Art as Unlearning

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).

• Introduction Chapter 1: Undoing Mona LisaChapter 2: Art, doubt, and errorChapter 3: Learning with artChapter 4: Art’s Deschooled PracticeChapter 5: Willed forgetfulnessChapter 6: Art’s false "ease"Chapter 7: The ventriloquist’s soliloquyChapter 8: A mannerist pedagogy

"In this provocative collection of writings, John Baldacchino articulates his concept of unlearning in relation to art and education. A mannerist pedagogy is advocated and unfolded as each chapter explores the relationships between art, philosophy and learning, engaging the reader into processes wherein art becomes a form of unlearning and learning becomes a form of art. Artists, art teachers, and teachers alike will find this a rewarding read."Jan Jagodzinski, Professor Visual Art and Media Education, University of Alberta. Author of What is Art Education? After Deleuze and Guattari."Baldacchino makes an insightful and compelling case for unlearning and willed forgetfulness as creative dispositions through which the events of art and its education resist and endure foundational assumptions and representations of learning. Contrary to the linearity of developmental and constructivist modes, unlearning problematizes teleological objectives of knowledge acquisition and instead embraces the contingencies and immanent potentialities of paradoxical thought. His positioning unlearning alongside 16th and 17th century European Mannerist art and culture does not repeat and romanticize the past, but provides an historical association when canonical thought was once challenged, destabilized, and opened to the differential possibilities of life."Charles R. Garoian, Professor Emeritus of Art Education, Pennsylvania State University.