An Intercultural Aesthetic Dialogue: Creativity and Innovation Across Cultures

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY http://www.arts-journal.com First published in 2009 in Melbourne, Australia by Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd www.CommonGroundPublishing.com. © 2009 (individual papers), the author(s) © 2009 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground Authors are responsible for the accuracy of citations, quotations, diagrams, tables and maps. All rights reserved. Apart from fair use for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act (Australia), no part of this work may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. For permissions and other inquiries, please contact <[email protected]>. ISSN: 1833-1866 Publisher Site: http://www.Arts-Journal.com THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY is peer-reviewed, supported by rigorous processes of criterion-referenced article ranking and qualitative commentary, ensuring that only intellectual work of the greatest substance and highest significance is published. Typeset in Common Ground Markup Language using CGCreator multichannel typesetting system http://www.commongroundpublishing.com/software/

An Intercultural Aesthetic Dialogue: Creativity and InnovationAcrossCulturesDonna Wright, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia

Abstract: Artistic expression utilises practical creativity as a communication tool for the development of new understandingsacross cultures. This is equally valid for contemporary artists as it has been for our ancestral artists and artisans.Throughout human history creative arts practice has been instrumental in providing interactive, reflective, analytical contextsin which to draw out new knowledge and build new meaning systems. It has the ability to cross cultural boundaries and tomake comment on and about the periphery, by mediating unfamiliar cultural forms and providing connections betweenpeople and cultures, and between past and present. The outcome of the application of this creative process is the generationof knowledge and understanding that can afford a multiplicity of ways of encountering and representing intercultural exper-iences.

Keywords: Intercultural Communication, Creativity and Innovation

THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY artspractice has been instrumental in providinginteractive, reflective, analytical contexts inwhich to draw out new knowledge and build

new meaning systems. Artistic expression utilisespractical creativity, and as a communication tool hasthe capability of developing new understandingsacross cultures. Arts practice crosses culturalboundaries to make comment on and about the peri-phery, by mediating unfamiliar cultural forms andby providing connections between people and theirsocieties, and between past and present. The outcomeof the application of this creative process is the gen-eration of knowledge and understanding that can af-ford a multiplicity of ways of encountering and rep-resenting intercultural experiences. This article ex-plores the role of creative arts practice in positioningartefacts as sites which can cultivate innovation to-wards the creation of newmeaning that can be sharedcross-culturally.Additionally, imagination, aesthetic perception,

and the allusionary function of the visual are funda-mental to our everyday life experiences. The associ-ative qualities of visual aesthetics particularly, givethem interpretive possibilities which enable us todynamically engage with external environments onmultiple semiotic levels. Visual imagery provides acritical link to making sense of the unfamiliar andto extending association to others, therefore provid-ing practical processes to facilitate shared meaning.These fundamental attributes of visual media canprovide enormous scope for creative innovationacross cultures. Thus, the article particularly focuseson visual arts practice as a communication channelthat offers a distinctive language which can connect

us in ways that give rise to the formation of sharedmeaning systems. Using theories of creativity andcultural semiotics, the article presents a modelthrough which we can establish ideas-spaces wherevarious visual artefacts can be momentarily placedin order to reach across time and cultures to interactwith our imagination and to provide for possibilitiesof new intercultural connections and understandings.Social groups employ systems ofmeaning to orient

themselves to the world. An individual co-exists inthis complex social system through its capacity tolearn the signs contained within the conventionalvalue system and retain this information in order toparticipate in the society of which it belongs. Thissocialisation of the species necessitated the abilityof humans to learn, retain, reflect on, interpret, andmake use of conventional signs and sign systems inorder to reinforce a group mentality that couldmaintain a communal consciousness, thereby enhan-cing the chances of both individual and mutual sur-vival. These human meaning-systems, referred to incultural semiotics as semiocultural spaces, are im-mersed in and constrained by an all encompassingsemiosis (Lotman 1990). As culturalmemory evolvesas a coded system over generations, encompassingthe embedded and transferable values and beliefs ofa culture, it builds into these semiotic systems con-ventionality. A culture’s durability is maintainedthrough its conventionality and is supported by thehuman being’s epigenetic ability to encode culturalmemory. The advantage to this is that these culturalmemory codes form a patterning of interrelated ideas,symbols and behaviours which are easily shared,learned and transmitted cross-generationally. Bodleynotes that because of this cross-generational quality

