MARXISM AND ART INSTRUCTION

Abstract

The focus of this article stems from the work of Observatory 2, which in recent years has been dedicated to analyzing art education and teacher training policies in the arts. Specifically, in this text, we begin by discussing the particular nature of art from a Marxist perspective, drawing on the works of Marx (2004), Fischer (1987), Vázquez (1978), and Lukács (2018) to challenge the liberal and idealist notion of “innate talent,” which remains prevalent in common understandings of art and its teaching. Next, we examine how the content of Visual Arts is constructed within school curricula, guided by the concept of the “classical” (Saviani & Duarte, 2016). This discussion is particularly important in light of neoliberal curriculum and teacher education policies, which have been reinforced by dominant pedagogical trends such as “learning to learn” and “cultural relativism” (Duarte, 2010; 2021). These trends have contributed to the increasing erosion of substantive educational content. We argue that the concept of the “classical” offers a way to reclaim the objectivity of art from a historical-dialectical perspective, helping to shape meaningful content in Visual Arts education.