Contextualism as the world view and general method for studying arting¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The report adopts Pepper's contextualism as its world hypothesis, taking the historic event as root metaphor and treating the drawing process as an act in its context. The author states that "The historic event, as Pepper says, is the root metaphor of contextualism; and the theory to which it commits one is synthetic and not analytical." Quality and texture serve as working categories, and the drawing serial is treated as an extended individual texture. This framework shelters the qualitative description of unique expressive acts.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Researcher works from a contextualist stance attending to concreteness, uniqueness and wholeness of the expressive act

Constraints¶

• The author notes an uncommon degree of arbitrariness exists in why one feature is selected rather than another, yielding what he calls a Roshomon effect

Target Learners¶

• artists and art students making drawings

Target Learning Objectives¶

• understanding and describing the creative drawing process

Claims¶

Related Theories¶

• Special participant observer role stepping within the artist's artistic serial
• Counelis typology of research designs by time/space assumptions and unit versus class
• Three coined conditions of arting: artistic causality, idiosyncratic meaning, and intentional symbolization

Examples¶

• Drawing laboratory with time-lapse photography of drawing evolution
• Eight constant forms of data collected within the drawing laboratory
• Shared history feedback inquiry using stimulated recall of time-lapse replays

Key Sources¶

• Beittel, Kenneth R. (1972). A Case Methodology for the Study of the Drawing Process and the Drawing Series. Final Report. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED075274