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Intellect Books - Alan Thornton

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89 pages

English

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Description

Artist, Researcher, Teacher explores the relationship of three professional identities that often intersect in the lives of art practitioners, educators, and students.

Challenging conventional wisdom about specialization and professional identity, Alan Thornton shows that many individuals have complex, varied, and evolving relationships with visual art—relationships that do not fit into any single category. Against the backdrop of an expanding research culture and current employment models in the United States and the United Kingdom— where many artists also work as teachers—he argues for the necessity of a theory that both reflects and influences practice in the realm of art and art-related work. A great resource for those whose professional or creative lives encompass multiple aspects of art, research, and education, Artist, Researcher, Teacher will also provide fresh insights for those interested in identity formation and professional roles and practices. By elucidating our current situation, it opens the door to much-needed new approaches.

Sujets

Arts visuels

Éducation

ART

General

Education

General officer

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	15 décembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781841507804
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0950€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2013 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2013 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Melanie Marshall
Typesetting: Planman Technologies
ISBN 978-1-84150-644-9
eISBN 978-1-84150-780-4
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Introduction
Part I: The Artist Teacher
Chapter 1: Historical Impressions
Chapter 2: Identity Theory
Chapter 3: The Identity of the Teacher
Chapter 4: The Identity of the Artist
Chapter 5: The Identity of the Artist Teacher
Chapter 6: ‘Putting Her Heart into Art’
Chapter 7: A Really Good Art Teacher …
Chapter 8: An Artist Teacher’s Portrayal
Chapter 9: A Conceptual Model
Part II: The Researcher Artist
Chapter 10: Research and Art
Chapter 11: Art Practice as Research
Part III: The Teacher Researcher
Chapter 12: Research and Teaching
Chapter 13: Action Research
Conclusion
References
Index
List of Figures
Figure 5.1: Three concepts of identity.
Figure 5.2: Overlapping concepts.
Figure 9.1: Common factors.
Introduction
This book is aimed at all art practitioners, professionals and students who see their practices and identities embracing many aspects of the cultures of art, research and education. It may also be of interest to those in other fields who are concerned with identity formation and professional roles and practices. I endeavour to challenge some of the preconceptions of specialisation and professional identity, which for many individuals do not reflect their complex, varied and evolving relationship with visual art. The geographical and cultural context of this study is primarily the United Kingdom, with substantial reference and relevance to the United States and beyond. The book considers the interrelationship of the three professional identities of the title. Of course we can understand these as discrete identities/practices/professions adopted by specialists and endorsed by many societies. However, distinctions between them do not always reflect the self-identifications and practices of individuals who work in these areas. Art as a cultural force is, and has been, driven by people who engage with these professional identities individually, or integrate them in various ways. I argue that forms of interaction between these identities are essential for the continuation of art as a field of human creativity and achievement. I identify and evaluate dual identities adopted by professionals in these fields. I then argue that individuals could further integrate their practices as artists, researchers and teachers in order to drive art as a cultural force through personal holistic endeavours. The initial identities of artist, researcher and teacher are based on actual practitioners but are also constructs or categories that represent the differentiation of practices and beliefs. In this understanding people both shape categories and are shaped by them. I utilise a simple concept/phenomenon to represent the three professional identities of the title, which in themselves are presented as important different tendencies of artistic identity and knowledge and skills acquisition that encompass the field of visual art that are, or can be, variously interrelated. In colour theory and the context of pigment mixing, the primary colours, red, yellow and blue can be combined in three different ways to form the secondary colours of purple, orange and green. I propose here that red represents the artist, yellow the researcher and blue the teacher. Hence purple represents the artist teacher, orange the researcher artist and green the teacher researcher. Also it is envisaged that similar to the phenomenon/concept that mixing primary colours creates new secondary colours, I suggest that the acknowledgement or embracing of overlap in these identities, for some practitioners, can result in a synergy in which new identities, thinking and practices can emerge further interrelating or integrating important aspects of the culture of visual art.
