Available via license: CC BY-NC 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
9
How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged
in Art Learning?
Chiaki Ishiguro1and Takeshi Okada2
1Tamagawa University Brain Science Institute, 6-1-1 Tamagawagakuen,
Machida, Tokyo 194-8610, Japan
2The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Education, 7-3-1 Hongo,
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Abstract
Inspiration has been regarded as an important phenomenon in research into
artistic creation and art learning (Tyler & Likova, 2012; Chemi, Jensen &
Hersted, 2015). Active art appreciation inspires people and facilitates the
creativity of art-making, as shown by psychological experiments on drawing
(Okada & Ishibashi, 2016). Our recent studies on inspiration in artistic
activities have shown that the core of inspiration through art appreciation
(ITA) is a dual focus on the artwork (and artist) and the viewer’s own art-
making. In this chapter, we outline our model of the psychological process
of ITA. We list factors that promote ITA, in particular, those inducing a
dual focus in the context of educational practice. Some factors – instruction,
methods of appreciation, and methods of selecting and showing artworks –
may contribute to educational interventions in museums and schools. Finally,
we described a case of art educational practice for undergraduates, designed
to promote inspiration.
9.1 Introduction
Many artists have described receiving inspiration for their creations. In the
book, “Behind the Scenes of Artists’ Creations”, Tatiana Chemi, Julie Borup
Jensen and Lone Hersted provided several examples of artists’ creative inspi-
ration (Chemi et al., 2015). For example, Julia Varley, an Italian actress, was
205
206 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
deeply inspired by a performance of Odin that she had the opportunity to see
when visiting Denmark. Although she encountered many difficulties perform-
ing in a foreign country, she was so inspired by Odin’s work that it pushed
her to become a better artist herself. Such an experience has often been
described as a gift from the creative muse, as if inspiration comes from some
higher power. In fact, psychological research in past decades has revealed
that the creation of artwork requires conscious effort (Weisberg, 2006). More
recently, researchers have begun to examine inspiration empirically and have
suggested that inspiration plays an important role in creativity “by firing the
soul” (for a review, see Oleynick, Thrash, LeFew, Moldovan & Kieffaber,
2014). The increase in the number of psychological studies on inspiration in
creation has helped us begin to unravel the mystery of inspiration. In addition,
researchers studying art learning have also shown an interest in inspiration
and how the inspiration process can be utilized in art learning, a question that
still remains unanswered (Tyler & Likova, 2012).
To answer this question, this chapter provides a review of psychological
studies on inspiration, especially in artistic activities, and suggests important
factors in promoting inspiration in art learning and art education. In addition,
we introduce our own practice in art education and report how it was designed
to promote inspiration and how learners changed throughout the practice. We
aim to offer a new framework for art learning, with a focus on inspiration.
9.2 A Brief Review of Psychological Studies
on Inspiration
Inspiration has recently become a topic of empirical investigation in psycho-
logical studies. The word “inspiration” has been used in various areas such
as social comparison, religion, problem solving, and creativity. The triggers,
the results, and the processes of inspiration differ depending on the area of
study. Two American psychologists studying motivation, Todd M. Thrash
and Andrew J. Elliot, provided a general conceptualization of inspiration
by focusing on the psychological experience (Thrash & Elliot, 2003, 2004).
Through questionnaire survey studies, they statistically extracted the follow-
ing three elements as the psychological constructs of inspiration: evocation
(e.g., feeling overtaken, uncontrolled); motivation (e.g., activation, energy);
and transcendence (e.g., positivity, enhancement and clarity). Further, they
defined the process of inspiration as being inspired by, which refers to
appreciation of the perceived intrinsic value of a stimulus object, or inspired
to, which refers to motivation to actualize or extend the valued qualities to
9.2 A Brief Review of Psychological Studies on Inspiration 207
a new object. Indeed, they enabled the measurement of the psychological
experience of inspiration by developing a psychological scale of inspiration
called the “Inspiration Scale (Thrash & Elliot, 2003)”.
Thrash and his colleagues also conducted empirical research into inspira-
tion during creative activities. In one study, undergraduates participated in
various writing tasks, such as scientific writing and fictional writing, and
reported their level of inspiration during the writing process. The results
showed that how inspired they felt predicted how creative their works were
rated to be by readers. In addition, they often felt inspired after they came
up with a new idea. These findings contributed to the understanding of the
psychological mechanism of inspiration in creation.
However, inspiration might not result from an inner process. As described
above, Thrash & Elliot believed that inspiration includes the process of
being inspired by something (Thrash & Elliot, 2004). Recent studies have
pointed out that artists are strongly influenced by encounters with the outside
world, and they often actively make use of these encounters when creating
art (Chemi et al., 2015; Takagi, Kawase, Yokochi & Okada, 2015). We gain
stimulation from outside phenomena, such as an apple falling to the ground,
traces of our own scribbles, artworks created by amateurs or famous artists,
and incidents in our personal or social lives. Especially in art education and
art learning, it is important that students learn from artworks created by others
and gain inspiration from them. According to the Systems Model of Creativ-
ity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999), learners can participate in the social system of
creativity by acquiring knowledge and inspiration from other creators and
their works.
Focusing on such theories and episodes, some researchers have claimed
that inspiration occurs as a result of encounters with the world outside the self.
For example, analogy researchers have examined the relationship between
one’s creativity and one’s encounters with the outside world. They define
analogy as transferring meaning or ideas from a particular subject (analogical
source) to another (target), and express the similarity or difference based on
the distance of the source and target. For the explanation of creativity, they
focused on encounters with images, products, and ideas as the analogical
source, and proposed that a conceptually distant source, which has a similar
structure but a different surface, elicits a creative breakthrough (Conceptual
leap hypothesis: Gentner & Markman, 1997; Holyoak Thagard, 1996; Poze,
1983; Ward, 1998). The hypothesis was confirmed in studies on product
design in artistic domains (Chan, Schunn, Cagan, Wood, Kotovsky, 2011).
