24. Barnes based his theory of art criticism on Deweys educational theory. With regard to this point,
see Kazuyo Nakamura, A Study on Educational Art Criticism: The Influence of Deweys Thought on
the Art Theory of Albert C. Barnes, Bulletin of John Dewey Society of Japan 47 (2006): 125134.

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in which unification and discrimination are conditioned by a series of intelligent

judgments and perceptions.25 The crucial point in terms of the refinement of a
persons personality is that the purpose of the individual as a unifying point is
formed in relation to what actually exists as a characteristic in a work of art,
rather than something that is accidentally present (AE, 318). Dewey specified that
there is not just a single unifying point to be found in a work of art. There are
instead many unifying points, and their number depends on the complexity of the
work in question and on two conditions that must be met for the articulation of
such a unifying point: One of them is that the theme and design which interest
selects be really present in the work, and the other is the concrete exhibition
of this supreme condition: the leading thesis must be shown to be consistently
maintained throughout the parts of the work (AE, 318). Although Dewey did not
explicitly discuss the matter in Art as Experience, it is clear that such unifying
points are essential if there is to be a connection between the artist and the
perceiver.
Furthermore, in order to develop an aesthetic experience, the medium of the
work of art must be taken into account as a mediator a go-between linking the
artist with the perceiver (AE, 204). Unlike raw materials, the medium is where the
artists mind and materials intersect. In contrast to other forms of communication,
art is a language of expression with the special purpose of enhancing the immediate
experience. The value of art should not therefore be reduced to other kinds of
values, and Dewey directed his criticism at theories of art that fail to take account
of the medium. When criticisms made by historians, physiologists, biographers,
or psychologists fail to take account of the medium, Dewey regarded this as a
confusion of categories and a great fallacy in art criticism. Dewey also criticized
the way some art criticism isolates the individual characteristics of a work of art,
such as technique and formal elements, from the whole form. For Dewey, this
kind of criticism involves a reductive fallacy.
In addition, the operation of intelligence that demands judgment is necessary
for producing an aesthetic experience. Dewey argued that judgment is not aimed at
making comparisons by means of an external preestablished rule, but at gaining
critical insight into qualities-in-qualitative-relations (AE, 312). Moreover, the
grounds for judgment lie in the temperament and the personal history of the
individual. In this context, in order to avoid the possibility of a mere personal
impression, Dewey offered criteria by which judgment can be gauged. They include
the discussion of form in relation to matter, meaning of medium in art, and
nature of the expressive object (AE, 313). With these elements serving as criteria,
the perception of the constituent parts is critical in relation to the whole, and
this critical perception includes discovering how consistently constituent parts
are related to the whole form as well as determining the balance of the parts in
the context of the whole. Furthermore, in order to increase the perception of the
25. Intelligent judgment and perception are discussed in chapter 13, Criticism and Perception, in
Deweys Art as Experience.

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intent of the artist and the adequacy of his or her execution of intent, the traditions
to which the work subscribes should be identified. In this regard, Dewey viewed
tradition as an organized habit of vision and of methods of ordering and conveying
material (AE, 270). The artists intent should be discovered not just from a single
work, but from a succession of works that portrays his or her development over
time.
This experience, which is developed through a series of intelligent judgments
and perceptions on the part of the perceiver, is part of the process of formation
of his or her own personality (AE, 7678). That is, a scheme of the interaction
of the individual, which consists of relations of elements of the past experience,
is transformed in ways that lead to the realization of a new scheme. For Dewey,
individuality itself is originally a potentiality and is realized only in interaction
with surrounding conditions. In this process of intercourse, native capacities,
which contain an element of uniqueness, are transformed and become a self
(AE, 286).
Dewey discussed different levels of selfhood; some are deeply embedded, while
others exist on the surface and are thus easily displaced. Art drives impulses. In
the operation of impulses those at a deeper level may rise to the surface where
significant ones may be selected and unrelated ones rejected. In this process
something meaningful is compressed and intensified, and a new relationship of
elements relating to past experiences is thereby constructed. This procedure is
more than placing something on the top consciousness over what was previously
known (AE, 48), and may become a source of pain as a result of resistance against
such a construction.
When the various elements available from past experiences and a present
situation are linked in a single whole, a consummation phase arrives that is
embodied in a sense of satisfaction related to direct perception. This implies that
a self-sufficient experience has taken a course that has its own individualizing
quality; a new vision is perfected that determines how future perception operates.
Dewey described this as follows: The eye is the sense of distance not just
that light comes from afar, but that through vision we are connected with
what is distant and thus forewarned of what is to come. Vision gives the
spread-out scene that in and on which, as I have said, change takes place
(AE, 241). In contrast to the physiological definition of sense experience, vision
here means an insight that cannot be separated from the very personality of the
individual, and which has been built up by cumulative experiences concerning
actual feeling.
As we have seen, the experience of art is a process of gaining insight into
the personal vision of the other; through such a process the individual deepens
his or her relationship with the other. The experience of art thus is a process
of creating a human community. Dewey described the nature of this formation,
where friendship becomes intimate and tinged with affection, as an outcome
that concerns not just information about another person, but sympathy gained
through imagination as well. This sympathetic understanding is explained as

