Analysis of existing educational paradigms shows that in the Ukrainian pedagogical science and practice there is an urgent need to change the priorities of modern philosophy of education, i.e. a new, men-centrist, type of outlook. Working on a new theory and practice of free developing education, domestic scholars are intended to clarify the conditions under which the externally determined educational process can be transformed into internally caused. Awareness of powerful multifunctional potential of art in terms of the transformational changes that are taking place in Ukraine, led to rethinking the conceptual basis of national education and laid the foundation for the establishment and development of art-pedagogy as a new phenomenon in the Ukrainian pedagogical science and practice.