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Abstract
By exercising their autonomy—as free and intelligent beings—women and men make art by deed of their historicity as a dynamic social relation. This explains why, when we talk about art and education, we are talking about matters that we experience as being factually there, in their fullness and not as part of a universe of identical elements. However, this raises a question over the relationship between a critical and experiential approach to art, which, as Dewey would argue, would enhance the possibility of experimentation and pragmatic openness. But here we are challenged by a double bind between what is within (as immanence qua interiority) and that which is found outwith art as an autonomous form which, as an object that is made, equally relates to the outward experience that (a) is lived as art and (b) prompts us to make art.
While some would either dismiss this double bind or seek to resolve it, I would argue that the inherent aporia that this represents comes with a disclaimer, especially when we take a closer look at the relationship between art, experience and education, where neither education nor art could be construed as experience. This is where I would like to position my approach to Dewey’s Art as Experience. Using both text and image, I propose to critique an often-misconstrued interpretation of what he means by art as experience, and how this needs to be read in the context of other major books of his, notably Experience and Nature. Here I am proposing that we read Art as Experience in reverse.