Perennial Questions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Winner
Keyword(s):  
Art Making ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Subsequent Chapter ◽  
Philosophical Questions

This chapter explains the approach of the book: taking puzzling questions about the arts, often posed by philosophers, and examining how psychologists have reframed these questions so that they can be addressed empirically. The topics covered in each subsequent chapter are then previewed: Part I (Chapters 1–2) introduces the book and deals with the question of defining art, Part II (Chapters 3–7) is about art and emotion, Part III (Chapters 8–11) is about art and judgment, Part IV (Chapters 12–14) is about how art making affects us, Part V (Chapter 15) is about who becomes an artist, and Part VI (Chapter 16) concludes the book by summarizing the key ways in which psychologists have taken philosophical questions as a jumping off point for examining how we experience art.

The Power of Art to Cope With Trauma: Psychosocial Intervention After the Tsunami in Japan

2020 ◽  
pp. 002216782098214
Author(s):  
Tami Gavron
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Psychosocial Intervention ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Psychosocial Interventions ◽  
Kindergarten Teachers ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
The Arts

This article describes the significance of an art-based psychosocial intervention with a group of 9 head kindergarten teachers in Japan after the 2011 tsunami, as co-constructed by Japanese therapists and an Israeli arts therapist. Six core themes emerged from the analysis of a group case study: (1) mutual playfulness and joy, (2) rejuvenation and regaining control, (3) containment of a multiplicity of feelings, (4) encouragement of verbal sharing, (5) mutual closeness and support, and (6) the need to support cultural expression. These findings suggest that art making can enable coping with the aftermath of natural disasters. The co-construction underscores the value of integrating the local Japanese culture when implementing Western arts therapy approaches. It is suggested that art-based psychosocial interventions can elicit and nurture coping and resilience in a specific cultural context and that the arts and creativity can serve as a powerful humanistic form of posttraumatic care.

A Moderately Pessimistic Perspective on “Cooperative Naturalism”

Projections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Davies
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Neurons ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Normative Dimension ◽  
Film Experience ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Murray Smith’s plea for a “cooperative naturalism” that adopts a “triangulational” approach to issues in film studies is both timely and well-defended. I raise three concerns, however: one is external, relating to this strategy’s limitations, and two are internal, relating to Smith’s application of the strategy. While triangulation seems appropriate when we ask about the nature of film experience, other philosophical questions about film have an ineliminable normative dimension that triangulation cannot address. Empirically informed philosophical reflection upon the arts must be “moderately pessimistic” in recognizing this fact. The internal concerns relate to Smith’s claims about the value and neurological basis of cinematic empathy. First, while empathy plays a central role in film experience, I argue that its neurological underpinnings fail to support the epistemic value he ascribes to it. Second, I question Smith’s reliance, in triangulating, upon the work of the Parma school on “mirror neurons.”

scholarly journals Aaron Douglas and Aspects of Negro Life

October ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 126-162
Author(s):  
Leah Dickerman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Making ◽  
History Writing ◽  
American Modernism ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Aaron Douglas ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Black Modernism

In 1934, Aaron Douglas created an epic four-panel mural series, Aspects of Negro Life (1934), for the branch library on 135th Street in Manhattan, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The panels answered a call, issued by the first major program for federal support of the arts in the United States, to represent “an American scene.” In them, Douglas traced the trajectory of African American history in four stages and across two mass migrations: from Africa into enslavement in America; through Emancipation and Reconstruction; into the modern Jim Crow South; and then northward with the Great Migration to Harlem itself. The narrative Douglas constructed was remarkable in both its historical sweep and as a story of America seen through Black eyes. This essay explores how Douglas's approach to the trenchant and understudied Aspects of Negro Life panels was shaped by rich conversations across a decade-about what it meant to be Black in America, how the “African” in “African-American” was to be understood, and what a distinctly African-American modernism might be-with an interdisciplinary nexus of thinkers, activists, and artists that included W. E. B. Du Bois; a co-founder of the NAACP and co-editor of the Crisis, sociologist Charles S. Johnson; poet-activist James Weldon Johnson; bibliophile Arturo Schomburg; and philosopher-critic Alain Locke. Looking at Douglas's visual narrative in this context offers insight into how parallel practices of archive-building, art making, history writing, and criticism came together not only to shape a vision of America but also to champion a model of Black modernism framed through diaspora.

scholarly journals artscanada’s "Black" Issue: 1960s Contemporary Art and African Liberation Movements

