Giving space to the unknown and transcendence – Art education as guardian of the child's authentic gesture

Abstract

AbstractThe main concern of this article is to introduce the concept of the authentic gesture as a vital, largely self-determined expression of the child and to make it fruitful for art education. Because of the assumed educational importance of the concept, some hints to other learning areas will also be given. This should be done from a historical and systematic perspective against the background of relevant literature, above all the German-language literature and some other important voices, in which a number of further leading ideas can be found and discussed. Explicated in this way, the concept at issue leads to the question of the unknown per se, to which art education and education in general should open itself. This means that education opens up to something that, in its material and/or social form, evades a final assessment. Something enigmatic thus comes into view, because the unknown, by definition, is beyond exact description and extern evaluation. However, in and for the modern world, it can be paraphrased with a secular approach of transcendence as an inner-psychic space which is withdrawn from instrumental intervention including educational intervention and which must be protected at all costs as a central condition of freedom and human dignity.