ABSTRACT
Research into art is widely understood; so is research through art. But art as research is still a much contested area, where the research is to a greater or lesser extent embodied in the artefact. Using examples from literature (especially J-P Sartre's noel “Nausea”) and film (especially popular bio-pics of artists and scientists), and with reference to the latest thinking about practice-based, practice-related and practice-led research – the terms are themselves unsettled – this essay explores and unpacks some of the main assumptions which lie behind a burgeoning type of research, in both public and specialist discourse. It also examines some of the reasons why arts research has expanded so much within arts higher education over the last twenty years or so. The essay concludes by outlining a series of muddles surrounding arts research which still need to be resolved – and with the thought that, somehow or other, “in the end, the Arts should make their own argument.”