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krys Verrall
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Greenwich Village ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Subsequent Publication

ABSTRACT In August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African American subcultures and global anti-colonial movements began to circulate prominently within mainstream mass media, seven men from two countries met via a transnational telephone connection to talk about the colour black. Their conversation, and its subsequent publication in the arts journal artscanada’s October 1967 issue titled “Black,” provides this article’s focus. While the thematic issue indexes a rare intersection between elite art and racial politics, and while it is unlikely that any of these representatives of innovative contemporary art practices intimate with the radical countercultures of Greenwich Village and Yorkville saw any cloying taint of bigotry compromise their views about art and art-making, the issue nonetheless enforces covert racism sustained by ideologies of Whiteness. The result is that rather than embracing creative expression associated with black, Black-as-race is construed as alien to contemporary art’s mise-en-scène.RÉSUMÉ En août 1967, quand le slogan « Black Power » se fait entendre au-delà des subcultures afro-américaines et les principaux médias commencent à couvrir les mouvements anti-impérialistes mondiaux, sept hommes vivant dans deux pays, par l’intermédiaire d’un lien téléphonique interurbain, ont eu une échange sur la couleur noire. Cet article porte sur cette conversation et sa publication ultérieure en octobre 1967 dans un numéro de la revue artscanada intitulé « Black ». Ce numéro thématique est l’occasion d’une rare intersection entre l’art d’élite et la politique raciale. Il est peu probable que ces représentants de pratiques innovatrices d’art contemporain, avec leur connaissance intime des contrecultures radicales de Greenwich Village et de Yorkville, aient été conscients d’avoir exprimé des préjugés à l’égard de l’art et de la création artistique. Pourtant, le numéro comporte des exemples de racisme implicite soutenu par une idéologie favorisant la blancheur. En conséquence, plutôt que de reconnaître l’expression créative associée à ce qui est noir, les interlocuteurs traitent le noir en tant que race étrangère par rapport à l’art contemporain.

Does Making Art Improve Well-Being?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Winner
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Negative Affect ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Physiological Indices ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Making Art

This chapter considers the claim that making art is therapeutic. Evidence that the arts are therapeutic comes from studies showing that art making in young children living in poverty relieves physiological indices of stress. And when we draw, mood improves. Why? Both Aristotle and Freud believed that the arts are cathartic. For Aristotle, watching a tragedy arouses pity and fear, which at the end “flood” out of us, leaving us calm. For Freud, making art involved sublimating forbidden urges in a socially acceptable way, resulting in tension release. But research shows another mechanism at work: making art pulls us away from negative affect, distracting us from our problems. Whether more intensive involvement in the arts can relieve stress, not via distraction but through the process of venting and working through difficulties, remains a distinct possibility.

scholarly journals Arts as Dialogic Practice: Deriving Lessons for Change from Community-based Art-making for International Development

Psych ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 375-390
Author(s):  
Lyusyena Kirakosyan ◽  
Max Stephenson
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Community Change ◽  
International Community ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Community Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Public Consciousness

Communities around the world struggle with weakening social bonds and political, racial, ethnic, economic, and cultural divides. This article argues the arts can be a means of raising public consciousness regarding such concerns by catalyzing conscious, thoughtful dialogue among individuals and groups possessing diverse values and beliefs. Change can only occur when people become aware of and actively reflect on the ontological and epistemic-scale norms and values that so often underpin their divisions, and the arts can help them do precisely that. We examine the dynamics of participatory performing arts and mural-making in diverse contexts to contend that the dialogic character of community art-making can be valuable for practitioners and scholars in a variety of efforts in international community development. We conclude by sharing lessons that we believe will aid artists and practitioners in devising more inclusive and participatory approaches to their international community change or development projects.

