The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving

David W. Ecker

The statements of artists on art have served many purposes. Promotion and protest, instruction, criticism and reflection, even calls for aesthetic revolution, have issued forth on those occasions when artists have been moved to express themselves in words. The diversity of purposes or intentions of the artist-as-writer persuades the critical reader that different kinds of criteria are appropriate for the evaluation of such a wide variety of discourse.

When judged by literary criteria the literary efforts of artists are found to range from the grotesque to the polished and, at times, the elegant. For examples of this stylistic range one need only compare the Dada manifestoes with Delacroix's Journal.

When judged by philosophical criteria the generalizations of artists rank from the superficial, and occasionally the incoherent, to the profound. This intellectual gamut is readily noted by comparing a random sample of the flood of statements by contemporary artists published in catalogues and magazines with Leonardo's Notebooks.

When judged by educational criteria treatises on art run from the highly specific to the broadly theoretical. One thinks of Cennini's Book of the Art, the original "how-to-do-it" manual for painters, on the one hand and on the other Paul Klee's almost spiritual Pedagogical Sketchbook, whose subtitle is "Initial plan for a section of the theoretical instruction at the German Bauhaus."

It is apparent, however, that statements of artists on art and art itself may serve functions other than those sought by the artists. For instance, the purpose of the researcher into art may well involve criteria for assessing the writings or works of art that are not relevant to the artist's purposes. The artist may be concerned with the qualities of his personal experience or he may be preoccupied with the unique character of his artistic production. The art critic could well be chiefly interested in the completed work as an example of a stylistic movement, as a type of art activity that lends a common character to the work of many artists. Given this interest criteria come into play that have more inclusive applicability than those confined to a few cases. The philosopher is concerned with the status of a work of art as part of the furniture of the world and, more recently, with the status of talk about art. The sociologist, historian and psychologist of art will work with quite different hypotheses and, consequently, look for and find evidence of very different sorts in the same material.

The general impression one gets from a survey of writings of artists and non-artists alike is that the closer the writer has stood to the work of the studio, the more the techniques and means of production are appreciated. Conversely, it seems that the farther he moves back to view the role of art in education, society, or civilization, the more the writer becomes concerned with the ends of art, its ultimate value to mankind.

My interest in artists' discourse is methodological. By this I mean to indicate that my problem is one of formulating warranted generalizations about the controlled process of artistic production. These perspectives may be usefully merged. A close examination of the shop talk and the work of the studio will provide certain data about the process of constructing an art object. These generalizations will be expanded to a level of abstraction inclusive of the immediacies of any given artistic production. I will call the latter qualitative problem solving. It is my contention that careful study of what painters do when ordering their artistic means and ends, as well as to what they say they are doing, will provide the bases for significantly improving our generalizations about the plastic arts and our conceptions about education in the arts. If it is possible to describe the artistic process as a series of problems and their controlled resolution, the ensuing generalizations may be of no small consequence to the teaching of art. Thus, my interest in and criteria for the evaluating of the verbal and qualitative ma ­ terials of the artist will be methodological: my interest will be in artistic means and ends and my criteria that which will evaluate discourse in terms of its ability to ex ­ plain and describe deliberately conducted procedures involved in artistic production.

I

Henry Moore, writing on "the problems that have concerned me from time to time," claims that the sculptor "must strive continually to think of, and use form in its full spatial completeness . . . he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like; he identifies himself with its centre of gravity, its mass, its weight; he realizes its volume, as the space that displaces air."2 Moore speaks of the sources of his "sculptural problems" as follows:

"... I sometimes begin a drawing with no preconceived problem to solve, with only the desire to use pencil on paper, and make lines, tones and shapes with no conscious aim; but as my mind takes in what is so produced a point arrives where some idea becomes conscious and crystallizes, and then a control and ordering begins to take place."

