eva Luating quaLity in artistiC researChsome of these clashes between academic and artistic paradigms could have been
avoided if the school and its supervisors had been aware beforehand of possible
illegal acts and provocations which might impact passers- by or involve people in
performances or recordings without their knowledge; that is, transgressing the borders
of research ethics. The debate over the thesis Self Portrait revealed that at the time
there were no agreements about definitions and boundaries between art and research
at the institution itself. Fictive elements in a doctoral thesis are not rare but are usually
marked as such, for example as a narrative concept or literary style. however, must
they always be explicitly declared as pure fiction? it is evident that not just any topic or
problem can be admitted for artistic research projects, at least it may not be possible to
carry it out without many obstacles and clashes if one aims to be a pioneer in both form
and content. on the other hand, cases like the above attracted much public attention,
which might ultimately benefit the art world in general, not least by inspiring and
raising the level of art criticism.
The changing roles and positions of artists in Western societies – from court
painters to bohemians, rebels and society’s conscience, to the academic researchers of
today – would constitute an interesting multidisciplinary research project. an initial
stocktaking of the theme was presented at a series of exhibitions in Berlin in 2008–9 as
Kult des Künstlers (The Cult of the artist).^9
Best practices, canons and paradigmsin our consideration of ‘canons’ of best practice in arts- based research we find ourselves
thinking once again of the impressionists in nineteenth- century paris. Working within
a narrowly defined genre of art, conventionalized into certain practices that were
approved by the salon, the radicals who were operating outside these ‘laws’ could be
seen as revolutionaries, for better or worse. since their art is no longer revolutionary in
our eyes, it is easy to see this transgressive behaviour as nonetheless lying squarely in
the tradition of art production, producing collectable artefacts for connoisseurs. as we
look at more recent examples, it is perhaps less easy to see how they fit our expectations
of art. and if we hold a revolutionary model of art then the continual requirement
of novelty might also present insuperable demands. likewise in the academic field,
revolution can be seen as a mainstay of creativity (perhaps in line with sullivan’s model
of creative novelty, Chapter 6). methodological radicalism has also been somewhat
incorporated into the mainstream, through the popper/Feyerabend debate (Feyerabend
1993 [1975]), and through the emergence of alternative paradigms (guba 1990). We
therefore live in times when canons are under question as unsustainable within a model
of continual change, and also under question politically, as a symptom of a dominant
hegemony that is also rejected.
if the idea of a ‘new paradigm’ is to be taken seriously then it must be recognized
that few cases are available to be used as models. similarly, we should be sceptical of
early examples, as has been discussed in the case of pioneering phds in the arts in the
1990s (Chapter 5). a case- led approach is therefore both impractical and undesirable.
Finally, the great diversity of subjects within the creative and performing arts would
require an exhaustive list of examples to be useful to trainee researchers seeking models
of working within their particular media and scenarios (Chapters 13 and 17). instead