However, results of more recent studies implied that the conceptual distance
208 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
of sources did not affect the novelty of ideas analogized from the sources
(Fu, Chan, Cagan, Kotovsky & Schunn, 2011). In keeping with these studies,
Chan et al. suggested that creativity of ideas might be affected by a deep
exploration of distant sources (Chan, Dow & Schunn, 2015).
Deep exploration was also examined in an experimental study on drawing
(Okada & Ishibashi, 2016). Okada & Ishibashi conducted experiments to
study the creative process of drawing. On the first day of Experiment 1,
non-art major undergraduates were asked to create a drawing of natural
motifs (e.g., pine and pepper). On the second day (the intervention session),
one group of participants copied an artist’s drawing with a similar motif,
while a control group of participants drew motifs in the same manner as
on the first day. All participants were asked to create a drawing of natu-
ral motifs again on the third day. In Experiment 2, the participants were
presented with two types of drawings by artists (e.g., representative and
abstract), which were selected according to how familiar they were to the
participants (i.e., representative drawing familiar and abstract unfamiliar).
In Experiment 3, one group of participants copied an artist’s drawing while
another group only viewed the artist’s drawing for approximately 20 minutes
on the second day. The results of these experiments showed that both copying
an unfamiliar artwork and viewing it for a long time promoted creativity,
while copying familiar artwork did not have that effect. In addition, the
participants were also asked to express aloud what they were thinking during
the intervention session. The results suggested that they relaxed their con-
straints (i.e., their preconceptions about art-making) and reconstructed their
knowledge through deep exploration of the artwork. These findings provide
useful insight into the mechanism of the creative process by stimulation
from outside. Recently, Okada (2016) further emphasized the importance
of comparison between oneself and others in artistic creation. Through the
process of comparison, viewers can detect the differences between their own
schemas and others’ schemas through profound encounters such as copying
others’ works or spending a long time appreciating the works of others.
In order to examine the importance of the comparison process empirically,
we conducted another study, which was a questionnaire survey of non-art
major undergraduates. It revealed that appreciation with comparison between
one’s own art-making and works by others promoted artistic inspiration more
strongly than appreciation with evaluation of others’ artworks (Ishiguro &
Okada, 2015).
Another question is how viewers compare others and themselves while
appreciating a work of art. To answer this question, we introduce an outline
9.2 A Brief Review of Psychological Studies on Inspiration 209
of the psychological model of inspiration for art-making through art appreci-
ation (the ITA model), and in the next section, we suggest factors to promote
ITA in art learning. Though this model primarily focuses on inspiration for
art-making through art appreciation, it can be applied to other types of social
encounters with the world beyond the self.
9.2.1 Psychological Model of Inspiration for Art-Making
through Art Appreciation (ITA)
Previous studies on art appreciation have assumed the goal of art appreciation
to be evaluating and understanding artworks (Pelowski, Markey, Lauring &
Leder, 2016). However, such studies did not explain how people drew inspi-
ration from others’ artworks while they were appreciating a work of art. As
we have mentioned above, drawing inspiration from others’ artworks is one
of the key processes of artistic creativity and needs to be incorporated into
the model of art appreciation. Our previous studies suggested that the process
of inspiration is triggered by individuals when they compare others’ creative
process with one’s own (Okada, 2016; Ishiguro & Okada, 2015). Therefore,
the ITA model needs to include the process of viewers’ own art making. The
model should extend the process to include both evaluation of artworks and
reflection on the viewer’s own art-making as its essential goals. In addition,
the model assumes that the process of ITA consists of both emotional and
cognitive processes. This is because inspiration has been conceptualized as a
motivational state, which consists of emotion, cognition, and need (Tyler &
Likova, 2012; Thrash & Elliot, 2003, 2004). As shown in the outline of the
ITA model (Figure 9.1), the process consists of four phases: the initial state;
Phase 1; Phase 2; and Phase 3. The initial state refers to the motivational state
for artistic activities such as art-making and appreciation. Phase 1 refers to
Figure 9.1 Outline of the process model of inspiration to make artworks through art
appreciation (ITA).
210 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
evaluation of others’ artworks. Phase 2 includes a comparison between the
process employed by others and that employed by the viewer of the artwork,
based on an evaluation of others’ artworks and reflection on the viewer’s own
art-making. Phase 3 refers to the state of being inspired in art-making. The
ITA model emphasizes the significance of Phase 2 because it connects the
activities of art appreciation and art-making.
Phase 2 is characterized by its “dual focus”, the state of focusing on both
the evaluation of others’ artworks and reflection on the viewer’s own art-
making, simultaneously or alternately. To achieve a dual focus, there are some
essential conditions. First, it is important for the viewer to be motivated to
make art in the initial state. Second, the viewer has to consider how relevant
other artist’s artwork is to his/her own art-making in Phase 1. The higher the
relevance is considered to be, the easier it is for the viewer to pay attention to
his or her own art-making and to have a dual-focus.
This feature of the ITA model is useful in order to understand the differ-
ence in the experience of inspiration between professional artists and ama-
teurs. It has been shown that experts in a creative art domain (such as design)
gain inspiration more frequently and intensely than amateurs (Thrash &
Elliot, 2003). Artists are more easily inspired to make art because they
are often motivated to make art in the initial state before they enter the
stage of appreciating others’ works. In addition, they tend to consider how
relevant the works by others to their own art-making because they are strongly
motivated to improve their creativity. In contrast, amateurs in artistic activities
hardly gain any inspiration because when viewing others’ artworks they are
motivated to appreciate rather than to make art. As a result, their appreciation
is often preoccupied with evaluating others’ works. However, as shown in an
experiment by Okada & Ishibashi (2016), their creativity can be promoted
if they actively interact with works by others for a long period of time. We
can assume that such deep interactions with artworks encourage viewers to
consider how relevant the works to their own art-making.