Three important theoretical perspectives and influences
These particular theoretical perspectives are highlighted because of their importance regarding my approach to this book. I begin by briefly engaging with the philosophical notion of ‘human being’ with specific reference to Aristotle, Heidegger and Sartre. This simply locates the generic ‘being’ of artists, researchers and teachers in both a philosophical/cultural context and within an individual’s all encompassing sense of personal being. This conceptualisation is followed by references to reflective practice and integral theory. I believe these perspectives to be important not only because I wish the reader to be aware of their influences on my thinking and style of writing, but also because they help me counter the constant dualistic influences on thinking and language, which seem to compel us to choose between options that may not necessarily be conflicting, other than through our perception of them. This desire and sometimes possibly futile attempt is born of the remote hope that we may be able to embrace difference in some circumstances in a world in which destructive conflicts appear ever present. Language itself seems often to resist integration and open interpretation, through a constant process of polarisation and dialectical jousting, and our language profoundly influences our thinking. The cultures of art, research and education manifestly have differences that can be problematic for individuals whose professional and sometimes personal lives are closely associated with these cultures. The evocation of ‘being’ regarding identity, which is expanded upon in terms of ontology as the study develops, further embraces the notion of our holistic sense of self existing simultaneously and interdependently with our various roles, identifications and differences as professionals and human beings.
Human being
Aristotle (2004) in his Metaphysics was one of the first philosophers to systematically conceptualise and categorise Being and beings. He believed that universals only exist in relationship to particulars. For example, ‘Being’ itself is a general expression that encompasses particular beings in their various manifestations and operates as an overarching concept confirming existence by naming it and identifying various types of existence. In this study the beings in question are the type of human beings understood as artists, researchers and teachers. Of course the idiosyncratic artist, researcher or teacher has some characteristics in common with other artists, researchers and teachers. These characteristics are both abstract and concrete in the sense that ideas and beliefs can be shared by protagonists or understood to overlap, and common characteristics, behaviours or actions can be identified and categorised. Distinctions between the abstract and the concrete are understood here as sometimes unclear, as ideas and actions interrelate. Also identities are believed to shift and reconfigure in accordance with context, time and consensual claims regarding degrees of likeness and difference. For example we identify artists, researchers and teachers, or they identify themselves, through references to others in terms of both likeness and difference. Identifications do have both a psychological and professional impact on individuals’ ‘being in the world’. Heidegger in his publication Being and Time (1995) develops a conceptualisation of ‘human being’ that he called ‘Dasein’ in which individuals’ various relationships with the world (and others) are considered critical regarding their sense of existence and impact on the world. Heidegger also maintained that being is historically situated and needs constant conceptual reinterpretation as time passes. To understand being as ‘always becoming’ at a personal as well as at a collective level could be helpful to the individual. Our sense of our own being may need to encompass a sense of our becoming or potential to become if we have a desire for beneficial personal development. Again this relates to transformations such as those that can take place between artist, researcher and teacher. Sartre, who was highly influenced by Heidegger, in his publication Being and Nothingness (1989), emphasises individual existence as preceding all else. Human becoming is central to Sartre’s thesis as he believed we have authentic choices and therefore multiple possibilities of being that can, to a significant extent, be in our control. In this study Sartre’s claim for being from individual existence is valued and embraced although his conceptualisations of being sometimes appear dualistic in the sense that individual existence is contrasted and favoured as foundational in relationship to a determinism where human volition is controlled by universal forces that transcend the individual. Such dualism is viewed critically within this book. Although it is agreed that a being must first exist in order to acknowledge existence, our accumulated knowledge and understanding from consciousness also suggests to us that the universe existed prior to our own existence. This apparent paradox: ‘does human consciousness create the universe or did the universe create human consciousness’ is resolved through an understanding that phenomena are not necessarily ‘either or’. Just as light can be understood and observed to behave as both particles and waves, so can th