Fine Art Practice Research Articles

Spectral ruins: Empathy with inanimate material movements

Simulations are interactive, lively models of material events. Working with simulations that require the consideration of mass, gravity, and texture becomes an embodied experience. Much like video games, simulations imitate the physics of the material world and, as such, engage us corporeally. This dynamic between interactive model and user is particularly generative when the content of a simulation is inanimate, or inorganic materials. Digital models of static matter in motion offer the user a unique opportunity to relate to things that are typically understood as inert or nonliving. While empathy with the nonliving is a complex relationship to authentically construct, the ecological implications of this interaction are significant. This paper uses critical tools from video game studies and media theory to study simulations in experimental architecture and contemporary fine art practice. The essay posits a thesis informed by ecocriticism that users can build a tactile, bodily understanding of material behaviors by designing and interacting with tools built into animation, gaming, and visual coding platforms. A series of case-studies in art and design are examined with particular emphasis on their use of digital physics engines and code libraries that imitate natural behaviors.

Towards an Experimental Creation of the Printed Image for an Active Reception

This article proposes a reflection on how contemporary experimental practices in the printed image can encourage the viewer towards active reception. My practice-based research project has been instigated by questions raised through my fine art practice, concerning how reality is perceived within a photographic printed image and how chance in creation helps the possible development of the photographic reference.
 The discovery of photography in 1839 triggered a mode of reproducing images that challenged traditional forms of visual representation. Its characteristic of mimesis of reality, unlike painting, drawing or engraving, forced artists to change their patterns of behaviour. With the arrival of Impressionism, artists recognised the influence of photography on their work, and the “photographic gaze” emerged, which provided a new way of contemplating and representing. As Coronado writes in his text on photography and Impressionism, “The photographic gaze extends beyond and beyond the limits of vision allowed to the painter’s eye” (Coronado, 1998, p. 310).
 During the first half of the twentieth century, in the context of the avant-garde, the connection between photography and the plastic arts arose, leading to the conception of new photography in which the symbiosis of the verbal and the visual became evident. The period was marked by a type of innovation that produced a change in expressive resources by breaking with the mimetic condition, ceasing to be the mirror of the world to create another independent narrative, becoming the new reality.

Collaborations in Art and Medicine: Institutional Critique, Patient Participation, and Emerging Entanglements

Abstract In recent decades, collaborations between artists and clinicians or biomedical researchers have become increasingly common and now constitute a distinctive category of art-science collaboration. This article reflects on the intellectual and material conditions of such collaborations, exploring two genealogies for these practices—”sciart” and arts and health—with a focus on two key areas: (1) the need for stakeholders to recognize fine art practice as research and knowledge-production (rather than merely as illustrative, educational, or therapeutic); (2) the challenges and opportunities presented by patient-participant involvement. Finally, it explores critical medical humanities as an emergent framework currently shaping these kinds of collaborations.

Beyond Craft: Textile Practices in the Art Museum

Textiles have traditionally fallen beyond the collecting and exhibiting remit of museums of modern and contemporary art. In recent years, however, there has been a re-appraisal of their place within canonical narratives of fine art history and practice. Beginning with a consideration of the expanded retrospective of the work of Anni Albers staged at K20 Düsseldorf and Tate Modern in 2018, this paper questions received categories of art and craft and the history and place of textile art within twentieth and twenty-first century art museums. Homing in on some further examples of textile works brought into the Tate collection and displayed at Tate Modern, I propose that museum practices become increasingly transparent and the craft of exhibition making be used to bring about an expanded, inclusive recognition of diverse media and multiple stories in the history of art.

Cupid, Canvas, Circle, Plane: Conservation and Conceptual Fine Art Practice

ABSTRACT A selectively cleaned oil painting, Cupid asleep in a garland of flowers, circle of Mario di Fiori (1603–73, GV43) was installed alongside a series of photographic works by artist Sophy Rickett. Cupid and the Curious Moaning of Kenfig Burrows was an exhibition at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, UK, that featured this partial restoration undertaken as a conservation-intervention following discussions between the artist and painting conservator Jenny Williamson. Rickett and Williamson wish to explore this conservation-intervention as a methodologically oriented dialogue that mirrors, reflects and represents the similarities as well as some of the tensions, between the distinct, but related, fields of fine art practice and conservation. In conceptualising and then carrying out this conservation-intervention, a new artwork has been created. They envisage this methodological approach as a strategy encompassing principles and ethics that is replicable in other contexts and at other institutions. Through this conservation-intervention, the authors consider the role of the artist’s original intention, truth, meaning, aesthetics and ethics in the field of conservation, and explore how subjective, affective processes are a part of more objective, finite, scientific ones. This version of Cupid, in his fragile, temporary, incomplete state highlights the subjectivity, contingency and to an extent, arbitrariness that is a feature of much conservation practice.

