'Ema (Nude on a staircase)' pulls the reader into the mind of Ema, the young woman descending the staircase in Gerhard Richter's 1966 painting, 'Ema'. Ema is a young artist who wants to discover what her greatest form of creativity is. She embarks on a journey of awakening, a quest for mastery that brings her into dialogue with her teachers and with her great mentors, the artists Gerhard Richter, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. Ema explores her field, finds her own voice, considers the world an...

In this book, Gert Biesta presents a new approach to contemporary art education by showing the unique possibilities the arts offer to establish a dialogue with the world around us. This approach to art education is based on teaching as a process of showing, where the teacher shows the student what could be good, important or meaningful to master in the world. As a starting point for illustrating this method, the book proposes 'How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare' (1965) by Joseph Beuys, wh...

The innovation of higher education is incredibly important to the future of our society. In this volume, Jeroen Lutters traces the source of his pedagogical philosophy on higher education, the Free University of Bernard Lievegoed, founded in 1971. Fifty years after this alternative form of higher education was launched, the concept remains a crucial guideline for Lutters in creating a non-reductionist, de-disciplined, multi-level form of higher education. Essential reading for those looking f...

This inspiring book addresses questions such as: How can we become active within our own learning and unlearning process? What happens when we open to the wisdom of the body? Or for the knowledge that comes from conversations around the dinner table? How can we make time to really listen and not to understand? This publication is an invitation to deal openly and critically with numerous artistic learning methods such as making, listening, talking, researching, voting, asking questions and col...

'Ema (Nude on a staircase)' pulls the reader into the mind of Ema, the young woman descending the staircase in Gerhard Richter's 1966 painting, 'Ema'. Ema is a young artist who wants to discover what her greatest form of creativity is. She embarks on a journey of awakening, a quest for mastery that brings her into dialogue with her teachers and with her great mentors, the artists Gerhard Richter, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage. Ema explores her field, finds her own voice, considers the world an...