Academic Philistinism? The Challenges of Contemporary Artistic Research Inside Academia. Semi-structured Interviews with Visual Art Students in Brazil

Abstract

The objectives of this research are twofold, firstly, to analyse how departments of art and art practitioners are integrated within academia, and to scrutinise this coexistence, by focusing on emerging issues due to the nature of Art as “specific knowledge” thus, an assessment of its eventual mismatch within the generic framework of a traditional academic context. Consequently, this article exposes both frictions and dilemmas witnessed, as well as elaborates on the specificities of the Art knowledge and associated visual creativity and thinking. The study used qualitative analysis to explore the topic of the integration of art departments within academic settings. In this article, ten Visual Art students from three Brazilian universities are interviewed between May and August of 2022 about their perspectives on their studies and whether they advocate artistic research. The results shed light on how artistic practice is viewed as research and demonstrate how the traditional research outcome affects art students in their art production, academic and artistic identities, and perceptions and expectations.