About the Authors

Previous articleNext article FreeAbout the AuthorsFull TextPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreJenny Anger is professor and chair of art history at Grinnell College. She is the author of Paul Klee and the Decorative in Modern Art (2004) and Four Metaphors of Modernism: From Der Sturm to the Société Anonyme (2018). Anger’s long-standing interest in gender and art extends here to an exploration of mental illness.Paisid Aramphongphan earned a Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University, and previously held a Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His book Horizontal Together: Art, Dance, and Queer Embodiment in 1960s New York is forthcoming (May 2021).David Brody is a professor of design studies at Parsons School of Design at the New School. He is the author of Housekeeping by Design: Hotels and Labor (2016) and Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines (2010), and co-editor of Design Studies: A Reader (2009). He is on the editorial board of American Art.Rhoda Eitel-Porter is the editor of Print Quarterly, based in London. Her master’s thesis was on portraits of women by Otto Dix; her Ph.D. dissertation on Cesare Nebbia was published in 2009. Much of her research focuses on Italian art of the sixteenth century, and American and German art of the twentieth century.Elizabeth S. Hawley is a visiting assistant professor in art history and visual studies at Northeastern University. She received her PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center, and her research on Native and non-Native art in the American Southwest has been supported by the Lunder Institute, Wolfsonian-FIU, and the Pittsburgh Foundation.Jennifer Quick holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. She was previously Research Curator for the Polaroid Consultant Photographers Collection at the Harvard Business School. Her book manuscript, “Back to the Drawing Board: Ed Ruscha, Art, and Design in the 1960s” is under contract with Yale University Press.Jennifer Van Horn is an associate professor of art history and history at the University of Delaware. She is the author of The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America (2017) and her second book, Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery, is due for publication next year.Kristina Wilson is a professor of art history at Clark University and the author of numerous books, articles, and essays on modernist design and modernist fine art practice in the United States. Her book Mid-Century Modernism and the American Body: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Power in Design is due for publication in April 2021. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Art Volume 35, Number 1Spring 2021 Sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/714334 Views: 198 © 2021 by The Smithsonian Institution. All rights reserved. Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Revealing the Hidden Colour in Representations of Eileen Gray’s Modern Architecture and Design

Abstract Colour is both spatial and material. It is an integral feature of architecture, yet it is often undervalued, particularly in contrast to form. This article explores how Eileen Gray’s background in fine art and material practice promoted a particular use of colour in her architecture. Art practitioners who engage with processes of colour and material making are alert to the ambiguous nature of colour and its potential to contribute to space production. However, such knowledge is often overlooked by historians or dismissed as less significant than other aspects of design. Previous architectural histories of Eileen Gray that rely upon representations of her work in black and white photographs have missed the spatial and place-making qualities of colour in her work. Archival evidence, by contrast, reveals the significance of Gray’s material and practice-led colour research, which resulted in her distinct approach to modern architecture.

And Now a Return to Ourselves: Working toward an Ancestor Reverence Pedagogy

The narratives, knowledges, and representations in the canon of fine art practice often proclaim to introduce students to new ways of making in environments steeped with criticality. This discourse fails to include Indigenous and embodied knowledges as part of their canons. This erasure is normalized and rarely questioned, and it reproduces an imperial, aesthetic arrogance. Traditional fine art pedagogies must expand. Social media provides multitudes of examples of the increasing awareness and reclaiming of ancestral traditions in efforts to heal colonial trauma. African and other Indigenous aesthetics are then often co-opted, packaged, marketed, sold to the public. The majority of these initial processes are often conducted by artists who work in the commercial arena. This article opens inquiries of fine art pedagogy and processes that disrupt, problematize, challenge, and transform its colonial educational model by employing decolonial knowledges. This article shares a five-step pedagogical process as a working example of how we can intentionally teach ritual in a fine arts institution while orienting ourselves against the epistemic violence of cultural appropriation often featured in the work produced by fine art students. The urge to separate indigeneity and marginalized identities from their histories and geographies is situated at the heart of modernity, a territory designating which knowledges are legitimate, legible, and visible. Using decolonial love as the framework for an ancestor reverence pedagogy, this article does not provide an answer but instead offers an embodied approach from the margins of rejection to resist the hegemony of fine art pedagogy.

Culture and Identity in Selected New Media Artworks in Malaysia 1993-2007

Contextual analysis studies based on cultural and identity aspects of fine art practice are still limited in Malaysia, especially concerning new media art, although new media as an artistic tool was introduced as early as the 1990s. Since the seminal exhibition on E-art was in 1997, since then systematic examination of new media artworks and their role in the Malaysian art history has only been limitedly done. The early approaches of new media art were varied, yet the subject matter, as discussed in this paper, was still mostly informed by the general proclivities of Malaysia artists at that time. Thus, it can be seen that despite the new technology used and explored, the subject matter of these works is still aligned with similar concerns and contents as can be found in contemporaneous works using traditional media. Thus, as this paper demonstrates, the themes of cultural identity and culture related issues and concerns still persisted as the main subject matter of early Malaysian new media artworks, as can be seen in the oeuvres of Hasnul Jamal Saidon, Liew Kungyu, Niranjan Rajah, Yee I-Lann and T.C. Liew.

