Artistic Creation

Learning in and through the visual arts can develop complex and subtle aspects of the mind. Reviews in: Journal of aesthetic education. 38(2004)4(Winter. 71-98), available M05-194.

“There are more than 50 creative prompts for the artist (or artist at heart) to explore. Take the title of this book as affirmation, and get started.” —Fast Company More than 50 assignments, ideas, and prompts to expand your world and help you make outstanding new things to put into it Curator Sarah Urist Green left her office in the basement of an art museum to travel and visit a diverse range of artists, asking them to share prompts that relate to their own ways of working. The result is You Are an Artist, a journey of creation through which you'll invent imaginary friends, sort books, declare a cause, construct a landscape, find your band, and become someone else (or at least try). Your challenge is to filter these assignments through the lens of your own experience and make art that reflects the world as you see it. You don't have to know how to draw well, stretch a canvas, or mix a paint color that perfectly matches that of a mountain stream. This book is for anyone who wants to make art, regardless of experience level. The only materials you'll need are what you already have on hand or can source for free. Full of insights, techniques, and inspiration from art history, this book opens up the processes and practices of artists and proves that you, too, have what it takes to call yourself one. You Are an Artist brings together more than 50 assignments gathered from some of the most innovative creators working today, including Sonya Clark, Michelle Grabner, The Guerrilla Girls, Fritz Haeg, Pablo Helguera, Nina Katchadourian, Toyin Ojih Odutola, J. Morgan Puett, Dread Scott, Alec Soth, Gillian Wearing, and many others.

Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism, a study in philosophical aesthetics, investigates an idea that underpins the ethical criticism of art but that is rarely acknowledged and poorly understood - namely, that the ethical criticism of art involves judgments not only of the attitudes a work endorses or solicits, but of what artists do to create the work. The book pioneers an innovative production-oriented approach to the study of the ethical criticism of art - one that will provide a detailed philosophical account of the intersection of ethics and artistic creation as well as conceptual tools that can guide future philosophizing and criticism. Ted Nannicelli offers three arguments concerning the ethical criticism of art. First, he argues that judgments of an artwork's ethical value are already often made in terms of how it was created, and examines why some art forms more readily lend themselves to this form of ethical appraisal than others. He then asserts that production-oriented evaluations of artworks are less contested than other sorts of ethical criticism and so lead to certain practical consequences-from censure, dismissal, and prosecution to shifts in policy and even legislation. Finally, Nannicelli defends the production-oriented approach, arguing that it is not only tacit in many of our art appreciative practices, but is in fact rationally warranted. There are many cases in which we should ethically critique artworks in terms of how they are created because this approach handles cases that other approaches cannot and results in plausible judgments about the works' relative ethical and artistic value. The concise, powerful arguments presented here will appeal to moral philosophers, philosophers of art and aesthetics, and critics interested in the intersection of artistic production and criticism and ethics.

Since the 1970s, the landscape of higher education and research has been considerably altered by the integration of the arts within the university environment. Even though a form of research is inherent to artistic creation, the creative process is not comparable to the established procedures involved in academic research. As such, how can the imperatives of intellectual (and sometimes restrictive) rigour characteristic of scholarly endeavours be reconciled with the more explorative and intuitive approach of artistic creation? The concept of 'research-creation' allows artists and scholars to collaborate on a common project, acknowledging each participant’s expertise in the production of an artistic work that either generates theoretical reflections or has emerged from academic research. This fully revised and updated translation of Sophie Stévance and Serge Lacasse’s original French book offers an overview of the historical, political, social, cultural and academic contexts within which research-creation has emerged in Quebec and Canada, before similar (yet often divergent) conceptions appeared elsewhere in the world. Focussing primarily on the case of music, the book goes on to explore the pedagogical potential of research-creation within a university-based environment and proposes a clear and encompassing definition, as well as a theoretical model, of research-creation supported by concrete examples. By underscoring the reciprocal nature of this approach and the potential benefits of collaborative relationships, the authors’ vision of research-creation extends far beyond the field of music and art alone: rather, it has the potential to integrate all approaches and disciplines that seek to combine practice and research.

Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism, a study in philosophical aesthetics, investigates an idea that underpins the ethical criticism of art but that is rarely acknowledged and poorly understood - namely, that the ethical criticism of art involves judgments not only of the attitudes a work endorses or solicits, but of what artists do to create the work. The book pioneers an innovative production-oriented approach to the study of the ethical criticism of art - one that will provide a detailed philosophical account of the intersection of ethics and artistic creation as well as conceptual tools that can guide future philosophizing and criticism. Ted Nannicelli offers three arguments concerning the ethical criticism of art. First, he argues that judgments of an artwork's ethical value are already often made in terms of how it was created, and examines why some art forms more readily lend themselves to this form of ethical appraisal than others. He then asserts that production-oriented evaluations of artworks are less contested than other sorts of ethical criticism and so lead to certain practical consequences-from censure, dismissal, and prosecution to shifts in policy and even legislation. Finally, Nannicelli defends the production-oriented approach, arguing that it is not only tacit in many of our art appreciative practices, but is in fact rationally warranted. There are many cases in which we should ethically critique artworks in terms of how they are created because this approach handles cases that other approaches cannot and results in plausible judgments about the works' relative ethical and artistic value. The concise, powerful arguments presented here will appeal to moral philosophers, philosophers of art and aesthetics, and critics interested in the intersection of artistic production and criticism and ethics.

In recent years, the rise of research-creation—a scholarly activity that considers art practices as research methods in their own right—has emerged from the organic convergences of the arts and interdisciplinary humanities, and it has been fostered by universities wishing to enhance their public profiles. In How to Make Art at the End of the World Natalie Loveless draws on diverse perspectives—from feminist science studies to psychoanalytic theory, as well as her own experience advising undergraduate and graduate students—to argue for research-creation as both a means to produce innovative scholarship and a way to transform pedagogy and research within the contemporary neoliberal university. Championing experimental, artistically driven methods of teaching, researching, and publication, research-creation works to render daily life in the academy more pedagogically, politically, and affectively sustainable, as well as more responsive to issues of social and ecological justice.

Art for everyone--the Federal Art Project's drive for middlebrow visual culture and identity