Setting 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 ‘meteoric success’ 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 artists’ 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 invention—originating in the self rather than through social and institutional relationships and cultural change.
The value of creative expression as a means of unlocking students’ creative capacities can be traced to Immanuel Kant as the ‘progenitor of modernism in art’ (Brown 1996, p. 6), mediated in art education by the highly influential and widely publicised works of Franz Cižek, the ‘father of child art’, 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 students’ authenticity and freedom of creative expression, linked to their ‘creative intelligence’ (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 students’ 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, students’ 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...