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follows: when the desires and aims, and the interests and modes of response
of another become an expansion of our own being then we understand him
(AE, 339). For Dewey, an ideal community is characterized as a way of sharing
through an expansion of the life-attitude of the individual. Experience of the
art of other cultures is advanced in a similar way, which Dewey explained as
follows:
To some degree we become artists ourselves as we undertake this integration, and, by bringing
it to pass, our own experience is re-oriented. Barriers are dissolved, limiting prejudices melt
away, when we enter into the spirit of Negro or Polynesian art. This insensible melting is far
more efficacious than the change effected by reasoning, because it enters directly into attitude.
(AE, 337)

This process leads to the formation of a more comprehensive vision, beyond a

narrow-minded and local outlook, through wedding elements of art from different
cultures with the life-attitude of the individual. The formation of such a capacity
depends on increasing the power to understand what is unfamiliar, that is, what
derives from another situation or novel condition.
Experiencing art in this way helps form the individual and develops
a relationship with the other by way of imagination. Dewey distinguished
imagination from fantasy and reverie, which do not involve any contact with
materials in a public world. He defined imagination as conscious activities that
are aroused during interaction of the individual with the environment. Imagination
is a characteristic of human behavior, and is not found in nonhuman animal or
vegetable lives. It is by the conscious adjustment of the new and the old through
imagination that we are capable of going beyond the mechanical, the routine,
and the inertia of habits. Through imagination, we can foresee the unknown,
extend value and meaning obtained from the past, and reconstruct the past by
constructing something novel.

Changing Perspectives on Art Education in the Age of Globalization

Deweys aesthetics, being democratic and educational in nature, helps us
clarify which direction we should take in order to carry forward art education in
schools in the face of contemporary globalization. In terms of cultivating a vision
of a personal way of life appropriate in the age of globalization, art education based
on Deweys aesthetics would have the following objectives: It will attempt to
create a common ground between the childs local visual culture and the broader
visual culture rather than making a distinction between the local and the global,
the particular and the universal, or the childs world and the world of art. It
will also attempt to open up ways for both the individual and the community to
develop as a consequence of interaction with art in a particular global context.
The first objective is to cultivate the functioning of the childs emotion
and imagination in such a way that the quality of the childs image of value
is enhanced; this image is the basis for creating the individuals perspective
on how to live. Todays accelerated globalization has expanded the space where
multiple cultural values intersect not only at the global, regional, and international
levels, but also on a daily basis at the local level through media and modern

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communication technology.26 It is in this context that some scholars are concerned