"Or sometimes I start with a set subject; or to solve, in a block of stone of known dimensions, a sculptural problem I've given myself, and then consciously attempt to build an ordered relationship of forms .... "

Thus Moore refers to what Dewey would call qualitative thought-thinking in the particular qualities of the artist's medium (in this case, stone). Moore's sculptural ideas are not necessarily "preconceived," but nevertheless at some point in the proceedings an "idea becomes conscious and crystallizes" and "ordering begins." Here, one thinks of Moore's various wood, bronze, and stone solutions to his long-time problem with the theme of the human torso - his "reclining figure" series.

Turning to a painter, the following is a recorded conversation with Picasso.

It would be very interesting to record photographically, not the stages of a painting, but its metamorphoses. One would see perhaps by what course a mind finds its way towards the crystallization of its dream . . .

The picture is not thought out and determined before-hand, rather while it is being made it follows the mobility of thought . . .

When one begins a picture one often discovers fine things. One ought to beware of these, destroy one's picture, recreate it many times. On each destruction of a beautiful find, the artist does not suppress it, to tell the truth; rather he transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial . . .

Here Picasso gives an illuminating account, part shop talk and part speculative, of his painting procedures. Yet what is perhaps even more significant from a methodological point of view is a comparison of his paintings of the 1910's with those of Braque and Juan Gris. For it seems justified to claim that, at this period in the history of modern art, these three painters shared cubistic problems - shared them even to the point of making it difficult for the viewer to distinguish the work of one painter from another save through signature.

Another painter, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, states:

“There are numerous problems that beset the artist in his work. Consciously or unconsciously each artist tries to solve them. Lately I have come to the stage where I actually take a problem and try to solve it. For instance I was interested in painting a dark object within the dark. In order to carry this out successfully it may take me several years. Once accomplished to my satisfaction, however, it becomes an integral part of me, enabling me to go on to another problem."

This last statement about going on to another problem suggests the notion of a development - or learning sequence - whereby the artist increases his control, over a period of time, by solving problems which are qualitatively related to one another in technique, style, or theme. It also suggests a conception of art history as a series of problems and solutions; those solutions which provoke the most artists in succeeding generations to work at related problems are named "masterpieces." Successive problems with perspective, modeling, proportions, color, composition, expression, and so on, are literally a part of art history.

Is this not the case in the series of paintings shown here? Cezanne's View of Gardanne, painted in 1885-1886, with its flattened perspective and color-the same green is used in the distant hill as in the trees in the foreground-is clearly a precursor of Picasso's cubistic The Reservoir, painted in 1909. In turn, Cubism, as a pervasive quality of the work of Picasso, Braque, and Gris, prompted Mondrian to move toward "pure" painting in Eucalyptus Tree in Grey + Tan (1912), and in his Oval Composition done in 1914. Even in this se ­ quence of only four paintings one can see why Cezanne is called the father of modern painting. His work, as summed up in his dictum: "Nature must be treated through the cylinder, the sphere, the cone," has led many painters ultimately to reject nature as subject matter altogether. Yet with respect to "volume" the new qualitative alternatives gained by Cezanne-the qualities of flatness and "local" color without light or shadow-have influenced quite diverse schools of painting. These "surface" or com ­ ponent qualities have, together with the pervasive "expressive" qualities of Van Gogh and the "decorative" qualities of Gauguin, directly influenced the Fauve movement of 1905-1907 (Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Dufy, Marquet, Rouault, Braque, Friesz, van Dongen) and, by way of Cubism, have also influenced the geometric, non-objective De Stijl movement (Mondrian, van Doesburg, Vantongerloo, the architect, Oud, and the Bauhaus). One is impressed by the continuity of artistic thought, as these new pervasive qualities are seen to emerge from older qualities - sometimes dramatically, sometimes almost imperceptibly. By extending this analysis of qualitative relationships it is conceivable that the history of art could be viewed as a record of the highest achievements of man's qualitative problem solving behavior.

