Artist Teacher | Master of Education @ UWS

Michael Corris has taken me to task in the letters page of Art Monthly about my article on the difference between teaching art and teaching the arts. Here’s my article, given the title “Teaching the Unteachable” when it was published.

Paul Kristeller, in his pioneering study of the historical formation of the ‘modern system of the arts’, says the modern belief that ‘Art cannot be learned, and thus often becomes involved in the curious endeavor to teach the unteachable’ was unknown to the ancients who equated art with skill understood as ‘something that can be taught and learned’. The difficulties and controversies associated with teaching art arise as a result of the transition from the various arts to the singular concept of art in general.
The various arts had always been ordered – the distinction between the Liberal and Vulgar arts is ancient – but the specifically modern ordering of…