This book examines the paradox of creativity in art education and proposes a possible resolution. Based on the findings of a longitudinal ethnographic study as a particular case of creative practice in art education, this book is underpinned by Bourdieu's concepts of the habitus, symbolic capital and misrecognition. The author offers an insightful account of social reasoning within creative practice in the senior school art classroom, examining ongoing exchanges between students and their teacher. Ultimately, these exchanges culminate in actions, beliefs and desires about what is creatively conceivable in the making of art, while providing confirmation without corruption of the pedagogical role of the art teacher. Allowing the context of creative agency to emerge afresh, this book will be of interest and value to art educators and teachers committed to fostering the creative performances of students in any field.
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The Paradox of Creativity in Art Education
Bourdieu and Socio-cultural Practice
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Topic
EducationSubtopic
Education Theory & PracticeĀ© The Author(s) 2019
Kerry ThomasThe Paradox of Creativity in Art Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21366-4_11. Introduction
Kerry Thomas1
(1)
School of Education, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Abstract
Thomas sets out the context of her study of creativity in art education in the senior years of schooling. She identifies the paradox of creativity, outlining how students are obliged to find creativity within their own intentions and psychological resources while they are advantaged if what they make conforms with aesthetic values in the visual arts. Briefly commenting on the methodology and findings of the study, Thomas explains how creativity necessitates tactful forms of social reasoning on the part of art teachers and students and occurs as a function of misrecognition in the realities of classrooms. Commenting on the upsurge of interest in creativity in contemporary curriculum and standards frameworks and gifted education, she prepares the reader for an anti-reductionist rethinking of creativity.
Keywords
Creative expressionCreative intelligenceCreativity and social reasoningCreative autonomyCreativity and twenty-first century skillsCreativity and misrecognitionSetting the Context
In the recent exhibition Baldessin/Whiteley: Parallel Visions at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, George Baldessin and Brett Whiteley were shown to have shared many similarities. Both were represented as experiencing āmeteoric successā as artists in Melbourne and Sydney respectively, and acknowledged internationally in prestigious museum collections. Both were regarded as innovative in their use of media, acting as provocateurs in the exploration of contemporary themes for the time, couched in a representational style and artistic language that epitomised the period of the 1960s and 1970s (National Gallery of Victoria 2018).
While these artists produced many compelling artworks that are appreciated today and left a lasting legacy on how the field of Australian modern art projected itself, the view as crafted by the NGV, is highly individualistic. It is as if what occurred in the artistsā creative processes took place as a function of their heightened creative personalities and inspirations, artistic intentions and deep experiences of the world.1
Similarly, if one were to review the statements made by senior school art students about the artworks they make that are publicly exhibited, their narratives assume a similar form, as evidenced in for example, those made by final year secondary school art students that accompany the artworks exhibited in the prestigious Australian annual exhibition of ARTEXPRESS (n.d.).2 While students are applauded for their creativity and representation of issues of personal significance by the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney, the students themselves elaborate on this narrative by expanding on how they explore concepts dear to them, such as migration, the fallibility of language, the seductive nature of reality and what lies beneath, and much more. While they may acknowledge selected influencing artists, at times they go as far as to take credit for their personal style that connects concepts and techniques (AGNSW 2018).
In both cases, the Romantic and highly modernist illusion of the originating artist prevails (see Bilton 2013; Thomas 2013). It is an enduring belief in the world of art, and art education, underscored by the view that creativity is a highly individualistic enterprise, occurring as a function of imagination, intuition and spontaneous inventionāoriginating in the self rather than through social and institutional relationships and cultural change.
The value of creative expression as a means of unlocking studentsā creative capacities can be traced to Immanuel Kant as the āprogenitor of modernism in artā (Brown 1996, p. 6), mediated in art education by the highly influential and widely publicised works of Franz Cižek, the āfather of child artā, Austrian painter and art education reformer; John Dewey, the eminent American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer; Victor Lowenfeld, the Viennese refugee, philosopher, and distinguished art educator; and Herbert Read, the English art historian and critic, philosopher and poet; amongst others.3
With a resounding psychological poignancy, this view, where the quest for studentsā authenticity and freedom of creative expression, linked to their ācreative intelligenceā (Lowenfeld 1960; Burton 2009), subjective truth and qualitative and aesthetic experience of the world, endures (Zimmerman 2009; Bastos and Zimmerman 2015). Even though the times in which these creative advances for children were advocated are vastly different from our own and there have been many twists and turns in the directions of art and art education internationally,4 this view is oftentimes tacitly or more publicly believed to be a key purpose for art education, and the arts more generally. And yet, it is limited in its scope (Brown 1996). Even so, it endures and precedes the current focus on twenty-first century skills that include creativity or creative thinking, amongst others, by nation states and as represented in national and state-based curriculum and standards frameworks.5
The Paradox of Creativity
There is a paradox that is associated with the belief that creativity emanates from the self that I have sought to resolve in this study of creative practice in art education, as reported in this book. This paradox is rehearsed as follows. Senior school art students are frequently obliged by their own beliefs and those of their art teachers to find creative authenticity within their own psychological resources and intentions, and/or, by using a prescribed creative process. Be that as it may, these same students begin to realise with increasing social awareness and maturity that their creativity is valued when it conforms to the aesthetic values of the visual arts, as a domain of knowledge, mediated by particular institutional constraints of the field of art education. Their beliefs are reinforced by opportunities to exhibit in celebrated public exhibitions, like the ARTEXPRESS exhibition referred to above, and through high achievement in high-stakes final year assessments, public examination results, university entrance marks and scholarship opportunities.
My attention also focused on an interconnected dilemma. That is, how do art teachers overcome the contradiction of fulfilling the expectations of their studentsā creative personalities, while meeting their professional obligations to satisfy the content and outcomes of curriculum frameworks, and assessment and examination requirements? (see Board of Studies 2016).
In this study, the critical function of the art teacher was suspected to serve a significant purpose in the performances of the students and the artworks they made. This is despite the deeply entrenched custom, as represented above, that privileges the role of creative autonomy and iterations of the creative process, studentsā personalities and their authenticity in effecting creative outcomes.
The Purpose of This Book
This book examines the paradox of creative practice in art education, as outlined above, and goes on to propose a possible resolution. The contradictory nature of paradoxes defies co...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Front Matter
- 1.Ā Introduction
- 2.Ā Sampling Alternative Conceptions of Creativity
- 3.Ā Conceiving of Creativity as a Socio-Cultural Practice
- 4.Ā The Study of Creative Practice in the Particularities of the Art Classroom
- 5.Ā The Shaping of Creative Experience and Possibilities in the Art Classroom: Grounded Narratives
- 6.Ā Celebrating the Ingenuity and Mystery of the Cultural Achievement of Creativity: Animating the Workings of the Art Classroom
- 7.Ā Reconceptualising Creativity
- Back Matter
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