The beauty of harmony: Clues from Chinese aesthetics for contemporary art and art education

Art education can be a wonderful discipliine for teaching people how to see and shape the world and find aesthetic and humanistic meaning in life. In the past few decades, however, art education has failed to fulfill its best potential largely because of the polarized debate between the modernists and postmodernists, especially in regard to the (question of how the artistic self relates to the spiritual self within the context of a community. In my dissertation, the theoretical and practical possibilities of contemporary art education are explored through comparative studies of Western and Chinese aesthetics and art education theories. Art educators are the agents for change in the field. Thus, my main aim in this dissertation is to examine possibilities, and map out directions that reflect meaning and value in art for the improvement of art teacher education. There is much that Chinese aesthetic theory can contribute to the development of Western art. Similarly, there is much of value that China can learn from Western art. In this respect, an academic visit arranged by the Chinese art educator, Professor Guo, in which my Senior Supervisor Professor Richmond and :I visited three national academies of fine art in China in 2003 has become a preliminary cross-cultural dialogue between Western and Chinese art educators. Additionally, ideas and questions which came up for discussion during the academic visit have become a source for my dissertation; one key question is what are the possible solutions for offsetting the impact of globalization on contemporary art and art education? Perhaps, the Chinese concept of 'wholeness' (a vital theme in Chinese philosophy and aesthetics) and the approach of self-cultivation (a core theory in Chinese art and art education) would be potential prescriptions. A positive outcome of the interchange of ideas between Western and Chinese cultural tradition might be to retain the explorative energy of Western art controlled by the internal discipline of Chinese aesthetics with the aim of training oneself to be a good human being by tuning the self to live harmoniously with other people and in h~armony with the earth within the eternal cosmos.