Book Review: Wicked Arts Education: Designing Creative Programmes

Wicked Arts Education : Designing Creative Programmes

Book by Emiel Heijnen, Folkert Haanstra, and Melissa Bremmer

Authors: Melissa Bremmer, Emiel Heijnen, Folkert Haanstra
Co-editor: Sanne Kersten
Design: Laura Pappa

Valiz, November 2024 | supported by Amsterdam University of the Arts | Pb | 192 pp. | 22 x 15 cm (h x w) | English | ISBN 978-

94-93246-38-6 | € 22,50

It was hard to summarize Wicked Arts Education: Designing Creative Programmes down to a few words. There were so many inspirational talking points and references that I immediately came up with a plethora of ideas for panels, lectures, or class discussions. The book maintains depth, clarity, and an intellectual orientation toward autonomy, sovereignty, and curriculum as lived practice. Wicked Arts Education, WAE, is a pedagogical text developed by Emiel Heijnen, Folkert Haanstra, and Melissa Bremmer, published by Valiz with support from the Amsterdam University of the Arts. The book examines how a Visual Arts curriculum can be structured to foster independent thinking, self-direction, and personal ownership of the arts. Wicked Arts Assignments is a project of the Research Group Arts Education of the Amsterdam University of the Arts. “The project reflects the oeuvre of contemporary arts educators around the world.” Collectively, participants, students, and pupils can produce work of grand proportions.

The Death of Socrates, Jacques Louis David (French, Paris 1748–1825 Brussels), 1787, Oil on canvas, 51 x 77 1/4 in. (129.5 x 196.2 cm), Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

Young Ladies of the Village, Gustave Courbet (French, Ornans 1819–1877 La Tour-de-Peilz), 1851–52, Oil on canvas, 76 3/4 x 102 3/4 in. (194.9 x 261 cm), Gift of Harry Payne Bingham, 1940, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

The term “wicked” refers to assignments that do not have a singular correct outcome. These assignments demand improvisation, interpretation, and self-governance. In my mind, the term reminds me of the Chanel Fall/Winter 2010 Collection. It would have passed by any other online viewer’s eye, had I not been working at an Atelier that Summer. The day of my interview, I remember wearing a white shirt, white shorts, and a Barney’s tie as a belt. I had also seen this woman across the street while I was biking back home. She was wearing a blue-and-white striped dress and a fantastic bracelet. I was so inspired that I immediately went home and wrote a short French poem about a Wicked woman hailing a cab, and I posted it on the art tech blog I was working on post-graduate. Flabbergasted, to even the tiniest degree of possibilities and dreams, that there might be a possibility that Karl Lagerfeld knew who I was or about my work, the core question, like that of the text, was: How to be authentically creative in a way that cultivates independent financial agency rather than being constantly overshadowed?

Madame Georges Charpentier (Marguerite-Louise Lemonnier, 1848–1904) and Her Children, Georgette-Berthe (1872–1945) and Paul-Emile-Charles (1875–1895), Auguste Renoir (French, Limoges 1841–1919 Cagnes-sur-Mer), 1878, Oil on canvas, 60 1/2 x 74 7/8 in. (153.7 x 190.2 cm), Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1907, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

I. Why “Wickedness” Matters in Arts Education

As outlandish as it may seem, the possibility that I was either forecasting the right trends or discreetly well-connected was confirmed by the partnership between Chanel and Cambridge University, whose publishing house I was working for before the program's announcement. Traditional art education focused on apprenticeships that taught technique, historical knowledge, and critique. While these are valuable for developing a particular kind of mastery, they can create a dynamic in which the task is to impress, replicate, or validate existing standards. That is why I focused on apprenticeship theory rather than a regular internship at the time, because learning is a never-ending, more rewarding process in the long term. Wicked Arts Education, WAE, made me recognize the shift, changes, and commitment the moment I knew that, somewhere down to the core of it, the Gay fashion designer I idolized as a child knew about me.

The Dockhand (Le Débardeur du port d’Anvers), Constantin Meunier (Belgian, Etterbeek 1831–1905 Ixelles), 1885, cast before 1902, Belgian, Brussels, Bronze, confirmed: 19 × 9 1/4 × 8 in., 17.1 lb. (48.3 × 23.5 × 20.3 cm, 7.8 kg), Purchase, Friends of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Gifts, 2024, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

Seeing him and making eye contact with him when he would visit New York City, specifically at the Strand, made me recall that most important thing I learned from him, the importance of trusting one’s own judgment, maintaining one's own identity, and having strong reference points. Despite any difficulty, it makes your work seem more meaningful and self-authored. I was already on assignment when this book appeared as a reminder of my early days as I started to navigate a professional art career, working in the fashion industry for the last few years before focusing on art and architecture. The value comes from the process of figuring out how to think, choose, and act, through unfamiliarity. The book treats assignments as systems made. Assignments are not simply tasks. They are environments. A well-constructed assignment allows the learner to confront uncertainty while maintaining a stable set of conditions for exploration:

• Inputs (materials, knowledge, lived experiences)
• Agents (students, facilitators, external stakeholders)
• Processes (exploration, experimentation, critique, revision)
• Outputs (artworks, reflections, performances, proposals)
• Feedback loops (peer review, community response, personal reflection)

Karl’s mastery of having an interdisciplinary Practice extends into my own work, as well as many other artists and contemporary creative practitioners who know how to integrate their specific sense of style across multiple fields. Wicked Arts Education, WAE reflects this reality. One domain is neither primary nor more legitimate than another. The book’s approach aligns with creative lives where identity, labor, geography, and cultural memory shape artistic output. It supports the development of practitioners who move fluidly across domains rather than conform to a single professional category. Autonomy and Sovereignty are learning outcomes that ultimately enable the student or learner to build the capacity to govern themselves in creative work. Autonomy is not isolated independence. It involves the ability to define one’s own criteria of quality; set goals and modify them in response to real conditions; understand what is non-negotiable in one’s practice and where flexibility is possible; and sustain momentum without external validation.

