Beyond Aesthetics: Contemporary Art as an Answer to Critics Towards Arts-Based Methods in Organizations

Abstract

Research showed that art could improve organizations through a kind of importation of artistic skills related to creativity and uncertainty management. Three critics have emerged to contest such artistic interventions in organizations: technical criticism, highlighting practical difficulties of the process; representational criticism which relies on social representations of art; conceptual criticism, which shows unbridgeable differences between art and management.

This article explores contemporary art as a potential answer to these critics. Contemporary art gives up esthetic matters and does not need any know-how: everyone can practice it (technical answer). This post-esthetic art appears rather as a professional method than transcendental inspiration (representational answer). The difficult transition between these representations contributes to a greater creativity (conceptual answer). Switching to the paradigm of contemporary art shows the importance of the translation process between art and management, which should be placed at the heart of arts-based methods.

Keywords:

• Arts-based methods
• creativity
• artistic interventions in organizations
• art
• esthetics
• contemporary art

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 A perfect example of a post-aesthetic artwork devoid of materiality: Yves Klein, who sold eight “Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility” – literally empty space – for twenty grams of gold apiece between 1959 and 1962.