Researching and writing on contemporary art and artists take many forms: the scholar meticulously developing a journal article, book chapter or research monograph over many months or years; the journalist penning a review or opinion-piece, often working to a strict deadline; the writer affiliated with a specific arts institution or event, preparing a programme note, theatre booklet or exhibition handbook; the aficionado typing a personal blog entry, producing a fanzine or even just documenting a spontaneous insight via social media. In respect of art created, and artists who have lived, close to the present time, all such writersâand many more besidesâmay have developed a close relationship with their subject matter, with which they might have a myriad range of wider personal connections, some of which may affect their access to documents, interviews and other sources for their research. How can such authors engage with the art and the artist, yet maintain a respectable level of critical distance when researching and writing about them and their work?
This volume has its origins in recurrent dialogues between the two editors and others concerning the need for rigorous critical thinking about the very nature of researching and writing about contemporary artists and their output, as manifested in different types of discourse. In a multidisciplinary scholarly field, this topic is very far from being exhausted, though some piecemeal aspects have, of course, received significant previous coverage in the literature. Several general volumes on writing about art consist primarily of student-facing guidance rather than scholarly critique of real-life practices (for example, KrĂŒger 2008; Herbert 2012; Williams 2014; Barnet 2015), but there are a number of edited anthologies in which biographers reflect more generally upon their experiences in writing the lives of their subjects, such as Jeffrey Meyersâs The Craft of Literary Biography (1985) and John Batchelorâs The Art of Literary Biography (1995), some of whose contributors happen to have been writing on modern figures and/or those with whom the authors had personal connections. A range of other volumes (for example, Herndon and McLeod 1979; Hatcher 1985; Morphy and Perkins 2006) consider the subject from an anthropological perspective, frequently downplaying both art and artists in favour of wider cultural questions, but sometimes with material relevant to the issues of this volume (see Ian Paceâs chapters for more on this subject). Journals such as Performance Research have carried articles documenting areas such as artistic practices and processes in relation to individual case studies of, as distinct from self-reflexively contemplating acts of researching and writing on, contemporary art and/or artists; similar engagement can be found in leading book-length studies of practice as research (for example, Allegue et al. 2009; Smith and Dean 2009; Freeman 2010; Nelson 2013). Many trade periodicals offer examples of writing on contemporary art, as distinct from the critical modes of writing under scrutiny in the current volume, which therefore raise a different set of, nonetheless pertinent, questions.
This collection, conversely, is characterised by two distinctive features. First, the emphasis is placed on specifically on contemporary artists and their outputs, and the issues that are uniquely raised by researching and writing about living or recently deceased figures, as distinct from those whose lives have taken place further from the present. Second, it brings together discourse on personages across the disciplines of music, literature, dance, theatre, the visual arts and more, in order to give sharper focus to issues shared across the arts as well offering opportunities for dialogue between different artistic fields (involving differing numbers of individuals in the creative process, some very much focused on a single creator, others in which a range of people contribute) on the theory and practice of research. In these respects, the anthology aims to fill a valuable gap in scholarship by subjecting the theory and practice of writing about contemporary art and artists across the disciplines to sustained critical scrutiny from a range of different artistic viewpoints, discussing issues of writing about recent developments in the arts in order to raise the visibility of this area of scholarly enquiry.
The scope of the volume concerns figures active in the contemporary arts, understood to incorporate those living or recently deceased artists who have produced innovative, distinctive or otherwise leading work within the last c. 30 years. Coverage ranges from performers and performance artists, through dancers and choreographers, to composers, visual artists, literary authors and more, in addition to artists writing about their own creative practices and corresponding output, and those with whom individual authors have worked. It focuses upon the act of writing and the strategies, ideologies and assumptions contained therein, as well as the boundaries of what constitutes âwritingâ about contemporary artists in its multifarious forms, involving iconoclastic and experimental approaches to such writing alongside more conventional representations. It is primarily concerned with critical modes of writing, as distinct from fan-based writing or descriptive writing, insofar as these discourses can be separated at the current time (on which point, see Wiley 2020, and Paceâs chapters in this volume), and it looks reflexively at such writing in the hope of providing more rigorous and ethically sound foundations for future practices of this type. Matters of ethics in relation to researching and writing on contemporary artists are to be found throughout the collection, for example, in Lorraine Yorkâs chapter on scandal.
