Art as Research

The new practice of art-based research uses art making as a primary mode of enquiry rather than continuing to borrow research methodologies from other disciplines to study artistic processes. Drawing on contributions from arts therapies, education, history, organizational studies, and philosophy, the essays critically examine unique challenges that include the personal and sometimes intimate nature of artistic enquiry and the complexities of the partnership with social science which has dominated applied arts research; how artistic discoveries are apt to emerge spontaneously, even contrary to plans and what we think we know; how truth can be examined through both fact and fiction as well as the interplay of objective and subjective experience; and ways of generating artistic evidence and communicating outcomes. Offering examples from all of the arts this volume will be welcomed by researchers and students in many fields.
Part I
Introduction to Part I
Opportunities and challenges in art-based research, by Shaun McNiff
Art as enquiry: Towards a research method that holds soul truth, by Pat B. Allen
Art-based enquiry: It is what we do!, by Mitchell Kossak
Mentoring and other challenges in art-based enquiry: You will figure it out, by Bruce L. Moon
Art-based research as a pedagogical approach to studying intersubjectivity in the creative arts therapies, by Nancy Gerber, Elizabeth Templeton, Gioia Chilton, Marcia Cohen Liebman, Elizabeth Manders and Minjung Shim
Performance as art-based research in drama therapy supervision, by Robert Landy, Marian Hodermarska, Dave Mowers and David Perrin
Where are the five chapters?: Challenges and opportunities in mentoring students with art-based dissertations, by Sally Atkins
The risks of representation: Dilemmas and opportunities in art-based research, by Jean Rumbold, Patricia Fenner and Janine Brophy-Dixon
Improvisation and art-based research, by Nisha Sajnani
Know thyself: Awakening self-referential awareness through art-based research, by Michael A. Franklin
The feeling of what happens: A reciprocal investigation of inductive and deductive processes in an art experiment, by Malcolm Learmonth and Karen Huckvale
Part II
Introduction to Part II
A critical focus on art-based research, by Shaun McNiff
Frames of enquiry: Perplexity, self-integration, pregnant images, by Robert E. Innis
Expecting the unexpected: Improvisation in art-based research, by Stephen K. Levine
On creative writing and historical understanding, by Kelsey McNiff
On the seam: Fiction as truth – what can art do?
A more complete knowing: The subjective objective partnership
Knowing what is known: Accessing craft-based meanings in research by artists, by Ross W. Prior
Art-based research for engaging not-knowing in organizations, by Ariane Berthoin Antal
Art as a mother tongue: Staying true to an innate language of knowing, by Tamar Einstein and Michele Forinash
Shall I hide an art-based study within a recognized qualitative framework? Negotiating the spaces between research traditions at a research university, by Tawnya D. Smith
Trusting the felt sense in art-based research, by Laury Rappaport
Painting research: Challenges and opportunities of intimacy and depth, by Barbara J. Fish
Capturing the transient, by Corinna Brown