Locke and Hume’s Philosophical Theory of Color is Investigated through a Case Study of Esref Armagan, An Artist Born Blind

This article investigates Locke and Hume’s philosophical theory of color, through a study of the fine art practice of Esref Armagan, a Turkish artist who was born blind. The philosophical theory of color is important to the cultural history of blindness, as it has been used to justify early curricula in schools for the blind. This study is based on the following research question: Can people who are born blind understand color in the fine arts? The study is part of a grounded methodology study of art practices and visual impairment, whose findings informed a participatory study of museum access. This article examines part of the study’s first phase, and focuses on the practice of the blind Turkish artist, Esref Armagan. Data was collected through a translated correspondence interview with Esref Armagan, and an examination of research articles focusing on Armagan’s drawing skills. The study’s data is analyzed using Anderson, Krathwohl, and Bloom’s (2001) learning hierarchy. It is found that Armagan has an extensive knowledge of color and other visual concepts, developed symbolically. What is more, not only does Armagan have a knowledge of color, but he can use this knowledge creatively in accordance with Anderson et al.’s (2001) highest level of learning (level 6). The article concludes that Locke and Hume’s philosophical theory of color can be challenged in the context of the creative fine arts, as Armagan could develop unique, creative images using color. Therefore, our application of the philosophical theory of color on the education of students with visual impairments, and the pedagogical and andragogical practice based on these theories, should be questioned.

Effective approaches to heritage education: Raising awareness through fine art practice

Abstract By learning about the problems of heritage preservation (conservation and protection of cultural heritage) and by creating fine art products with interesting solutions based on well-known facts from their surroundings, students build and strengthen their critical attitude towards problems of heritage preservation. The purpose of this research was to study whether it would be possible to include the contents of heritage preservation along with the contents of the current curriculum in regular fine art classes in primary schools. Research has shown that the results of teaching with the help of various teaching methods, teaching media, fine art materials and with different ways of fine art expression (fine art motives) were positive. Students came up with interesting solutions when carrying out their fine art assignments and they also displayed greater ability of critical judgement and evaluation of heritage care. To date, there has been no research in Slovenia on the possibilities of raising awareness of the importance of heritage preservation within fine art classes.

Out of our skins

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses ontologies of the digital model. The adoption of 3D imaging techniques into fine art practice redefines conventional typological distinctions, including image and object categories, and proposes new methods of composition and aggregation. How do the instrumental tools of technologised sensing inflect knowledge production? Archaeological imaging practices, in this case photogrammetry, have been brought into the apparatus of art practice producing technical objects with a distinct and contingent temporality that operates between the mnemonic and the affective. Such objects may be described as skeuomorphs, or container-forms. What might be produced and deduced from accidental outcomes of the 3D process and through provocative misapplications?

Influences on the struggle over content: considering two fine art studio practice curricula in developing/ed contexts

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the influences of curricula content on the nuances of teaching and learning practices, and the ways in such influences are complicated by the contexts within which they are situated. Generated data from within the particularity of two fine art schools, one operating from the developed world in the global ‘north’ and another the developing world in the ‘south’, considers how they have negotiated the contemporary push from the professional community of practice, led by ‘western’ artmaking, towards the discourse-interest of contextualism in fine art practice education, compared to the focus on skills and mastery of more out-dated formalism. Particular emphasis is placed on the significance of such influences and pressures on the structures and cultures of teaching and learning.

Collagegrids: generative metaphor and emergent composition. The interplay of inherited tradition with human agency in fine art practice

ABSTRACTOften presented as mutually exclusive or conflicting discourses in the history of art, grids and collage exist in parallel, each having its own discourse, strategy and associations. The PhD project brings together collage and grids and investigates the interplay of inherited tradition (habitus) with the immediacy of human agency (reflexive deliberation), of structures, structuring and agency in practice-led research. Set up to interrogate the collagegrids practice, of constructing open grid formulations and alignments using strategies of collage, the project seeks to extract insights from practice and articulate the role metaphor plays in the construction of new meaning. Insights are thought to lie in (a) exploring how metaphor functions in the ‘movement’ of making and (b) how meaning is constructed through practice. This paper explores the correlation of theory and practice through reflections on the collagegrids project. It argues for the primacy of practice in the construction of new theory and proposes collagegrids as metaphor structuring such thinking and knowledge.