If this conception of the art process as a problem-solution-problem continuum is warranted by the qualitative evidence of art history, much of the shop talk between artists is verbal evidence. For shop talk is largely a by-product of their mutual prob ­ lems of painting or sculpting. The words incorporated into this shop talk have com ­ mon sense meanings, or, rather, sense common to fellow artists. That is, the words refer to the shared qualities of their work. Consider the empirical character of the following examples of shop talk: "If you use a cool green here you can get this plane to recede." "My painting is beginning to get a cubist quality." "This jagged shape contrasts sharply with those open volumes." The things dealt with by such language are what I choose to call the means and ends of artistic production, the qualities artists manipulate, orchestrate, modify, and create in solving their problems. Even the limited sample of artists' statements reviewed thus far suggests the broad features of the artistic thinking that is involved in the production of plastic art.

Given this initial data it seems plausible to suggest that:

(1) Artists at their work think in terms of relations of qualities, think with qualities; their thought, in a word, is qualitative.

(2) This thought is exercised on behalf of the construction of further qualities - the qualitative problem.

(3) Qualitative problems are not so much "in the mind" as they are "mindings." Artistic problem solving takes place in the artist's medium-line, plane, color, texture, form are the qualities distinctive to or possible for such materials as stone, wood, paint, or fabric.

(4) Qualitative problems are not "inner conflicts" or "states of confusion" but awareness of elements or prospects within a range of qualities with regard to some intended order, end-in-view, or pervasive quality. Thus qualitative problems, like theoretical problems, are publicly available to student and instructor alike for shared criticism and work.

(5) The means for the resolution of a qualitative problem are component qualities. Words as qualities may, of course, enter into the art, say, of collage, or the poster.

(6) While language may be of help in the definition of the qualitative problem, that is, in its location or delimitation, the ability to describe verbally a qualitative problem is not a necessary condition for having one. (A painting may be labeled after its completion.)

(7) Critical judgment is not necessarily antecedent, nor totally subsequent, to a creative act, but often occurs during the act. Judgment, or judging, is choosing among alternative actions and qualities, choosing among alternative qualitative means - ends and methods. Cubism as a style has acted to determine what elements, planes, structures may be organized. As such the style regulates or controls the production of a given canvas. Because of this control one would identify the canvas as cubistic. The painter may, at any time, choose to destroy his canvas, that is, embrace another control. Or he may indicate verbally his satisfaction with its development or otherwise affirm his control.

(8) None of the laws of formal logic as such seems to be directly applicable to the qualitative thought of the artist. While logic can order the theoretical symbols used in scientific inquiry and control statements and assertions, whether about art objects or other subject matters, it is not applicable to the qualitative ordering that yields a piece of sculpture.

(9) One may locate within the history of art the history of art criticism; the historical series of qualitative solutions to artists' problems sets the qualitative standards for evaluation of art.

II

John Dewey is one of the few modern philosophers who have offered us some methodological analyses of controlled production both in the arts as well as in scientific inquiry. These analyses are exceedingly pertinent to the theme of this paper. Dewey held that all thinking depends upon the awareness of qualities. He claimed it is the unique quality that pervades a situation that acts as a control over all means to ends-in-view ordering. But in his most systematic effort to explain thought processes Dewey is essentially occupied with the nature of the "pattern of inquiry," or scientific problem solving. Dewey's analysis of the steps of inquiry are well known: "(i) a felt difficulty; (ii) its location and definition; (iii) suggestion of possible solution; (iv) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (v) further observation and experimentation leading to its acceptance or rejection; that is the conclusion of belief or disbelief."6 As to his conception of artistic thinking he leaves only a series of rather unsystematic, albeit seminal, ideas which suggests the possibility of extending the conception of "problem" to include both scientific and artistic aspects of human in telligence. For example one reads:

"The artist has his problems and thinks as he works. But his thought is more immediately embodied in the object. Because of the comparative remoteness of his end, the scientific worker operates with symbols, words and mathematical signs. The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so close to the object that he is producing that they merge directly into it."