that globalization may turn into a process of homogenization of cultures, where
one carelessly accepts the values created by more powerful cultures instead of
remaining firm and creating ones own values in order to live an authentic life.27
To counteract this negative aspect of globalization, art education, as Dewey
suggested, should be recognized as a major factor in the formation of personal
values, and thus an essential component of general education. It should seek to
activate the childs feelings, taking into consideration the temperament and life
history of the child, and helping the child to develop an image of value that is
expressed by those feelings.
Currently, in art education, there is still a tendency to give universal
values as exemplified by masterpieces from mostly Western and domestic
art priority over the particular values of the child and the local visual culture.
Instead, art education should begin from, and end in, the visual culture of the
child and encourage the child to create original art and an image of value through
constructive dialogue with a broader visual culture. In other words, the local
culture of the child should be recognized in the classroom and actively applied to
the creation and appreciation of art. For example, in the case of a Chinese child
creating a Japanese Jomon clay pot at a school where Japanese culture is dominant,
the child would be encouraged to transform the original form by using Chinese
symbols instead of merely reproducing it. In such a process, the child enriches his
or her own visionary world by expressing the creative spirit in the Jomon artifacts.
The second objective is to develop intelligent visual literacy, which involves
critical perception and judgment of the qualitative world and is transferable to
diverse art forms. As globalization progresses, the overlap between diverse visual
cultures increases. This fosters the emergence of a large number of new types
of art that cannot be ascribed to a specific genre or a clearly defined culture.28
Considering this state of globalization, art education should be geared toward
developing a type of visual literacy that is effective in interacting intelligently
with art unlike anything encountered before, and in making judgments about the
artistic and human values residing in the work of art. Deweys aesthetics helps us
gain insight into this kind of intelligence.
It is often the case in art class that the child is asked to recognize cultural
or stylistic features of a work of art without taking into account the individual
quality of the piece. There is a tendency to pay attention only to technical and
formal aspects of art, as well as abstract concepts of art, apart from the artists
judgments in creation. In the face of globalization, it is ever more critical in art
26. John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
27. David Held, ed., A Globalizing World? Culture, Economics, Politics (London: Routledge/Open
University Press, 2000).
28. Marilyn Stokstad, Art History, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2002),
11241187.

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Deweys Aesthetics in Art Education

education to consider an individuals judgments operating in a particular situation

rather than that persons fund of knowledge and information.
This type of art education centers on questions such as these: How is the intent
of the artist realized in the design of the work? What type of problem does the artist
tackle in what type of situation? What are the key judgments the artist made in the
process of creating his or her art? How did the intent of the artist and style of the art
develop over the course of a lifetime? Take, for example, a case of learning about the
art of Henri Matisse, with whom Dewey was associated and to whom he referred
in his work on aesthetics. In an art lesson on his representative artwork the Dance
mural, the child could study several photographs of his work in progress and discuss
Matisses points of concern, and what trials and errors he made in the process of
completing the work.29 It is more important for the child to pay attention to the
situational judgments of Matisse in the process of creation than it is for him or her
to gain knowledge of historical facts and stylistic features. Through speculating on
the operation of the artists qualitative intelligence, as well as focusing attention
on the work of intelligence in creating his or her own art, the child is expected to
develop the ability to gain meaningful interaction with diverse forms of art.
The third objective is to cultivate a type of communication through art
that creates a common ground with the other while paying serious attention
to differences from the other. Unlike the modern globalization advanced by
European empires, in our own time we celebrate the multiplicity of cultures
as a key factor in the development of visual culture on the global level. The
quality of communication becomes crucial to this development as well as to the
enhancement of relations among different cultures. Art education in the future
should consider what form of communication is more productive.30 Deweys
aesthetics helps us articulate this type of communication: communication is not
the activity of conforming to the other and thus losing individuality, but rather
the activity of expanding and deepening ones horizon through reconstructing the
internal elements of ones own viewpoint in such a way that emotional ties with
the other are developed.
Art education that emphasizes the various aspects of cooperative undertaking
in creation would require the child to share viewpoints and emotions with the other
and to pay attention to reciprocal relations among different cultures. For example,
in an art lesson on Katsushika Hokusais The Great Wave, a famous Japanese
woodblock print, the child would learn that Hokusai not only studied the Kano
art tradition in Japan, but also studied Dutch engravings.31 Hokusai transformed
his art horizon by integrating something foreign into his art. Furthermore, the
29. For the development of The Dance mural, see Jack Flam, Matisse: The Dance (Washington, D.C.:
National Gallery of Art, 1993).
30. Ralph A. Smith, Excellence II: The Continuing Quest in Art Education (Reston, Virginia: National
Art Education Association, 1995), 115137.
31. Kiyoshi Shibui and Sadao Kikuchi, Masterpieces of Ukiyo-E Prints Series 5: Hokusai (Tokyo: Shuei
Co., 1971).

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child would learn that this type of art influenced paintings by the Impressionists
in Europe and America. Such learning is expected to enhance the childs sense
of continuity between different cultures and the importance of the other in
constructing a new form.
Although these objectives and approaches may not be entirely novel, by
focusing the direction of art education toward the ideals of Deweyan democracy,
art education can contribute to the transformation of globalization so that both
existing human relationships and individual personalities can find places in a
broader human landscape. I think this is within the scope of the realizable, and is
a worthwhile pursuit in art education.

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