The Role of Difficult Art-works in Teaching to be Critical

The difficult art-work is not formally considered an appropriate part of today's arts curriculum, as a glance at authorised classroom resource lists quickly confirms. By excluding from formal compulsory education the conceptual challenges offered by difficult work such as the poetic experiments of the Dadaists or the book-works and textual interventions of contemporary artists, we encourage a closed concept of art and can hardly be surprised at public outcries against avantgarde invention. This paper argues for the inclusion of difficult art-works in the secondary-school arts curriculum. George Steiner's four levels of poetic difficulty are used as a way of demonstrating which difficulties are included in the curriculum and which are peculiar to art-works but rarely studied. Examples of classroom applications are used to illustrate each of Steiner's four levels of difficulty: contingent, modal, tactical and ontological. It is argued that ontological difficulty distinguishes many of the art-works that have evoked public indignation and outrage; they ask blank questions and thereby challenge conventional concepts of art. This ontological difficulty is considered in light of Immanuel Kant's concept of aesthetic/reflective judgement and the discussion is brought full-circle with the question: If engagement with difficult art-work fits Kant's description of how aesthetic judgement postulates "a universal voice about a liking unmediated by concepts", how can secondary-school arts education neglect the conceptual difficulty of modem works and claim it is teaching art in its unique capacity for teaching to be critical?