9.3 Factors That Promote Inspiration for Art-Making
through Art Appreciation in Educational Settings
As mentioned above, recent studies have provided findings demonstrating
the psychological mechanism of inspiration in artistic creation. If these
findings can be applied to educational practices in museums, schools, and
lifelong learning settings, learners may be able to experience inspiration more
9.3 Factors That Promote Inspiration for Art-Making 211
frequently and intensely, become motivated to their artistic activities, and
be more committed to art culture. Such an experience plays an extremely
important role, not only for the creation of experts in an artistic domain, but
also for the well-being of amateurs in their creative lives.
Therefore, we will describe what factors affect the emergence of inspi-
ration by referring to our ITA model. According to this model, it is easy for
a viewer of artworks to experience inspiration for art-making if (s)he has a
high motivation for art-making in the initial state. However, the model also
emphasizes the importance of comparison between the artwork of others and
the viewer’s own art-making in Phase 2, which includes a dual focus state
activating both the attention to an artwork or the artist who made the artwork
and the attention to the viewers’ own art-making. The dual focus in Phase 2
is also crucial for attaining an inspirational state in Phase 3, whether or not
viewers are highly motivated to make artwork. Thus, to promote the process
of dual focus, it is essential for novice viewers of art to be creative because,
in general, they focus only on an artwork or the artist who made the artwork
during art appreciation, and hardly focus on their own art-making.
Therefore, to activate the viewers’ focus on their own art-making in an
art educational setting, teachers need to instruct viewers on how to interact
appropriately with an artwork. A teacher also needs to select appropriate
artworks for the students. Figure 9.2 shows examples of interventions to
activate a viewer’s dual focus: the focus on the artwork and artist, and on
the viewer’s own art-making. The focus on the artwork and the artist refers
to interpreting and evaluating the artwork and the artist. The focus on the
viewer’s own art-making means reflection on the knowledge, abilities and
autobiographical memory of the viewer’s own art-making. The examples of
the intervention are classified into three ways of interacting with an artwork.
The following describes examples of these and how they drive viewers to be
dual-focused and inspired.
9.3.1 Interventions
The first type of intervention is to activate viewers’ attention to their own art-
making process. For this purpose, the most direct intervention is to support
viewers in developing their goals for art-making during their art appreciation.
For example, it is useful to let viewers first make their own artworks before
appreciating others’ artwork and then to give explicit instructions such as
“appreciate an artwork in order to obtain hints for your own art-making”.
Researchers have applied this practice of having participants make products
212 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
Figure 9.2 Interventions from outside to make viewers dual-focused.
before viewing others’ examples in order to investigate creative problem
solving, such as product design and artistic drawing (Chan et al., 2011;
Langer, Pirson & Delizonna, 2016; Kiyokawa, Izawa & Ueda, 2006). The
findings have shown that such interventions promote creative performance
and self-evaluation.
The second type of intervention is the method of art appreciation. We
describe three methods: appreciation with physical activities; appreciation
with sense modalities other than vision; and appreciation using devices. All
of these methods of art appreciation are accompanied by actions other than
viewing, which is the central activity of art appreciation. These methods make
it possible for viewers to experience what they usually do not perceive in
everyday life and to question their own preconceptions. If they come to pay
attention to themselves during art appreciation, especially to their own art-
making process, and they also consider artwork as being relevant to their own
art-making, then the comparisons in Phase 2 will be made.
9.3 Factors That Promote Inspiration for Art-Making 213
The first method for art appreciation is appreciation with physical activ-
ities when viewing artworks. This changes the ways in which viewers’
interpret an artwork and helps to direct their attention to themselves. There
can be various interventions to promote such appreciation. We present three
examples, which have already been applied to learning in practical situations
such as in museums and schools. It is suggested that these examples were
effective in promoting viewers’ dual focus (both interpreting others’ artworks
and reflecting the viewers’ senses, actions and their own feelings). For
instance, Nakano & Okada (2016) reported a two-day educational practice in
a museum, in which participants appreciated one of the three official replicas
of Marcel Duchamp’s famous modern art, ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by Her
Bachelors, Even (often called The Large Glass)’, and then they did dance
exercises and created their own performance in front of the artwork. They
suggested that dancing while appreciating an artwork enabled the participants
to fix their attention on both the artwork and their own bodies.
The second method is art appreciation using sense modalities other
than vision, such as the sense of touch. This also serves the function of
focusing the viewers’ attention on their own senses. In general, vision is
the dominant sense in aesthetic appreciation of the fine arts. However, art
appreciation using other sense modalities provides viewers with new aspects
of interpretation and reminds them to pay closer attention to their own senses.
The third method is art appreciation using a device, such as a virtual
reality (VR) device. Recently, researchers demonstrated that using VR in
museums and galleries enabled viewers to perceive expression in a painting
intuitively by interacting with it in a 3D world (Huang & Han, 2014). VR has
already been used in art museums; for example, the MoMA in New York has
started to utilize VR technology in educational exhibitions. Although there
are still few studies about the effect of VR in museums, VR would change
our art experience from passively viewing artworks to actively playing with
them. Such an experience makes it possible for viewers to go beyond the
boundary of their ordinary feelings and thinking and, as a result, to reflect on
themselves more actively.
The third type of intervention relates to which artworks to show to viewers
and how. Educators and researchers can intervene in how viewers appreciate
artworks and what kinds of artworks they consider. The environment and
context are thought to be important for art appreciation. Recent studies on
art appreciation have suggested that the evaluation and interpretation of an
artwork is affected by its environment and context (Leder, Belke, Oeberst &
Augustin, 2004; Bullot & Reber, 2013) because the context activates viewers’
214 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
specific knowledge and memories and guides their interpretation of artworks.