Dewey finds many similarities between art and science and he often identifies the two. He insists that

"... science is an art, that art is practice, and that the only distinction worth drawing is not between practice and theory, but between those modes of practice that are not intelligent, not inherently and immediately enjoyable, and those which are full of enjoyed meanings .... "

According to Dewey the method of inquiry is the method of art: "Scientific method or the art of constructing true perceptions is ascertained in the course of experience to occupy a privileged position in undertaking other arts . . . "9 Furthermore, he claims that artists and scientists have much in common:

"There is ... a tendency among lay critics to confine experimentation to scientists in the laboratory. Yet one of the essential traits of the artist is that he is born an experimenter. Without this trait he becomes a poor or a good academician. The artist is compelled to be an experimenter because he has to express an intensely individualized experience through means and materials that belong to the common and public world. This problem cannot be solved once for all. It is met in every new work undertaken. Otherwise an artist repeats himself and becomes esthetically dead. Only because the artist operates experimentally does he open new fields of experience and disclose new aspects and qualities in familiar scenes and objects."

Having stated the basic similarities between artistic and scientific activities, Dewey does not ignore their differences, although perhaps he fails to draw the line to the degree of sharpness his critics might desire. Between the two,

“. . . the only significant distinction concerns the kind of material to which emotionalized imagina ­ tion adheres. Those who are called artists have for their subject-matter the qualities of things of direct experience; "intellectual" inquirers deal with these qualities at one remove, through the medium of symbols that stand for qualities but are not significant in their immediate presence. "

Inasmuch as the theme of intelligence as the one valid instrument to control and enrich human experience is central to all Dewey's writings, it is quite understandable that we find him insisting throughout these passages on the indispensable part thought plays in the production of art. He insists that "the odd notion that an artist does not think and a scientific inquirer does nothing else is the result of converting a difference of tempo and emphasis into a difference in kind."12 Or again, when he writes, "any idea that ignores the necessary role of intelligence in production of works of art is based upon identification of thinking with use of one special kind of material, verbal signs and words."13 Citations such as these could be continued, but nowhere does one find a systematic analysis of the method of "artistic" thinking.

III

Two students of Dewey's thought, N. L. Champlin and F. T. Villemain, of Wayne and Toledo Universities respectively, have exploited these suggestions by extending methodological analysis to include the controls in "qualitative thought" and the formal character of qualitative ordering. Following Peirce and Dewey, they define intelligence as a human process or activity rather than as some kind of entity within humans. But intelligence is not limited to arranging theoretical symbols-that with which scientists think primarily.

The artist, too, exhibits deliberate control over his materials: he arranges qualitative means such as lines, colors, planes, and textures, to achieve his qualitative end, which we might name "cubist," "impressionist," or "expressionist." In his selecting, rejecting, and relating of qualitative means, he is guided by a quality which is common to his previous work or to a particular style, such as Cubism. Thus, a certain kind of general or "pervasive" quality acts as his method. Just as the laws of logic are the controls by which theoretical symbols are arranged in scientific inquiry, so these pervasive qualities act as controls-directive criteria-by which component qualities are arranged in the artistic process. The artist utilizes qualitative method to arrange the qualitative means toward qualitative ends. Art, therefore, is an affair of intelligence ­ it is intelligence in qualitative ordering.

The arts can now be seen as specialized products of qualitative intelligence. Dewey's idea that the pervasive quality of experience is the "regulative principle of all thinking," and that this quality provides the necessary conditions for scientific knowing as well as qualitative operations, form the basis for Villemain's and Champlin's theory of education. The traditional distinction between scientific and artistic activities-that science has to do with "reason," and "intelligence," while art traffics with "feelings" and "emotions" - is rejected as inherently un-testable. (The latter terms do not have publicly shareable referents.) In its place, their theory establishes qualitative (aesthetic) and theoretical (scientific) intelligence as operating in all areas of human experience.1 4

