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Kenneth Beittel on Art Education Research
- Leonardo
- The MIT Press
- Volume 9, Number 4, Autumn 1976
- pp. 303-305
- Article
- Additional Information
Leonardo, VoI. 9, pp. 303-305. Pergamon Press 1976. Printed in Great Britain KENNETH BEITTEL ON ART EDUCATION RESEARCH Glenn B. Hamm* Kenneth R. Beittel‘s book Alternatives for Art Education Research [l] is based on the assumption that research into the making of art must move as closely as possible to the stream of consciousness of artists and that this is best done through the agency of ‘special participant observers’, although they still cannot entirely escape bias. Art is taken to be an ‘ultimate’ realm of human experience that cannot be subsumed by scientific or religious prescription or inspection. Beittel’s goal is understanding, not prediction and control, nor behavioristic, publicly verifiable research of art that ‘thingafies’ and closes off that which it would study and enhance. He further assumes that the essential conditions for the making of art are: (1) artistic causality (an emphasis on artists as active agents), (2) idiosyncratic meaning (of a unique, imagebound kind that impels the artist to ‘live the myth onward‘ (Jung) toward personal self-actualization (Maslow) ) and (3) intentionalsymbolism (a temporarily useful, opportunistic set of signs that artists use to ‘embody’ meaning into media.) The main topic to which he courageously addresses himself is the interaction of the unpredictable nature of artistic activity and the concept of ‘lawfulness’ in research. His alternatives to research on this topic are unique in that they stem from an art education base instead of being borrowed from a naturalistic discipline. His approach shuns ‘0-data’, that is, the machinations of ‘operators’ in reductive experiments. Evidence for an ‘iconic representational mode’ (the ‘icon’ being a personal symbol, invented or borrowed often inadvertantly by an artist, the identity and usefulness of which the research seeks to determine) is gathered in a special laboratory in which the artist is asked to draw while time-lapse still photographs are taken to record the steps of his work in progress. These are then utilized to facilitate discussions of the drawing process between the observer and the artist. The observer also takes notes on the process, which the artist can evaluate as to their relevance. Beittel calls the notes ‘T-data modes’, where T stands for ‘transducer’. The discussions between the observer and the artist provide ‘D-data’, where D stands for ‘dialogue’. These discussions are recorded on tape and they provide the primary evidence of the artist’s stream of consciousness during the drawing process. The next step is for the observer to prepare an interpretation of the discussions. After several observers repeat this procedure, the differences in their interpretations contribute to what Beittel calls the ‘Roshomon’ effect (I take this to mean the reduction of overall bias * Artist and teacher, School of the Arts, 307 Pollak Building, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23220, U.S.A. (Received 14 Nov. 1975.) through the mutual cancelling-out of many biases brought to bear on a single phenomenon-as in the movie of the same name). One may well wonder if this approach merely leads to a confounding of observer’s errors but perhaps it is better than a random sampling of the opinions of nonspecialist viewers. Beittel says that the approach leads to a ‘literary psychological vantage point, moving away from the novelist’s spontaneity toward the historian’s reconstruction under guidance of role and question’. An enigma begins to appear. This mode is not intended to provide a vivid chronicle of the process of drawing, but to lead to an understanding of underlying principles. ‘Lawfulness’ indicates that there are demonstrable and repeatable elements in the process, yet how isolate them when Beittel’s main credo holds that art is a non-translatable, existential contextual web? He wishes to avoid comparing events with outside norms, but how can the concept of scientificlawfulness be applied without reference to hypotheses built up from constantsextracted from more than one situation? The word loses its usefulness if it merely means ‘that which occurred’. Even if bias is recognized, how can one get beyond a ‘chronicle’ of the unique ways in which a drawing was made? If feelings about art are seen as a subjective matter, one can attempt to stimulate them and hope for empathy, but...