Making Space for Creativity : Niche Construction and the Artist’s Studio
Abstract
It is increasingly acknowledged that creativity cannot be fully understood without considering the setting where it takes place. Building on this premise, we use the concepts of niche construction, scaffolding, coupling, and functional integration to expound on the environmentally situated nature of painters’ studio work. Our analysis shows studios to be multi-resource niches that are customized by artists to support various capacities, states, and actions crucial to painting. When at work in these personalized spaces, painters do not need to rely solely on their “inner” powers of imagination, memory, decision making, and technique to execute their paintings. Instead, with the help of carefully selected resources, they can offload elements of creative mentation and action onto the studio niche and enact different forms of a creative agency. To put more flesh on these ideas, we examine how painters use (1) existing artworks, (2) memory aids, and (3) music to scaffold the creative process. Overall, our analysis illuminates underexamined aspects of environmentally situated creativity and demonstrates the broader utility of the applied concepts for future creativity research.
Main Authors
Format
Articles
Research article
Published
2022
Series
Subjects
Publication in research information system
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
The permanent address of the publication
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202206223580Use this for linking
Review status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0021-8529
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpac021
Language
English
Published in
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Citation
- Saarinen, J. A., & Krueger, J. (2022). Making Space for Creativity : Niche Construction and the Artist’s Studio. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 80(3), 322-332. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpac021
Additional information about funding
Jussi A. Saarinen would like to thank the Kone Foundation for its financial support.
Copyright© The Authors 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society for Aesthetics