Especially if the activated knowledge and memories are related to their own
art-making, such a context should increase their motivation to make art.
In addition, selecting what kind of artworks viewers should appreciate
plays an important role. Depending on what kind of artistic characteristics
the viewers perceive, their evaluation and interpretation of the artwork during
the appreciation phase may differ. For inspiration, it is important whether or
not the perceived characteristics of the artwork are related to the viewers’ own
art-making.
How do viewers then consider how relevant an artwork to their own
art-making? They consider the relevance of the artwork to themselves and
their own art by applying their own knowledge and experience. This process
is thought to be analogical, with related knowledge and experience being
mapped onto the artwork. Literature on art appreciation claims that the
style and content of artworks are categorized on the basis of viewers’ prior
knowledge and experience (Leder et al., 2004). Such a process is related to
analogical thinking. Therefore, in the next paragraph we will explain the art
appreciation process according to theories of analogy.
Accumulated research into analogy reveals that the core of the human
thinking process is deeply related to the perception of similarity and dif-
ference. One of the main findings is that analogical processing rests on the
common structure between source and target (structural mapping theory:
(Gentner, 1983), and it is also influenced by pragmatic contexts (Gick &
Holyoak, 1980; Holyoak & Koh, 1987). In contrast, everyday thinking,
including creative thinking, often has no clear source and target. Gentner &
Markman (1997) proposed a theory known as the structural alignment theory,
which states that a new structure can be produced by comparing a source and
a target. We can assume that the same process occurs in art appreciation, in
the early phase in which viewers classify the content and style of an artwork
by applying their prior knowledge and experience implicitly and explicitly
(Leder et al., 2004). According to the structural alignment theory (Gentner &
Markman, 1997), art appreciation can be regarded as a process of interpreting
an artwork (target) on the basis of prior knowledge and experience (source),
in which the comparison between the target and source will produce a
new structure for alignment. If viewers’ autobiographical knowledge of art-
making is involved as a source in the process of structural alignment, they
consider the artwork as relevant to their own art-making. As a result, the
viewers will become dual-focused.
9.4 An Example of Educational Practice for Promoting Inspiration 215
According to these findings, educators should take into consideration
learners’ prior knowledge and experience of art-making when selecting art-
works for their appreciation. To facilitate their dual focus process, it would be
better to make the relevance between the artworks and learners’ knowledge
and experience high. However, if educators intend to make students not only
inspired to make art but also to be creative, it might be better to select
artworks unfamiliar artworks to the learners, as Okada & Ishibashi (2016)
suggested. What kinds of artworks should be chosen depends on the goal of
the educational practice.
9.4 An Example of Educational Practice for Promoting
Inspiration
In the last half of this chapter, we introduce our practice as an example of
supporting learners to gain inspiration through art education.
We conducted a fine-art photography course, “Artistic Creation”, at the
University of Tokyo, in Japan. The course was held for the cultivation of stu-
dents’ creative fluency or creative literacy, which refers to an understanding of
creative processes and methods and the acquisition of habits and attitudes to
enjoy creative activities (Agata & Okada, 2013). Creative fluency is assumed
to play an important role in individuals’ well-being, especially in creative life,
and their participation in a creative society. For this purpose, the course was
aimed at promoting art-novices’ commitment to artistic activities in a certain
domain. Learning through experiencing inspiration by the artworks of others
is one of the significant parts of an experience of artistic creation. Thus, the
educational interventions were designed to encourage such inspiration.
All of the students who participated in the course for course credit were
non-art majors and had never had any formal education in artistic activities.
We chose artistic photography as the target domain, because photography is
familiar even to such students. It was thought to be relatively easy for them
to create artistic works through photography, rather than through other forms
of art, such as drawing or painting, because only a limited number of basic
techniques must be mastered to take pictures once the students are able to use
an automatic single-lens reflex (SLR) camera.
The course consisted of 14 classes in total (see Tables 9.1, 9.2 and
Figure 9.3), and 21 undergraduates at the university (10 males and 11 females;
aged from 20 to 27, M= 21.33, SD = 1.58) followed the course. All of them
were beginners in artistic photography. They used a digital SLR camera pro-
vided by us for the course (five of them used their own cameras). The whole
216 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
Table 9.1 Schedule of the course
Class 1 Guidance
Class 2 Lecture 1
Class 3 Free photography 1
Class 4 Lecture 2
Class 5 Lecture 3
Class 6 Lecture 4
Class 7 Free photography 2
Class 8 Appreciation & Imitation 1
Class 9 Free photography 3
Class 10 Appreciation & Imitation 2
Class 11 Free photography 4
Class 12 Presentation
Class 13 Free photography 5
Class 14 Introduction of the instructors’ artworks
N.B. Pale grey cells refer to the 1st intervention designed for inspiration, and grey cells refer to the
2nd intervention designed for inspiration.
Table 9.2 Educational interventions and timetables
Free Photography
1st Intervention
Designed for
Inspiration
2nd Intervention
Designed for
Inspiration Presentation
(5 Times) Appreciation & (Once)
Lecture
(4 times)
Imitation
(twice)
13:00–13:15 Complete a
questionnaire
Question time
with the
instructor
Question time
with the
instructor
Appreciation of
an exemplar
photograph
Appreciation of
photographs by
the students
13:15–13:45 Photography Lecture by the instructor
13:45–14:20 Photography Photography
(imitation)
Presentation
14:20–14:40 Appreciation of some students’ photographs
and comments on them by the instructor
Homework
Explaining the photographs they had taken in the classes
Describing what they had considered and noticed about artistic creation each week
N.B. The actual timetable was adjusted according to the situation.
course was taught by a professional photographer, Fumimasa Hosokawa, who
has an MFA in photography, teaches at a professional school of photography,
and has held exhibitions domestically and internationally. The second author
9.4 An Example of Educational Practice for Promoting Inspiration 217
Figure 9.3 Classes.
organized the course with the photographer; the first author collected student
data, such as the results of student questionnaires and student homework
responses. The first author also conducted interviews with the students one
year after the course. The students were informed that the data would be
analysed and published as scientific research.
