The use and abuse of aestheticism. (Symposium: arts education from past to present).

Editor's note: This essay is the fifth in an occasional series on past treatments of major issues in arts education policy from antiquity through the twentieth century. Future essays will appear as occasion arises.

For most of human history, art was not art, as we know it in English, and there was no such thing as aesthetics at all. Artistic activities and artworks usually pointed beyond themselves to higher things. They honored the gods, the king, the harvest, the hunt, birth, death, morality, and so on. Traditional cultures--including the artistically rich culture of Bali ...

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