ABSTRACT
This chapter examines four different types of art education that have developed out of the European tradition since the seventeenth century, and how they have played a role shaping the contemporary art school. It begins by looking at the methods and underlying ideas of academy teaching. The models of teaching that followed can be understood as different responses to the constraints of academicism, which many came to find a deadening influence. These alternatives are the ‘masterclass,’ which became integrated into European art schools from the 1820s and drew inspiration in the master-apprentice relationships; ‘naturalist’ approaches, which from the mid-nineteenth century promoted the faithful portrayal of nature and recording of experience, and Modernist teaching, which developed at the Bauhaus in the 1920s before spreading to the US, Britain and elsewhere. The chapter looks at the different philosophies and concepts of art which motivated and shaped each of these models, and which in turn played a role in shaping art schools of today. This perspective will also help us to see that the contemporary art school is itself based in and motivated by culturally specific ideas and assumptions.
