Art History and Image Studies
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Browsing Art History and Image Studies by Author "Janse van Vuuren, Lukas Marthinus"
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Item Open Access Kreatiwiteit as sistemiese faktor in die visuele kuns: 'n kritiese kunsteoretiese besinning(University of the Free State, 2004-11) Janse van Vuuren, Lukas Marthinus; Van den Berg, D. J.English: The aim of this project is to develop an art theoretical model which can be applied in higher education context in order to give an account of the way according to which creativity is established as a systemic factor in the visual arts. The purpose with this model is: (a) to critically analyse the disparate contents attributed to creativity in the visual arts and (b) to formulate sober ideas and categories in opposition to the deficiencies of existing or conventional speculations regarding creativity. The resistance of modern and post modern art practices to systemic forms of analysis results in a detachment of subjects and objects, events and conditions from their relational binding. As an alternative to these art practices and in reaction to present research on creativity in the visual arts, this project focuses on a hermeneutical approach in order to account for the interactive nature of creativity. Instead of linking it to the productive powers of the individual, creativity is viewed as systemically dependant on networks, based on creative interaction between artworks, artists and viewers as well as the ideological alliances of these parties with world views and traditions. Relational analyses of this systemic dependency, demonstrate how artists in the production of their works are interactively involved in the finding and transformation of visual imagery with metaphoric potential, the revision of intentions and the discovery of new alternative and creative communicative strategies. Contrary to modernist beliefs concerning the artist as autonomous creator of meaning in works of visual art, individual analyses conducted in this research project rather gave evidence of the artist acting as an kind of attendant, finally bringing together the various causal links surrounding the artwork. The multiplicity of changing and competing combinations of insights being actualised in the artwork during the creative process, is indicative of creative mutual interactions between the artist and the evolving artwork, in stimulation and in anticipation of viewers’ re-creative responses. Relational analyses also showed that the appreciation of products destined for creative interaction demand appropriate re-creative responses in the tracing of the implicit artist’s supposed creative strategies. Results of the analyses subsequently confirmed among others that viewers’ participation in the actualisation of the imaginary component, product or action require the finding, appropriation and critical consideration of unforeseen possibilities, as well as the ability to improvise with limited information and to ingeniously transform visual ideas. In reply to the passive aloofness endorsed by the traditional aesthetic principle of disinterestedness, this study establishes viewers’ creative participation in the actualisation of the aesthetic object as a complimentary equivalent of the artist’s creative making process. As participants in these mutually complimentary processes artists and viewers are ideologically influenced by their respective world views, determining the nature of their creative discourse. In anticipation of humankind’s predictable inclination to furnish artworks with their own cultural burden, interests and prejudices, artists’ creative initiatives are realised in the way that they ironize, expose and challenge this self-interest by means of strategies like contradiction, indefiniteness and an abundance of alternatives. Creative participation in the imaginary worlds of artworks among others also requires flexible divergent thinking, tolerance for disparate visual statements, an ability to distinguish ideology-laden interests from aesthetic interests, and to critically and introspectively reflect on the limitations of self-centred ideologies. This study subsequently establishes that creative participative relations in the visual arts surpasses cultural boundaries and enables participants involved in these relations to achieve self-understanding on the basis of moral understanding attained through the viewpoints of others.