The advent of practice as research in the arts disciplines (various key texts about which are cited above) is a secondary concern of the volume, since many of the questions raised by researching and writing on other contemporary artists also relate to writing about oneself and oneâs own practice. This became a particularly cutting-edge issue ever since greater recognition in the academic realm of practice as research, beginning in Finland in the 1980s and 1990s and Australia in 1987, followed by the USA in the 1990s and elsewhere later in that decade, emerging in the UK around 1997 (see Kershaw 2009, 106; Cook 2015; Pace 2015b). This phenomenon engendered a range of debates about when and how exactly practice can be said to embody research, as have occupied many academics in the UK who are required to submit outputs to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), subsequently the Research Excellence Framework (REF), such that they are forced to justify their work in this respect. Some maintain that certain forms of creative practice can only become research when accompanied by writing (see, for example, Nelson 2013, 71â73; Vaes 2015); others believe that that the research can be embodied within the creative practice itself, a key issue in the debates following from John Croftâs article (2015a), responses by Ian Pace (2015a) and Camden Reeves (2015), and a further contribution from Croft (2015b), in the journal Tempo, on music composition and performance. Others have grappled with the meaning of quality in such outputs (for example, Schippers 2007; Biggs and Karlsson 2011). Our volume incorporates contributions from artists as well as incorporating different forms of artâa visual essay and a music compositionâin later sections alongside more conventional modes of scholarly enquiry, while Christopher Leedham and Martin Scheureggerâs chapter on the written component of music composition PhD degrees addresses the matter directly. It therefore responds to timely questions such as the validity of creative practice as research and its parity with more traditional humanities-oriented output.
In the wake of various revelations relating to artistsâ private lives and activities, some alleged to have committed sexual harassment and assault, and the subsequent #MeToo movement which began in Autumn 2017 following allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, new complications have arisen concerning how those writing about such artists respond to such knowledge. In Part II of the volume, Lorraine York offers a particular perspective on the vexed question of how to continue to undertake academic study of contemporary artists at a time during which they have been embroiled in disciplinary scandal, with reference to three interrelated controversies of Canadian literary celebrity that developed in 2016â2017. First, a case involving allegations of sexual harassment at the University of British Columbia associated with the writer Steven Galloway, and articulated through a series of online statements including the âUBC Accountableâ letter (signed by household names including Margaret Atwood) and a subsequent counter-letter (though the case was eventually dismissed and UBC forced to pay damages to Galloway [Eagland 2018]). Second, the criticism on social media and other platforms faced by Joseph Boyden, author of the seminal UBC Accountable letter, disputing his claims of Indigenous identity and heritage. Third, an editorial written by Hal Niedzviecki in which he endorsed the appropriation of the stories of Indigenous communities by non-Indigenous writers in the name of diversity, including a suggestion for an âAppropriation Prizeâ that, although tongue-in-cheek, nonetheless received high-profile support via Twitter. Drawing on the field of celebrity studies as well as scholarship on scandal itself, York argues that while it has often been expected that scandal violates prevailing morals, the above controversies represent instances in which hegemonic institutions were among the sources of scandal, yielding an enhanced understanding in which scandal is no longer associated solely with the agency of an individual who is seen to be transgressive. She further suggests that scandal should be understood as lasting rather than fleeting and that rather than merely excising scandalous artists from the institutions that once upheld them, we should knowingly question their past and present place within them mindful of scandalâs persistent nature, in order to appreciate the full extent of the artists in a given field whom that scandal affects.
Hywel Dixâs chapter engages with issues pertaining to the reception of contemporary writers, in particular those whose later work is negatively affected by comparison with their earlier successes upon which their reputation is primarily founded. Drawing parallels with career guidance counselling and using career construction theory as a springboard for discussion, Dix theorises the range of different career trajectories that may be experienced by authors depending on the level of critical acclaim they experience over time: some enjoy initial or sustained success in their careers, while others attain success more gradually or experience a mid-career peak or trough. Noting a common trajectory of decline in an artistâs later output, Dix argues that the late-stage careerâwhich may, in reality, fall at different stages of life for different authors depending on their unique career trajectoryâshould itself be scrutinised as a distinct category. He suggests that writers may become more self-reflective and self-aware about their practice in their later output, even when their earlier work has attained significant success, as exemplified by such phenomena as retrospective commentary on oneâs own work, the revisiting of previously employed literary techniques, as well as specific modes of fictionalised criticism and autobiography.
The subject of Christopher Leedham and Martin Scheureggerâs chapter is the written component that accompanies the musical portfolio of many composition PhD degrees in the UK, which finds a parallel in current practices with respect to the Research Excellence Framework for which submitting composers are e...