IV

With the broad features of the artistIc process staked out and with a conception of art as qualitative means-ends relating as our theoretical base, we may now undertake to generalize the statements of artists into a statement of qualitative problem solving in methodological terms. It may be noted that, historically, much attention has been given to the description of the parts of word or number ordering. For example, there are the labels verb, noun, adjective; hypothesis, assertion, deduction; division, multiplication, addition; assumption, verification, Proof. Many writers have wanted to use these or similar terms to describe artistic ordering. And although it is true that much talk about the arts incorporates the terminology of theoretical ordering - such terms as "artistic truth," "visual statement," "aesthetic validity," "perceptual knowledge" are terms which come to mind - this is no doubt due to the vague morphological resemblance noted between artistic and scientific procedures. The reflections of artists and scientists alike point up striking similarities in all original thinking. But the use of these quasi-scientific terms to refer to qualities of art is, I think, grossly misleading.

The initial stages of art may appear to be random, uncontrolled behavior; but the appearance of an object is not a stage of artistic problem solving any more than the indeterminate situation was, strictly, a stage of inquiry for Dewey. A problem has to be taken in thought as either (1) an object such as a painting, costume, or table setting, or (2) a situation in which the relations of component elements seem present not in virtue of an ordering. In painting, for instance, if the work is to proceed, choices must be made; the alternatives are many and varied before the initial brush stroke (and the artist often may be in a hurry to make even "aimless" marks on the paper or canvas to gain a basis for future choice). But after these first elements-whether a bit of color, a line of a poem, or a bar of music-the alternatives diminish in number.

Here is a sequence of photographs of a painting by Saul Horowitz. All of the stages of the painting are not shown. However, the qualities of the final painting are present in the beginning sketch. Other qualities have been modified considerably, or in some places completely painted over. Yet the total quality of each stage is related to the extent that, were they mixed up with photos of other paintings, they could be re-ordered into the original sequence by inspection and comparison. It seems entirely plausible, therefore, to hold with Dewey that "The doing or making is artistic when the perceived result is of such a nature that its qualities as perceived have controlled the question of production."15 Also plausible is Champlin's notion that the final painting, even if hazily "conceived" or there at the time of the initial sketch, could, nevertheless, act in some kind of controlling capacity - as a criterion - for the selection and rejection of qualitative elements (line, color, distribution of shapes and textures).

Artistic thinking, then, occurs when present and possible qualities are taken as means, or ways of proceeding, toward a qualitative end-in-view, a total quality. The pervasive quality directs artistic behavior from stage to stage until a coherent whole is realized. This purposive activity may be conducted entirely in qualities - component, pervasive, and total. However, there may be ordering of theoretical symbols which may not be found as elements of the art work itself, but which are, nevertheless, helpful and in some cases demanded for the solution of a qualitative problem. It may be necessary, for example, for a painter to test a certain new formula for a particular gesso ground so as to achieve a highly mat finish when colors are applied over the canvas.

Qualitative problem solving is, as Dewey insisted of scientific inquiry, not a neat progression of steps but a single, continuous means-ends progression, sometimes hesitating, halting, groping; it may be rethought, move forward again, start over, in short, it is experimental behavior. And all that one can attempt is a logical analysis of distinguishable phases of the artistic process, as Dewey did in his description of scientific processes of thought. Rules, or recipes, as such, for producing good art (or science, for that matter) have never been established, and are perhaps anathema to the genuinely creative art of each age.

To reinterpret Dewey's definition of "inquiry": The artistic process is qualitative problem solving; it is the controlled procedure of instituting qualitative relationships as means to the achievement of a qualitative end or total. Not all of the following steps or stages are to be taken as necessarily proceeding in the order of presentation; but they are herein held to correspond with what Dewey has called "the stages of a complete act of reflective thinking":

1. A presented relationship. The initial and perhaps rambling phase is the instituting, taking, selecting, the discrimination of component or total qualitative relationships -the confrontation of that quality or those qualities which achieve candidacy for alteration, reconstruction, or change. These qualities (including those sometimes designated by the term "materials") vary, of course, from medium to medium, from sub ­ stantive context to substantive context, and are components to be developed.