218 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
The Course Design
The course was designed on the basis of three factors to promote inspiration,
as described in Section 9.3 above (see Figure 9.4). In the course, we included
two types of intervention for inspiration, combining each of the following
factors: instruction, methods of appreciation, and methods of exhibiting
artworks.
First, we held a series of lectures as the initial intervention designed for
inspiration, taking into account the fact that the students were beginners in
artistic photo expression. With the lectures, the students were able to gain
hands-on experience taking photos and acquire knowledge and techniques for
artistic photo expression and creation. Specifically, there were 4 lectures: the
1st lecture was an introduction to how to use a digital SLR camera (e.g., basic
manipulation of exposure, diaphragm, and shutter speed); the 2nd lecture was
on lighting; the 3rd lecture was on approaching models; and the 4th lecture
was intended to brush up these skills. Each class included a 20-minute lecture
on the topic and a practical photography session using the knowledge and
techniques learned in each lecture. The instructor answered students’ ques-
tions at any time during the lectures, and at the end of the classes, the instruc-
tor commented on some of the photographs the students had taken in the
practical photography sessions. This intervention was designed to pro-
mote the students’ motivation for art-making before encountering others’
artworks.
The second intervention designed for inspiration, was the ‘appreciation
and imitation’ intervention. We designed the way in which students interact
Figure 9.4 Course design according to factors to promote inspiration through others’
artworks.
9.4 An Example of Educational Practice for Promoting Inspiration 219
with an artwork, based on factors of the method of appreciating and exhibiting
artworks, and determined what kind of artworks they encountered. Specifi-
cally, the students appreciated a photograph selected by the instructor of the
class and shared their comments with one another. Then the instructor pro-
vided them with explanations about the photo, such as the artist’s intentions,
method of expression, and the historical background. After that, they imitated
the method of expression of the photograph when taking their own photos.
This intervention is a method of appreciation with physical activities, based
on the copying method, which was shown by Okada & Ishibashi (2016) to be
useful for promoting inspiration.
Considering the students’ prior experience, we selected two photographs
as examples to appreciate and imitate. A classic photo was used for the first
appreciation and imitation class, and a street photo was used for the second
class. The classic photo was ‘Farm Girl’ in ‘People of the 20th Century’ by
August Sander (1874–1964), which is a collection of portrait photographs
of people in the early 20th century. The street photo was ‘Los Angeles,
California’ by Garry Winogrand (1928–1984), which is a photograph of peo-
ple, on a city street, that demonstrates the social problems hidden in everyday
life. ‘Farm Girl’ is a photograph taken using camera techniques usually used
in a studio setting, which were familiar to the students after having taken the
lectures. In contrast, ‘Los Angeles, California’ is a photograph of a natural
setting, without using the camera techniques taught in the course, and was
assumed to be unfamiliar to the students, even after having taken the lectures.
Besides the lecture and the appreciation and imitation sessions, the course
also included free photography classes in which the students freely created
their own photo artworks and a presentation in which students showed other
students and the instructor five photographs that they selected from those
they had taken during the course, and received comments on them. These
classes were designed to provide the students with opportunities to apply
the knowledge and techniques learned in the lectures and appreciation and
imitation sessions and create their own artistic photographs.
Further, we gave the students two kinds of homework in order to encour-
age reflection on their creative activity after each class. The first homework
assignment was to explain the photographs they had taken during the classes.
The second assignment was to describe what they had considered and noticed
about artistic creation each week, both inside and outside of the classes. These
homework assignments were submitted by e-mail and through an online
system.
220 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
9.4.1 Changes in the Students with Each Educational
Intervention
The following sections describe how the students’ knowledge of attitudes and
art-making developed and how their appreciation of others’ artworks changed
throughout each educational intervention on the course.
First, we described how the students obtained a basic knowledge of
artistic expression through the first intervention, the lecture. The students’
knowledge and attitudes towards art-making were measured during the course
and analysed quantitatively to examine how they changed throughout the
course. Second, we examined whether or not the students’ interpretations of
artworks changed and became dual-focused. We also examined whether they
compared others’ and their own art-making through the second intervention,
the ‘appreciation and imitation’ stage. Finally, the students presented their
own artistic photos and appreciated the photos by other students in the
presentation session. We hoped to discover how the students reflected on
their own artistic activities during the course, and whether they continued
their photographic activities after the course was over. To do so, we qual-
itatively analysed the students’ comments on their interpretation of others’
photographs and students’ statements about their own artistic activities from
interviews one year after the course ended. Although most of the research
studies on art education have relied solely on qualitative analyses, we com-
bined both quantitative and qualitative analyses, which enabled us to better,
understand the overall effect of the course as well as the way of thinking
within each student more specifically.
9.4.2 The 1st Intervention
First, we measured the students’ expressive awareness (Ishiguro & Okada,
2012), which is their knowledge about and their attitude towards creative
activities especially for art-making and thought to be a part of creative
fluency in art-making. Expressive awareness is thought to be a part of
creative fluency in art-making. Expressive awareness means having the
intention to search for a match between images and ideas and a method
of expression in one’s creative activity. We had discovered that beginners
acquired this expressive awareness through several months of photography
practice (Ishiguro & Okada, 2012). Therefore, we measured the change in the
students’ expressive awareness during the course by using the psychological
scale that we had developed (Ishiguro & Okada 2016). There are 4 items on
this scale: ‘When taking photos, I consider effective methods to express my
images and ideas,’ ‘When viewing photos, I interpret how the photographers’
9.4 An Example of Educational Practice for Promoting Inspiration 221
Figure 9.5 Changes in the students’ expressive awareness in photography.
