transformationaL Pra Cti Cemode of landscape painting that conjoined poetry and science, both of which already
existed as separate traditions within the history of art. in short, he committed himself to
an artistic project, but neither he nor his contemporaries could have predicted that the
outcomes of his project would have a scope of influence that with the passage of time
would establish Constable as a major landscape artist. Constable’s artistic programme
had a clear ambition, direction, logic and coherence against which its achievements
could have been assessed. all that is required of the artist, then, is an artistic project
that offers the potential to challenge the understanding of art.
This chapter has outlined a history of art from the moment when the bond between
image and text was one in which the conventions and rules of the academy inscribed
the text, enacted in the social practices of the art world. in the demise of schools of
art and the academy, the text was then reconfigured in the interpretations of the
art critic, historian and theorist. Today, it is suggested, the artist may need to take
personal responsibility for contributing to the renegotiation or reconstruction of
the bond between image and text. in Rancière’s terms, the research function in art
will now require the artist to contribute to the construction of the mode of visibility
appropriate to the interpretation of the material innovation of his or her works of art.
however, as evidenced by Constable’s lectures, this does not amount to a justification
of research criteria attainment or adherence to their validity. Furthermore, we have
seen three effective, but linguistically different examples, in Constable, the goncourts
and aurier, of texts that contribute to the visibility of the works of art with which
they are conjoined, and it is not difficult to see how de- figuration, disfiguration, and
pre- figuration might be productively entwined in the unfolding of an artistic project of
transformational potential.
Notes1 Borgdorff (2006: 12) has used the term ‘research in the arts’, although his characterization of the
term suggests that he accepts that art is a practice that has yet to become research. macleod and
holdridge (2006: 2) have used the term ‘art as research’ as an anchor for exploring ‘how art can
be understood as academic research’, again emphasizing that art is at a distance from research.
2 Typically, types of research are defined in relation to a given condition of research, such as
subject, e.g. sociological, psychological, etc., or method, e.g. qualitative, quantitative.
3 in 1766, stubbs published a book entitled The anatomy of the horse, which is still in print.
4 in other words, words are necessary for a painted surface to be seen as the conquering of the
medium, i.e. for it to be seen as art.
5 There is a philosophical tradition concerning to the notion of surprise. at the one- day
conference in not Knowing, at new hall College, Cambridge, 29 June 2009, under the title, ‘on
the value of not knowing: wonder, beginning again, and letting be’, Rachel Jones traced part of
this tradition from descartes’ proposition that wonder is the first of all the passions, to irigaray’s
articulation of wonder as the event of the other.
6 Toward the end of the article, leroy describes how the fictional m. Joseph Vincent becomes
so befuddled as to confuse a municipal guard for a portrait. as far as leroy is concerned, the
boundary between art and reality has disappeared and with it so has art.
7 it might be taken that Constable is suggesting that we should simply learn from other painters and
he does indeed cite many painters in his lectures. however, close analysis of his lectures suggests
a more complex interpretation. Throughout his lectures, Constable uses examples to evidence a
common strength in some artists and weakness in others, i.e. that the great understand nature
and the lowly fail to observe nature, relying instead on imagination and imitation of past masters.
so artists can learn from great artists, but what they learn is that these masters learnt from