The idea that art can be a form of research and, therefore, a contribution to knowledge, raises a number of philosophical questions such as: What is research in, through or for art? Should art draw upon research methods from other subjects, or develop its own? What kind of forms are produced or might be produced through artistic research?  This is the first book to address the questions raised by visual arts research and is designed to give those working in the area new and challenging ways to reflect on how their practices engage with questions of knowledge-construction. Covering debates within aesthetics, epistemology and visual culture, this is an ideal text for art research students.

Art, Research, Philosophy explores the emergent field of artistic research: art produced as a contribution to knowledge. As a new subject, it raises several questions: What is art-as-research? Don’t the requirements of research amount to an imposition on the artistic process that dilutes the power of art? How can something subjective become objective? What is the relationship between art and writing? Doesn’t description always miss the particularity of the artwork?

This is the first book-length study to show how ideas in philosophy can be applied to artistic research to answer its questions and to make proposals for its future. Clive Cazeaux argues that artistic research is an exciting development in the historical debate between aesthetics and the theory of knowledge. The book draws upon Kant, phenomenology and critical theory to show how the immediacies of art and experience are enmeshed in the structures that create knowledge. The power of art to act on these structures is illustrated through a series of studies that look closely at a number of contemporary artworks.

This book will be ideal for postgraduate students and scholars of the visual and creative arts, aesthetics and art theory.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorandfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315764610