N.B. **:p<.01.
images and ideas are expressed in them,’ ‘Photography is a medium to express
our ideas and feelings,’ and ‘I can improve my art-making by viewing photos
by other photographers.’ The results indicated that the students obtained
higher expressive awareness after the lectures and retained it until the end
of the course (see Figure 9.5).
9.4.3 The 2nd Intervention
In each of the two appreciation and imitation sessions, the students were
provided a copy of an exemplar photograph which they appreciated for a
few minutes. Students also filled in a comment sheet in which they rated
the ‘value’ of the photo on a 5-point Likert Scale and described the reasons
for their rating and what they felt and noticed about the photograph. After
they had shared their comments on the photo with the other students, the
instructor provided an explanation of the photo, including information about
the photographer and his intentions, the expressive techniques, and the his-
torical background of the photograph. After the explanation, the students left
the classroom to take photos on the university campus, with the intention
of imitating the exemplar photograph. Finally, they described what they had
felt and noticed, and how their ideas about the exemplar photograph had
changed after listening to the explanations by the instructor and comments
by the other students. We analysed whether the students’ comments on each
222 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
exemplar photograph changed before and after the interventions, i.e., by
sharing comments with the other students, listening to the explanation by the
instructor, and imitating the photograph. We considered that the effects of the
interventions might be seen not only in the answers on the comment sheets,
but also in the students’ homework responses after each class. Therefore,
we included as data the comments that students made on each exemplar
photograph in the homework they completed as part of the appreciation and
imitation sessions.
In the analysis, we checked whether each student mentioned the contents
in the following categories ‘evaluation of the others’ artworks,’ ‘compari-
son between the others’ art-making and the students’ own art-making,’ and
‘improvement in the students’ own art-making’. These categories were gen-
erated according to the processes in Phase 1 (evaluation of others’ artworks),
Phase 2 (comparisons of the evaluation of others’ artworks and reflection on
the viewer’s own art-making), and Phase 3 (the state of being inspired in art-
making) of the ITA model. Then, we counted the number of students who
described the contents in each category.
The results show that after the intervention, more students compared the
exemplar photograph with their own art-making and considered the improve-
ment of their own art-making (see Table 9.3). These results demonstrate
that the intervention in the appreciation and imitation session promoted the
students’ dual focus and their motivation to improve their own art-making.
In addition, the changes caused by the interventions were larger in appre-
ciation and imitation session 2 than in appreciation and imitation session 1.
This difference in the students’ change of interpretation between the two ses-
sions may have been caused by the familiarity of the exemplar photographs.
The photograph in appreciation and imitation 1 session was familiar and easy
for the students to understand, because they had learned about the expressive
technique in the lecture. Some students mentioned a comparison between the
work and their own art-making and improvement of their own art-making
even before the intervention. In contrast, the photograph in appreciation and
imitation session 2 was unfamiliar and difficult for them to connect with their
own art-making before the intervention.
9.4.4 Presentation
The students chose 5 photographs for the presentation. During the class, the
students commented on each of the other students’ photographs displayed on
the table. Then, each student explained their own photographs and received
9.4 An Example of Educational Practice for Promoting Inspiration 223
Table 9.3 Changes in the students’ interpretations before and after the interventions in the
appreciation and imitation classes and after the presentation class
Appreciation & Imitation
1 (n= 21)
Appreciation & Imitation
2 (n= 19)
Before the
Interventions
After the
Interventions
Before the
Interventions
After the
Interventions
Presentation
(n= 21)
Evaluation of 21 20 19 19 15
others’
artworks
(100) (95) (100) (100) (71)
Comparison
between others’
art-making
and the
5 9 0 8 8
students’ own
art-making
(24) (43) (0) (42) (38)
Development of
the students’
8 11 2 8 9
own art-making (38) (52) (11) (42) (43)
N.B. The numbers in brackets show the percentage of students who described the contents of each
category in their comment sheet and diary homework in each class.
comments from the instructor. In addition, (s)he received comments from
the other students by e-mail after the class. We also analysed the students’
homework responses after the presentation class and examined whether the
students became dual-focused and motivated to improve their own artistic
expression by appreciating the other students’ photographic expressions.
Table 9.3 shows that 38% of the students compared others’ art-making with
their own art-making, and 43% of the students considered the development of
their own art-making after the presentation. Considering that the presentation
session did not directly guide students carefully to appreciate the artworks
of others, we could say that they became dual-focused and motivated for
their own art-making by themselves through viewing others’ artworks and
listening to their comments.
It is important to note that the presentation was effective for the students
in order to find their expression and gain motivation to pursue their originality.
The following statements are some of the students’ descriptions in their diary
homework after the presentation class.
“Photography allows us to create artworks in any circumstances, which is
different from painting. So I want to make use of the circumstances for my
expression. I want to enjoy the present moment more, because I tend to rely
on making plans.”
224 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
“When I viewed a unique photograph by another student, I found that we
can make use of our own senses, which are different from those of others. I
want to try to take a more unique photo because I am usually captured by a
kind of stereotype in photography,”
These statements imply that the presentation provided the students a
chance to find a variety of artistic expressions by comparing the art-making
of the other students with their own art-making. The comparison was effec-
tive even when the students were all beginners in artistic photo expression,
were following the same course, and took photos in the same environment.
Actually, the fact that there were a variety of photographic expressions among
the students even in such uniform conditions may have given the students the
chance to notice one another’s originality of expression.