2. Substantive mediation. There follows, sometimes quickly or sometimes over a prolonged period, the instituting of new qualitative relationships. In some instances these relationships become, however hazily, candidates for means, whose status as means is dependent upon having an end-in-view. The choice for these relationships rather than some other possible relationships conditions succeeding choices among qualities. A future choice, however, may involve the "destruction" of a previous choice in the sense that another quality appears to compete with the initiating quality.

3. Determination of pervasive control.

The controlling pervasive quality may emerge more clearly as a pervasive-as a control - at any time of the process' development; it results from the qualitative components being introduced, manipulated, and related to other components and the qualities emerging from these respective relations. "Components" of a unique end-in­view gain identity as such by virtue of the envisioned total quality now emerging. The pervasive quality may, however, be that of some "traditional" or already available art form or style. Nevertheless the total sought may maintain its uniqueness as a total quality. (The achieved total may appear as unique in the sense of being a distinctive forming according to a pervasive quality already available historically, e.g., impressionism, and thereby contribute to that pervasive control, or it may be unique as a total which itself becomes a pervasive or control quality for future orderings, i.e., the appearance of a new style.)  

4. Qualitative prescription. Given a pervasive quality, whether arriving early or late in the art production, future mediations follow according to patterns of qualitative relatedness. The artist "infers" quality from quality in the sense that future "qualitative steps" are anticipated or intended by virtue of presently instituted qualities.

5. Experimental exploration. With each brush stroke, push of the thumb, touch of the key, tap of the mallet, gouge of the burin, voice inflection, gesture, a "testing" operation is being performed. Such testing takes place as component qualities (now here or yesterday there) are thought in relation to total and/or pervasive quality also empirically there.

6. Conclusion: the total quality. The work is judged complete - the total achieved - the pervasive has adequately been the control. It is a tentative affair because future evaluations may yield a conclusion for future modifications. (Indeed, some artists have maintained that they have never really "finished" a canvas.)

In this attempt to establish methodological generalizations about artistic processes, I have argued for a discrimination between two kinds of problem solving - the scientific and the qualitative, each with its distinctive controls. These distinctions together with the analysis of qualitative procedures extend Dewey's conception of method and flow from the general theory of intelligence being explored by Villemain and Champlin.

To summarize the methodological conception of the artistic process advanced here, it may be said that qualitative problem solving is a mediation in which qualitative relations as means are ordered to desired qualitative ends. Thus to choose qualitative ends is to achieve an artistic problem. Whenever qualitative problems are sought, pointed out to others, or solved, therein do we have artistic endeavor - art and art education.

Notes:

1 This generalization is not entirely true, how· ever, since from the nineteenth century on artists in their writings reveal an increasing concern with the ends served by art, often expressing quite diverse opinions. See Artists on Art From the XIV to the XX Century, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves (New York, 1947), and The Creative Process, ed. Brewster Ghiselin (New York, 1955).

2 The Creative Process, p. 74.

3 Ibid., p. 77.

4 Ibid., pp. 56-57.

5 Ibid., p. 62.

6 How We Think (Boston, New York, Chicago, 1910), p. 72-

7 Art As Experience (New York, 1934), p. 16.

8 Experience and Nature (Chicago, London, 1926), p.358.

9 Ibid., p. 379.

10 Art As Experience, p. 144.

11 Ibid., p. 73.

12"Ibid., p. 15.

13 Ibid., p. 46.

14. "This section is, of course, a highly schematic presentation of some features of their theory. For a more comprehensive view, see F. T. Villemain, "The Qualitative Character of Intelligence," and N. L. Champlin, "Controls in Qualitative Thought," both unpub!. diss. (Columbia, 1952). Also see their article, "Frontiers for an Experimentalist Philosophy of Education," The Antioch Review, XIX (1959), 345 ­ 359. Of further interest is "John Dewey Centennial:

15. A Special Section," co-ed. Villemain and Champlin, Saturday Review, November 21, 1959, pp. 16-26.

16 Art As Experience, p. 48.