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY,VOLUME 4, 2009

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of culture it can be characterised as a ‘superorganicentity, existing beyond its individual human carriers’.He draws on the argument shared by Kroeber (1987)that ‘each individual is born into and is shaped by aculture that pre-exists and will continue to exist wellafter the individual dies’ (1994 p8).Cultural semiotics positions a culture’s centre as

the controlling mechanism for a society’s mythformation, constructing and organising meaning intoan integrated structural model of the world. Thecentre orders life into meaningful stability that ishighly valued as the normalised condition in whichthe culture’s society operates. The outside is con-sidered to be disorderly and chaotic. Over time ourmeaning-systems come into contact with other cul-tures, the ‘outside’, and these incursions have an ef-fect on the internal structure of the worldview ofeach of the affected cultures, providing a process ofcollision, interaction, transaction, transition and re-newal (Wright 2007, Lotman 1990). It is this innov-ative quality of the system that allows each genera-tion to integrate new information from the periphery,and to build into the system new ideas and new val-ues.From the centre of a culture to the edges, untrans-

latability increases. Tension builds up on theboundaries of these semiocultural spaces where thereis a confrontation and interaction between differentsocio-cultural codings and this reactivates semioticdynamism. These disruptive encounters draw outcreativity and new ideas and new languages canemerge. It is from this creative function that newmeaning-systems can come into being. A culture’speriphery is the area that provides the most innovat-ive semiotic activity. We see a shift in focus fromthe centre’s conventionality to the boundary’s instabil-ity, where we are influenced by transcultural engage-ments. Unfamiliarity precipitates an uncertainty thatcannot be fully perceived through conventional codi-fiedmeaning-systems. An untranslatable phenomen-on activates the creative function, thus generatingnew information, creating innovation in the commu-nication process. Semiotic mediation, acting as abridge between the human being and the immediateenvironment, provides a space for imagination, re-flection, adaptation and the construction of new signsand sign systems, allowing for new language struc-tures to emerge to facilitate shared experiences, andto support newly formulating cultural conventions.The innovative potentiality of this communicationprocess draws out creative resolutions which cantake the form of new ideas, new artefacts and newlanguages. It is from this creative process that newmeaning systems and new cultures come into being(Lotman 1990).Through memory and our imagination we can re-

call, reassemble and replay images and ideas, restruc-

turing old information and combining new informa-tion we encounter to create novel representations.Because individuals exist inside larger socio-culturalcontexts, immersed in an interdependent world ofknowledge, the ability to adapt new information andshare ideas connects us to other human beings andto other realities beyond our periphery. This processof reconstruction helps us fit the unfamiliar into ourstable perception of the world making similar butdifferent patterns, and through this process, buildimages which can be re-presented in new ways.Sometimes this practice produces misinterpretationsand other times it draws out approximate equival-ences that can assist in building a bridge towardsmutual understanding. This correlates with visualdissonance, a type of psychological tension, whichoccurs when we experience a discrepancy betweenwhat we expect to see and what we actually see.When our expectations are not fulfilled a resolutionto the tension is required either through reduction,reinterpretation or change. This also correspondswith Waldrop’s ideas concerning complexity andemergence in that we engage in spontaneous self-organisation and adaptive behaviour in an effort tobring chaos and order into balance (1994). His notionthat ‘the edge of chaos is where life has enough sta-bility to sustain itself and enough creativity to de-serve the name of life’ supports Lotman’s engage-ment with the periphery as a site for semiotic innov-ation (1994 p12).The emergence and impact of new information

