The article analyzes the peculiarities of art education in Ukraine within the framework of artistic discourse. It has been determined the essence and structure of artistic education. The normative documents, which concretize the tasks, set before art education, have been specified. The notion of “art school” has been defined. The main functions of art have been described, in particular the focus has been on a communicative one. It has been characterized the directions according to which the communicative function of national artistic education is realized. It has been stressed that the process of implementation of communicative function of artistic education provides for a constant communication which involves communicators – persons who initiate the process of communication, and communicants – the persons, who perceive messages. It has been established that communicative aspect of art is manifested primarily in the ability of the artistic language as an appropriate sign system to capture, store and transmit information of intellectual and emotional essence that encodes the spiritual experience of humanity, of an individual nation; that artistic communication – is a subjective process of coding/decoding artistic information. It has been summarized that communicative function of art ensures the functioning of artistic education and the continuity of the development of artistic culture in Ukraine.