"Portrait of Rup Singh", Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, Painting by Govardhan (active ca. 1596–1645), Sultan 'Ali al-Mashhadi (Iranian, Mashhad 1453–1520 Mashhad), verso: ca. 1615–20; recto: ca. 1500, Attributed to India, Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper, Page: H. 15 5/16 in. (38.9 cm) x W. 10 1/8 in. (25.7 cm), Purchase, Rogers Fund and The Kevorkian Foundation Gift, 1955, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

However, this is impossible to do without either help, input from an outside eye for good review, or references to others. The goal is to shift the student from being a participant in a system to being a co-author of the system they inhabit. Every classroom teaches more than what appears in the syllabus. The Hidden Curriculum refers to behavioral norms, power structures, and implicit hierarchies that shape how students learn what “counts” as knowledge. This is the reverse of the hidden curriculum, constituting self-issued value, self-directed learning, self-determined identification, non-hierarchical belonging, and autonomy over time and movement. The Null Curriculum is in opposition to the Nihilist. Everything that is left out is through absence, given unwanted power, bias, and worldview. Omission is never neutral, vis-à-vis: queer histories, Non-Western Philosophies, Labor Movements, Working-Class economic survival strategies, Critical media literacy, and Indigenous creative frameworks. 

Censer Support, mid-7th–9th century, Mexico, Mesoamerica, Maya, Ceramic, H. 21 1/4 x W. 11 3/8 x D. 13 3/4 in. (54 x 28.9 x 34.9 cm), Ceramics-Sculpture, The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Wielgus, 1963, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

Experimental or informal art practices that never enter the canon. Omission is never neutral. It shapes who feels entitled to create and who must justify their presence. The book encourages educators to be conscious of these layers when designing assignments. Technique supports freedom rather than restricting expression. History builds lineage rather than enforcing hierarchy. Critique becomes a tool for reflection rather than a mechanism of judgment. Rigor and experimentation reinforce each other to create structured exploration. Wicked assignments embrace limitations and constraints because constraints require resourcefulness. They situate creativity in real conditions rather than fantasy or abstraction. This parallels real-world creative labor, in which budgets, time, political climates, and personal capacities shape outcomes. 

Agnes Denes, Study of distortions; isometric systems in isotropic space-map projections: the cube, 1975, Medium, gouache and ink on graph paper and mylar, 10.5 x 8.25 in. (26.7 x 21 cm.) ©2024 Artnet Worldwide Corporation. All rights reserved.

Students learn how to recognize their available materials and networks, make decisions under pressure, work with imperfection and adjust mid-course, and to see creativity as problem-navigation rather than spontaneous inspiration. The book’s central pedagogical stance is that learners should leave art education with a sense of self-directed purpose—the ability to define and protect creative autonomy. An operational understanding of how systems influence creative production enables the reconstruction of meaning rather than its inheritance. The classroom becomes a testing ground for how one will live a creative life outside of institutional structure—the educator’s role shifts from authority to facilitator of inquiry.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) and Marie Anne Lavoisier (Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758–1836), Jacques Louis David (French, Paris 1748–1825 Brussels), 1788, Oil on canvas, 102 1/4 x 76 5/8 in. (259.7 x 194.6 cm), Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman Gift, in honor of Everett Fahy, 1977, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

Jar, Chantilly (French), After a print by Jean Antoine Fraisse (French, active ca. 1680–1739), ca. 1735–40, French, Chantilly, Tin-glazed soft-paste porcelain decorated in polychrome enamels, Height: 11 in. (27.9 cm), Ceramics-Porcelain, Gift of R. Thornton Wilson, in memory of Florence Ellsworth Wilson, 1950, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh: An Allegory of the Dinteville Family, Master of the Dinteville Allegory (Netherlandish or French, active mid-16th century), 1537, Oil on wood, 69 1/2 x 75 7/8 in. (176.5 x 192.7 cm), Wentworth Fund, 1950, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.

北宋　李公麟　孝經圖　卷, The Classic of Filial Piety, Li Gonglin (Chinese, ca. 1041–1106), Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), ca. 1085, China, Handscroll; ink and color on silk, Overall (a, painting): 8 5/8 x 187 1/4 in. (21.9 x 475.6 cm), Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, From the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Family Collection, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 1996, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved. 

Serpent labret with articulated tongue, Mexica artist(s), 1325–1521 CE, Mexico, Central Mexico, Mexica, Gold, H. 2 5/8 × W.1 3/4 × D. 2 5/8 in. (6.67 × 4.45 × 6.67 cm)
Wt. 1.81 oz (51.35 g), Metal-Ornaments, Purchase, 2015 Benefit Fund and Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2016, © 2000–2025 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.