ABSTRACT
Suppose a writer characterized art’s ‘postmodern condition’ in terms of ‘irony, parody, displacement, complexity, eclecticism…” (Jenks 1986:15). Or, more bluntly, claimed that for art, ‘Truth has been replaced by the twins “Relativity” and “Legitimation”’ (Burgin 1986:49). What should we make of this? On the face of it, both comments imply that remarks (‘criticism’1) about artworks cannot be true or false. Would this undermine the very possibility of arts education, by controverting any application of the idea of truth to art? Then, however education is explained, arts education cannot involve development of understanding, since truth and understanding are related. In part, the threats to arts education are familiar; and have been met: subjectivism-understood as the doctrine that ‘anything goes’, that there are no wrong ‘answers’ (McFee 1992a:21-38)—and relativism, understood as the possibility that two people in genuine disagreement might both be right (McFee 1992a:301-9).