9.4.5 Changes in Students’ Artistic Activities throughout
the Course
The goal of the course was cultivation of creative fluency, by offering the
students an authentic experience of artistic creation and by encouraging the
students to commit to artistic activities. We have mentioned in the previous
section that the students developed their knowledge of and attitude to artistic
expression and experienced inspiration by deeply interacting with the pho-
tographs by other photographers and the other students. The next question
is whether the students enjoyed their artistic activities even after the course
was finished. This question is important because it is related to the devel-
opment of creative fluency. To answer this question, we assessed whether
their commitment to artistic activities changed from before the course to one
year after the course. At the beginning of the course, we asked the students
to fill out questionnaires to determine the amount of the exposure they had to
some artistic activities, especially photography, before the course. In addition,
we interviewed them about their artistic activities one year after the course.
Fourteen of the 21 students participated in the follow-up interview (7 students
could not participate in the interview because they had already graduated
from the university or were studying abroad). We coded their artistic activities
in photography and counted the number of students who were involved in
each activity (see Table 9.4). The results show that 13 students continued their
photography for purposes of creating a record, and 7 students continued their
photography to make their own artworks. Four students began to show their
own photos on the Internet or in photo contests. One student who received a
prize in a photo contest reflected on this course in the follow-up interview as
follows:
9.4 An Example of Educational Practice for Promoting Inspiration 225
Table 9.4 Changes in the students’ photographic activities before and one year after the
course
Number of Students
Committed to Each Activity
Before the
Course
One Year After
the Course
McNemar’s
Test
Appreciation Encountering
photographs in daily life
0 1 1
Appreciating photographs
as artworks
3 8 3.6
Photography Taking photos as a record 3 13 10 *
Taking photos as artworks 0 7 7 *
Producing their own photos 0 4 4
Supporting creative experts 0 0
N.B. The grey part shows the activities that students experienced on the course.
The Bonferroni correction was applied to each statistical test of difference between numbers of
students engaged in each activity before and after the course.
“The course provided me with a chance to learn about artistic photo
expression. (. . . ) After the course, I bought a digital single reflex camera,
started to subscribe to a photography magazine and to study photography,
attended talks by photographers, and entered photo contests. Now I can say
that photography is my hobby.”
In addition, she discussed what she learned in the course:
“There are two parts of the course that I remember vividly. First, in every
class, we had time to review other students’ photographs. Although we took
the photographs in a similar place at a similar time, the photographs were all
quite different. This helped me to see that we all had different perspectives;
despite being in the same situation, we took entirely different shots. Sec-
ondly, in each class, we appreciated artworks by professional photographers.
I had not studied professional photographs before, and I found that there
were some patterns in photo expression, even in the photos of professional
photographers. Also, I had previously thought that most professional pho-
tographers took only portraits. But taking the course allowed me to see that
there were many other types of photography, such as snapshots and street
photography.”
Another student commented on the appreciation and imitation sessions as
follows:
“The other students and I were able to take a variety of photographs
despite being in such similar locations/situations. I learned not only the
226 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
importance of being artistically stimulated by something, but also how to
interpret such stimulation. The appreciation and imitation sessions were
critical in learning this. By imitating the professional photographers, I thought
about what the differences between the professional photographs and my
photo were and how I could deal with these differences.”
Some of the students changed their ideas about artistic expression in
general.
“I learned that it is important to think about what I want to photograph,
rather than how I want to photograph it. This is not limited to photographic
expression. For artistic expression, we should not stick only to techniques and
methods, but also consider what we want to do and why.”
These results suggest that the course effectively supported students in
their creative experience and commitment to artistic activities. Additionally,
the interventions designed to promote inspiration were shown to be effective
in encouraging novices’ learning about art. Further research is needed to
generalize these findings in various learning settings.
9.5 Conclusion
Inspiration has been regarded as a mysterious phenomenon and for a long
time, there has been no framework for understanding the inner process of
inspiration in artistic creation. In this chapter, to answer the question of how
we can utilize inspiration process in art learning settings, we provided a brief
review of recent psychological studies on inspiration and explained an outline
of our model of inspiration for art-making through art appreciation (ITA). On
the basis of our model, we have listed factors that promote inspiration by
others’ artworks in art educational settings. In addition, we have described
an undergraduate course on artistic creation as an illustration of our art
educational practice, which was designed according to the factors mentioned
above. Although in this chapter we have described only one case of an artistic
photography course designed to encourage inspiration, future research should
lead to an increase in such practices and the assessment of the educational
effects in order to offer more practical advice.
It is highly likely that the factors mentioned above would be useful in
designing educational programmes in not only the fine arts but also in other
creative domains, such as music, drama, literature, or even science. In the
domains of science and literature, scientists or writers often read research
articles or works by others in order to learn from them and produce new
works when inspired by them. Our framework for the use of inspiration in
References 227
educational settings would also be useful in facilitating creative activities of
this kind. Future studies are needed to examine the possibilities of applying
our framework to other creative domains. Through such studies, it should
become possible for everyone to experience and make use of inspiration in
various creative domains.
Acknowlegdements
We are thankful to Fumimasa Hosokawa, who provided expertise in con-
ducting the art course. This research was supported by the Grant-in Aid
for Scientific Research #15H01988, Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow
#2311149, and the Ishibashi Foundation.
References
Agata, T., and Okada, T. (2013). Souzou no syutaisya tositeno shimin wo
hagukumu: Souzouteki kyouyou wo ikuseisuru igi to sonohouhou (The
importance of cultivating people’s creative literacy). Jpn. Cogn. Sci. Soc.
20, 27–45.
Bullot, N. J., and Reber, R. (2013). The artful mind meets art history: Toward
a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. Behav.
Brain Sci. 36, 123–137.
Chan, J., Dow, S. P., and Schunn, C. D. (2015). Do the best design ideas
(really) come from conceptually distant sources of inspiration? Des.
Stud. 36, 31–58.
Chan, J., Fu, K., Schunn, C. D., Cagan, J., Wood, K., and Kotovsky, K.