Somewhere between printmaking, photography and drawing: viewing contradictions within the printed image

This paper examines a number of questions raised through my fine art practice, concerning how processes inherent in printmaking, photography and drawing may be brought together within a single image to open up new possibilities of reading surface and space and bring about new apprehensions of temporality. The central focus of this paper explores how surface and space are perceived and understood within an image, particularly where both digital photographic printmaking and hand-drawn marks co-exist. Using a number of my own artworks I will expose what I describe as a perceptual clash emerging on the printed picture plane. I argue that this clash emerges as a result of the ontological nature of certain printmaking processes, which embed certain visual elements within the resulting printed image. A number of key aspects around visibility of surface, orientation, materiality and time within the photographic printed image and the experience of tactile touch during making of the image will be investigated and will offer valuable insights into how and why this new perceptual space emerges within the image.

The significance of conflicting discourses in a professional degree: assessment in undergraduate fine art practice

This paper expands on empirical research which revealed that, whether or not an institution's interpretative community was explicitly informed by outcomes-based assessment, the more powerful and implicit discourses that emerged in assessment practices were those of their professional practice and academic traditions. Tensions, between the emerging dominant discourses, had their roots in academic perspectives and traditions; professional practice(s) and ways of being; and the more recent educational development discourses. The significance of these tensions for the discursive positioning of staff and students is discussed, with suggestions made for possible ways to negotiate these problematics more purposefully

The role of drawing in the work of Charlotte Hodes

This article is based on material from Hodes' Inaugural Professorial Address at London College of Fashion, which was conducted as a conversation with the author. The article considers the role of drawing within Hodes' overall fine art practice, particularly in relationship to her large-scale papercuts and ceramics. It addresses the manner in which drawing is used by Hodes as a primary research tool, to gather information and assimilate influences, and how digital technology works in conjunction with traditional means of drawing. The article focuses on particular projects to examine how Hodes engages with collections and archives as starting points for a more personal investigation, which invariably involves the female figure as a central motif. In this respect, how Hodes uses herself as the model offers insights into an embodied approach to creativity.

‘[T]he Royal Academy, and the effects produced by it’: accounting for art education in 1835

State funded art education in England began by offering a political view of the Royal Academy of Arts from the perspective of the social, commercial and cultural consequences of its existence. This article shows how the conceptualization and initiation of state funded art education in England in the 1830s raised the question of how the social determinants of fine art practice were to be taken into account in the configuration of the art institution within industrial capitalism. The specifically utilitarian and consequentialist ethos that informed the beginnings of state funding of art education in England showed that what matters is not only which items are taken into account in the social constitution of art educational institutions, but whether they can be fully taken into account within the terms of an education in art. The continuing relevance of the political experiments in state funded art education in the 1830s is in the link that was made between a political redefinition of the Royal Academy of Arts and the institution of the state funded art school as a new form of pedagogy under capital.

Private View, Public Birth: Making Feminist Sense of the New Visual Culture of Childbirth

In the last three decades, there has been a dramatic increase in media representations of childbirth across a range of platforms: cinema, reality television and television drama, online video-sharing platforms, pornographic film, and in fine art practice. As yet, however, there is little feminist scholarship on the implications of this new and varied visual culture of childbirth and its relationship to earlier feminist debates about the cultural taboo against the representation of birth. This paper focuses on two contemporary sites: the growing phenomenon of 'childbirth reality TV' and the birthrites collection, a unique art collection in the UK dedicated to the subject of childbirth. We explore the meanings and implications of this new visual culture of birth, and the ways its reception is challenging earlier feminist conceptualisations of motherhood and the birthing body. In particular, we argue that these new popular and artistic representations of birth trouble accounts of the birthing body as abject, and what could be described as the 'abject aesthetics' that has dominated the visual representation of birth. In place of abjection, we conclude by arguing for a more thoroughly social and political account of the place of birth in contemporary culture, based on forms of 'natal thinking', which we suggest that the birthrites collection proposes.

Good art, bad art – what is a ‘good’ drawing?

The article addresses subjectivity in relation to assessment of drawing as fine art practice within higher education contexts. How can we measure the quality of a drawing in contemporary fine art? What standards can one take recourse to, or use, to define boundaries and definitions for excellence? The role of outsider art, and of art not produced or valorized within institutional norms, is an area of tension within academic contexts. Do we overly valorize rejection of norms and traditions, or to the contrary, do we create neo-conformism in the way we teach drawing within fine art? This article asks to reconsider aesthetics as a potential way of redressing the need to build overarching standards and measuring codes, independent from agents and institutions that have become interested parties and stake holders: the curatorial function of museum and gallery, market forces, Research Council and Arts Council. A more meaningful dialogue with different types of public needs to be sought, to redress criticism that contemporary arts practices are elitist and removed from the realities of everyday life.