Learning by Heart: Intergenerational Theater Arts

2013 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marsha Gildin ◽  
Rose Binder ◽  
Irving Chipkin ◽  
Vera Fogelman ◽  
Billie Goldstein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Living History ◽  
Senior Center ◽  
Theater Arts ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Theater Program ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Diverse Communities

We are a lucky group of older adults, ranging in age from sixty to ninety-two, who participate in an intergenerational arts program at our local senior center in Flushing, Queens, one of New York City's most culturally diverse communities. In our living history theater program, run by Elders Share the Arts (ESTA) and facilitated by ESTA teaching artist Marsha Gildin, we are joined weekly by fifth graders from PS 24, a public elementary school located around the corner. Some of our senior members joined just last year, while others have been involved for more than a decade. Our relationship with the children is very special and mutually nourishing. ESTA guides us in sessions based on sharing stories from life experience and in transforming memories into art. We explore our ideas through theater exercises and devise an original piece rooted in what we have learned from one another. Rehearsals are an ensemble learning process. With forty-five people on stage during our performances at the senior center and school, the performance experience is always challenging, surprising, and well received. We connect strongly with the children during the program year, and our goodbyes are tinged with sadness, for we have grown close in our shared art making. This year our theme focused on the power of music in our lives.

scholarly journals Re-instating the Amateur: Holding Space for the Core Purpose of Art in the Classroom

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Armos
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Art Educator ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art Classroom

The methods and objectives for art education in public and post-secondary schools are often aimed towards the development of a professional fine arts or academic career. However, reflecting on the reasons humans originally turned to the arts can have profound effects on how we frame the role of the artist, art educator, student, and classroom. This paper traces perspectives on the core purpose of art from fields ranging from biology and anthropology to education and literary theory, noting how they converge on notions of art as an evolutionary form of social bonding, and open-ended life inquiry for personal and social transformation. Drawing from these theories, it discusses how these transactional perspectives on art reinforce the value of exposing students to both creative and interpretative forms of aesthetic inquiry. Further it proposes that the figure of the amateur artist—as opposed to that of the professional artist or renowned academic—can serve as an embodiment of the core purpose of art and our educational goals in the art classroom, encouraging students from diverse career paths to actively seek out meaningful and transformative art-making and appreciating experiences.

Interpassivity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pfaller
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Cultural Behavior ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Status ◽  
Philosophical Questions

Interpassivity is a widespread, but mostly unacknowledged form of cultural behavior. It consists in letting others (other people, or animals, machines etc.) not work, but consume in one’s place. When certain people, for example, take care that others drink their beer for them, fotocopy or print texts out instead of reading them, let recording devices watch TV programmes in their place, use ritual machines that pray or believe for them vicariously, or are happy that certain TV-comedies already laugh about themselves, we have to speak of interpassivity. These actions are based on certain subjects’ preference to delegate their enjoyment instead of having it themselves. This, obviously, raises a number of quite uncanny, fundamental questions: Why do certain people do not want to have their enjoyment? And why do they, if the do not want to enjoy, go to such great pains in order to ensure that somebody else enjoys in their place? The theory of interpassivity has had considerable impacts on several disciplines such as philosophy, art theory, psychoanalysis, media theory, political theory, anthropology, theory of religion etc. This volume assembles essays that reach from the fundamental philosophical questions, concerning the paradoxical pleasure gained from delegated enjoyment, to their most current consequences: for example concerning interactivity and participation in the arts and in politics, generosity in culture, the status of belief, ritual and magic, cultural capitalism, civilized urban role-play etc.

Arts-Based Research

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janinka Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethical Awareness ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Arts Based Research ◽  
Aesthetic Responses ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World

Arts-based research encompasses a range of research approaches and strategies that utilize one or more of the arts in investigation. Such approaches have evolved from understandings that life and experiences of the world are multifaceted, and that art offers ways of knowing the world that involve sensory perceptions and emotion as well as intellectual responses. Researchers have used arts for various stages of research. It may be to collect or create data, to interpret or analyze it, to present their findings, or some combination of these. Sometimes arts-based research is used to investigate art making or teaching in or through the arts. Sometimes it is used to explore issues in the wider social sciences. The field is a constantly evolving one, and researchers have evolved diverse ways of using the communicative and interpretative tools that processes with the arts allow. These include ways to initially bypass the need for verbal expression, to explore problems in physically embodied as well as discursive ways, to capture and express ambiguities, liminalities, and complexities, to collaborate in the refining of ideas, to transform audience perceptions, and to create surprise and engage audiences emotionally as well as critically. A common feature within the wide range of approaches is that they involve aesthetic responses. The richness of the opportunities created by the use of arts in conducting and/or reporting research brings accompanying challenges. Among these are the political as well as the epistemological expectations placed on research, the need for audiences of research, and perhaps participants in research, to evolve ways of critically assessing the affect of as well as the information in presentations, the need to develop relevant and useful strategies for peer review of the research as well as the art, and the need to evolve ethical awareness that is consistent with the intentions and power of the arts.

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