Kerry Thomas

Creativity in Artmaking as a Function of Misrecognition in Teacher-Student Relations in the Final Year of Schooling.

This article reports on a study of creativity in art education, and more particularly, what teaching and learning to be creative implies. The study employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of the habitus, symbolic capital, and misrecognition. These concepts are demonstrably relevant for understanding creativity as a kind of social reasoning that is transacted between an art teacher and students in the cultural context of an art classroom. The design employs a qualitative methodology. Methods include observations and interviews which are augmented by digital records. Results are interpreted using semantic analysis and triangulation. Four key functions are distilled from the results. These functions govern the way in which misrecognition performs as a practical, albeit contradictory, logic in the classroom. Misrecognition shapes and affirms the teacher’s and students’ beliefs in creative autonomy while they, paradoxically, take advantage of the contextual inputs that are available which incrementally strengthen the originality of the students’ artworks.

Negotiating the Paradox of Creative Autonomy in the Making of Artists

This article reports the findings of a longitudinal study of the making of artists within an Australian university art school. It investigates the ways in which creativity is conceptualized and expressed by art students. The study makes use of Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, and capital to theorize the development and maintenance of students’ creativity and emerging identities as artists within the institutional constraints of the art school and the competitive stakes of the field of artistic production. Through a detailed analysis of structured interviews, the article reveals the double paradox of students’ practice: despite their belief in the ideal of creative autonomy, they repeatedly make compromises to improve their competitive advantage in the struggle to be creative and to be recognized for their artistic achievements. At the same time, the art school does what it can to regulate and perpetuate this belief.

Introduction to the chapters

Recent decades have seen a resurgence of interest in creativity and innovation in the public sphere. Although the link between the two has not really been explored until recently (see Mann and Chan 2011), their reappearance, at least to a significant degree, can be attributed to a new global recognition that national, regional, corporate and commercial competitiveness now requires innovation more than ever (see Menger; De Cock, Rehn and Berry, this volume). From this perspective it is expected that creativity will spark innovation, which in turn will create a competitive edge for business (Pink 2004). Creative workers in creative industries are seen as ‘agents of urban regeneration’ while creative ideas ‘have become economically vital in late capitalism, both as products in themselves . . . and as a means of stimulating new demand through advertising and branding’ (Taylor, this volume, p. 176).1 Yet, the ‘new’ may not always be as promising as expected nor associated with the good or a more just and equitable society, as a number of authors in this Handbook suggest (e.g., see the authors above and McGuigan; Cropley, Kaufman and Cropley; jagodzinski, this volume). Nor may it enhance democracy and freedom, historically cherished concepts associated with creativity, in the perpetual abolition and replacement of markets (Pope 2005). This resurgence of interest in creativity and innovation in contemporary cultures, while often politically contingent, nonetheless coheres with, transforms and transcends narrowly defined or tightly measured business explanations. The recognition that education is significant in fostering creative achievements is a central concern for many governments and schooling systems even though their equivocation and its effects on students’ learning at different historical moments is also noteworthy (e.g. see Steers; Taylor; Zimmerman; Banaji, Cranmer, Perrotta; Burnard and Power; Cropley and Kaufman, this volume). The rise of networked societies and the unprecedented use of digital technologies; self branding efforts; cultural exchanges between different groups in time and across time; and artists’, designers’, performers’ and audiences’ desire for new experiences fuel surprising symbolic and material outcomes as evidenced in, for instance, the spectacle of large scale cultural performances, events and ‘bricolage’ culture (see LeviStrauss 1966; Deleuze and Guattari 1984; Derrida 1978; and Oiyama; Smith; Scheer, this volume) or ‘remix’ culture (Lessig, 2008; see also Kawashima on contemporary copyright, this volume). This widespread interest is contributing to the creative realization of imaginative performances and artefacts and a greater differentiation and representation of political, cultural and personal voices and identities (Johnson, this volume; Brown, 2006). It occurs at a time when the forces of globalization might predict otherwise. At the same time, there is an increasing obsession with the designed and aestheticized environment which causes and results in contradictory effects (jagodzinski, this volume; Brown 2006). There is also an insatiable appetite amongst the public for Romantic images of individual geniuses or famous artists, writers, scientists, musicians, designers and chefs amongst others who have acquired the status of celebrities (Van

Creativity as Collective Misrecognition in the Relationships Between Art Students and Their Teachers

This paper investigates the teaching of creativity as an exchange of symbolic capital between art students and their teacher. The authors test the proposition that trading in creativity between teachers and students, like the exchange of gifts in Bourdieu’s analysis of the Kabylia, is subject to silence about the truth of the exchange. Through semantic analysis in a pilot study of the studio transactions among a class of year 11 students and their art teacher, clinical evidence emerges demonstrating how respondents collectively mis-recognise ‘violations’ of student originality in exchange for enhanced chances of creative success in an external examination.

Introduction to Studies in Philosophical Realism in Art, Design and Education

This chapter introduces the topic of Philosophical Realism in art education. It positions Philosophical Realism in relation to the threat of philosophical revisionism and the corrosive effects of pluralism in the latter half of the twentieth century, its conceptual development within the Occasional Seminar Series held at The University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, and its continuing application over twenty five years through the Visual Arts curriculum of the New South Wales (NSW) Board of Studies. The chapter goes on to provide brief descriptions of the chapters in the book that is divided into three parts. Part I (Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), develops the concept of Philosophical Realism in art, design and education. Part II (Chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16), focuses on the critical application of Philosophical Realism to concerns in the field of art, design and education. Part III (Chaps. 17, 18, 19, and 20), considers the implications of Philosophical Realism for practice in art, and education with a focus on design and innovation. The chapter makes reference to other papers that, whilst important to the development of Philosophical and Practical Realism, were omitted from this book. Selected examples of recent research that amplify the scope of Philosophical Realism are also identified for future publications.