PERFORMANCE ART TEACHING AS A NEW PEDAGOGY

The Problem. The importance of conceptualizing performance art as a new pedagogy is as follows: (1) to help contemporary art educators become aware of the role that performance art has played in changing the function of visual art; (2) to describe and interpret the meaning of those changes; and (3) to discuss the implications of performance art for art teaching. The major concepts that were employed to differentiate traditional models of art teaching from performance art are: empathy, antipathy, adolescent cognition, and a paradigm shift in art.;Antipathy. Conceptual contradictions (antipathy) are used in performance art to divert the viewer's attention from sensory qualities to operations of the mind. The awareness of conceptual contradictions demonstrates a student's ability to experience the principles of performance art. Gablik's (1973) principles of surrealism; Koestler's (1975) "underground games"; and, Rothenberg's (1979) "janusian" and "homospatial" formulations substantiate the importance of conceptual contradictions in creative thinking.;Adolescent Cognition. The five traditional models of art teaching emphasize the sensory functions of visual art, and do not exploit the specific cognitive abilities of the adolescent. High school students, having progressed in their cognitive abilities from the concrete sensory functions of early childhood, are capable of processing information on an abstract conceptual level--what Piaget refers to as the "formal operational level" (Flavell, 1963). Rather than limiting adolescent art education to the sensory functions of traditional visual art, performance art teaching specifically challenges and develops the abstract thinking capacities of the adolescent.;Paradigm Shift in Art. Thomas Kuhn's (1970) conception of scientific progress provides a model with which to understand the nature of performance art and to relate it to the new found cognitive abilities of adolescents. The activities of the Futurists, the Dadaists, and other 20th century movements comprise a structure of revolutions in visual art which gave birth to the performance art model of self-expression. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.;Empathy. It is empathy, the capacity to respond to sensory qualities that enables us to experience art visually (Feldman, 1972). Five traditional models of art teaching are identified in this dissertation. They include: The Beaux Arts model, the vocational training model, the arts and crafts model, the Bauhaus model, and the child-centered model. These traditional models of art teaching have depended on empathy as their primary aesthetic function, thus limiting the experience of art to visual functions.