(2011). On the benefits and pitfalls of analogies for innovative design:
Ideation performance based on analogical distance, commonness, and
modality of examples. J. Mech. Des. 133, 081004-1-11.
Chemi, T., Jensen, J., and Hersted, L. (2015). Behind the Scenes of Artis-
tic Creativity. Creating, Learning and Organising. New York, NY:
Peter Lange.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). “Implications of a systems perspective for
the study of creativity,” in Handbook of Creativity, Ed. R. J. Sternberg
(New York, NY: Cambridge University Press), 313–335.
Fu, K., Chan, J., Cagan, J., Kotovsky, K., Schunn, C., and Wood, K. (2013).
The meaning of “near” and “far”: the impact of structuring design
databases and the effect of distance of analogy on design output. J. Mech.
Des. 135, 021007-1-12.
228 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
Gentner, D., and Markman, A. B. (1997). Structure mapping in analogy and
similarity. Am. Psychol. 52, 45–56.
Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-mapping: a theoretical framework for analogy.
Cogn. Sci. 7, 155–170.
Gick, M. L., and Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cogn.
Psychol. 12, 306–355.
Holyoak, K. J., and Koh, K. (1987). Surface and structural similarity in
analogical transfer. Mem. Cogn. 15, 332–340.
Holyoak, K. J., and Thagard, P. (1996). Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative
Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Huang, Y. C., and Han, S. R. (2014). “An immersive virtual reality museum
via second life: extending art appreciation from 2D to 3D,” in Interna-
tional Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, eds Y. C. Huang,
and S. R. Han, (Berlin: Springer International Publishing), 579–584.
Ishiguro, C., and Okada, T. (2012). “Emergence of control in artistic expres-
sions and the process of expertise,” in Proceedings of the 34th Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Sapporo, 1733–1738.
Ishiguro, C., and Okada, T. (2015). “The effects of art experience, com-
petence in artistic creation, and methods of appreciation on artistic
inspiration,” in Poster presented in the 31th International Congress of
Psychology, Yokohama.
Ishiguro, C., and Okada, T. (2016). Souzouteki kyouyou wo hagukumu
geizyutu kyouiku zissen: Nichizyou no syashin sousaku katsudou ni
oyobosu kouka (Development of creative fluency in an artistic photog-
raphy course). Jpn. Cogn. Sci. Soc. 23, 221–236.
Ishiguro, C., Yokosawa, K., and Okada, T. (2016). Eye movements during art
appreciation by students taking a photo creation course. Front. Psychol.
7:1074. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01074
Kiyokawa, S., Izawa, T., and Ueda, K. (2006). “Effects of role exchange
between task-doing and observing others on insight problem solving,”
in Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science
Society, Vancouver, (1617–1622).
Langer, E., Pirson, M., and Delizonna, L. (2010). The mindlessness of social
comparisons. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts, 4, 68–74.
Leder, H., Belke, B., Oeberst, A. and Augustin, D. (2004). A model of aes-
thetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. Br. J. Psychol. 95, 489–508.
doi: 10.1348/0007126042369811
References 229
Nakano, Y., and Okada, T. (2016). “Shokuhatsu suru communication to
museum (Inspiring communication and museums),” in Shokuhatsu
Suru Museum: Bunka Teki Koukyou Kuukan no Aratana Kanousei wo
Motomete (Inspiring Museums: an Inquiry into New Possibilities for
Cultural Public Space) eds K. Nakakoji, H. Shindo, Y. Yamamoto, and
T. Okada (Kyoto: Airi Shuppan).
Okada, T., and Ishibashi, K. (2016). Imitation, inspiration, and creation: cog-
nitive process of creative drawing by copying others’ artworks. Cogn.
Sci. 41, 1804–1837. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12442
Okada, T. (2016). “Shokuhatsu suru communication to museum (Inspiring
communication and the museum),” in Shokuhatsu Suru Museum: Bunka
Teki Koukyou Kuukan no Aratana Kanousei wo Motomete (Inspiring the
Museum: an Inquiry into New Possibilities of Cultural Public Space),
eds K. Nakakoji, H. Shindo, Y., Yamamoto, and T. Okada, Kyoto: Airi
Shuppan.
Oleynick, V. C., Thrash, T. M., LeFew, M. C., Moldovan, E. G., and Kief-
faber, P. D. (2014). The scientific study of inspiration in the creative
process: challenges and opportunities. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:436.
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00436
Pelowski, M., Markey, P. S., Lauring, J. O., and Leder, H. (2016). Visualizing
the impact of art: An update and comparison of current psycholog-
ical models of art experience. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:160. doi:
10.3389/fnhum.2016.00160
Poze, T. (1983). Analogical connections: The essence of creativity. J. Creat.
Behav. 17, 240–258.
Takagi, K., Kawase, A., Yokochi, S., and Okada, T. (2015). “Formation of an
art concept: a case study using quantitative analysis of a contemporary
artist’s interview data,” in Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of
the Cognitive Science Society, Pasadena, CA, 2332–2337.
Thrash, T. M. and Elliot, A. J. (2003). Inspiration as a psychological
construct. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 84, 871–889.
Thrash, T. M., and Elliot, A. J. (2004). Inspiration: core characteristics,
component processes, antecedents, and function. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol.
87, 957–973.
Tyler, C. W., and Likova, L. T. (2012). The role of the visual arts
in enhancing the learning process. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6:8. doi:
10.3389/fnhum.2012.00008
230 How Can Inspiration Be Encouraged in Art Learning?
Ward, T. B. (1998). “Analogical distance and purpose in creative thought:
Mental leaps versus mental hops,” in Advances in Analogy Research:
Integration of Theory and Data from the Cognitive, Computational, and
Neural Sciences eds K. J. Holyoak, D. Gentner, and B. Kokinov (Sofia:
New Bulgarian University), 221–230.
Weisberg, R. W. (2006). Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem
Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons.
