The study of art education in the State Academy of Arts (based on minutes of the meetings held in 1926-1929)

Abstract

The study of art education in the State Academy of Arts (GAKhN, in Russian) is reconstructed based on the analysis of the minutes of the related commission meetings. It is proved that GAKhN scientists developed ideas of cultural-historical epistemology and raised some important methodological problems of the twentieth century. GAKhN research program stemmed from the tasks of art synthesis and relevant studies integration. The study art education in GAKhN served as an example of the problem-oriented communication of professionals and the development of the interdisciplinary study methodology. Within the stated problem a unique special research paradigm – a cultural-historical epistemology – evolved. The commission work on arts education was performed simultaneously in two directions – a historical reconstruction and current experimental studies. Therefore, art education was considered in two dimensions – as a psycho-technical phenomenon and as a cultural-historical phenomenon which gave the issue its multi-dimensionality and cognitive complexity inherent to post-nonclassical type of rationality. GAKhN findings involve the ideas of methodological synthesis similar to historical anthropology and history of everyday life studies of the second half of the twentieth century. The archival research shows that Russian cultural-historical psychology is connected not only with Vygotsky cultural-historical theory but with GAKhN cultural-psychological studies (including researches of I.P. Chetverikov), M.M. Rubinstein culture-activity approach and historical-anthropological studies of I.M. Grevs school.