via cultural artefacts integrally forms our co-evolu-tionary future. The artefact gives us access to theconceptual worlds of peoples so that we can, in anextended sense of the term, converse with themacross space and time. This access will also highlightdiscord between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Theshock of the unfamiliar particularly an unfamiliarhuman experience, a culture different from our ownfor instance, radically reorganises and reshapes ourconceptions and perceptions of reality. An unfamiliaraesthetic with a completely different logic for formand function can repel or attract; but both play asignificant part in the emergence of an entirely newmeaning, a meaning that is neither of the former northe latter symbolic system, but that nonethelesschanges that affected culture irrecoverably. Encoun-tering new ideas-spaces can increase clarity for rep-resenting either an existing problem, or for approach-ing a new direction in thought, facilitating newpathways to inspiration and understanding. New in-formation communicated through an artist’s responseto cultural difference has historically provided in-sights into both continuity and transformation of so-cial and individual identity. Arts practice, respondingor reacting to dissonance can compel us to consider

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE ARTS IN SOCIETY, VOLUME 4

the ways in which culture influences the transmissionof messages.Post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin’s life

history reads like a true intercultural narrative withhis artistic practices and styles mirroring this in-triguing dialogue. Born in Paris to French and Per-uvian parents, he spent his childhood in both coun-tries, travelled the French colonies and beyond as amerchant and Navy marine, married a Dane, livedwith his family in Denmark, returned to France, andthen moved to Tahiti. He lived out the rest of his lifein Marquesas. Similarly, the place in which he feltmost comfortable, the French Polynesian islandgroups, was subject to continuous European contactand occupation from the 1500s, first by the Por-tuguese, then the Dutch, British, French and Spanish.The islands came increasing under French ‘protec-

tion’ finally becoming a full colony in 1880.Gauguin’s cultural influences are therefore extremelydiverse, almost random in their visual expression.There is a sense that through Gauguin’s rejection ofEuropean social norms and conventions he was at-tempting to bring together, not only an interculturalaesthetic experience, but a visual ideas-space whichcould allow for creative explorations into how ourmeaning systems, and therefore our worlviews,mightbe constructed. The title of one of his major works,Where Do We Come From? What Are We? WhereAre We Going? (1897) perhaps best describes thislifelong inquiry which he clearly facilitates througharts-practice based research. His work directly andopenly provides us with cross-cultural exposure andtherefore serves as an ongoing intercultural dialogue.

Fig 1:Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Gauguin [France] 1897

Gauguain’sCruel Tales (1902) is interesting becausethe male figure is represented in a seated Buddhaposition. However, while Gauguin was influencedby the popular adaptation of Japanese aesthetics,known as Japonism, the Japanese Buddha tends tobe squat and is clothed. The male in Cruel Tales ismore representative of the robust body of the Tibetenand North Asian post-Gutpa Buddhas, as seen in

figure 2. To expand this further, the Tibetin Buddhaof this particular period draws its influences fromthe art of the North Indian period of the seventh toeighth century, with what the MET then suggests is‘an eclectic synthesis of elements drawn from theartistic traditions of Central Asia, India, Nepal, andChina’ (Metropolitan Museum 2008).

DONNA WRIGHT

Fig 2: Cruel Tales (Exotic Saying), Gauguin [France] 1902

Fig 3: Seated Buddha Akshobhya (?), the IMPERTURBABLE Buddha of the East, [Tibet] 9th–10th Century

The creative function has the inherent capacity tosupport innovation and intertextual processes ofcreativity by linking spatial conceptions and pro-cesses for semiotic mediations to multiple, intercon-nected mediums for the production and reception ofnew information. This in turn provides a context inwhich to support knowledge discovery which mayfacilitate intercultural awareness and understanding.Individuals who have access to belief systems on aculture’s periphery might respond and represent an

illusion of knowing that has little real understandingof the wider history and body of beliefs that consti-tutes the larger community of the encountered ‘oth-er’.While this new information is at odds with tradi-tional cultural forms it sets up challenges for one toadopt new perspectives and identities, allowing theindividual to make superficial commitments to a newidentity. For instance, it is said that Picasso first en-countered an African Fang head sculpture, similarto the one shown below in figure 5, through Matisse


in 1906. At that time,Matisse and Picasso reportedlyhad discussions concerning African artefacts, whichignited both artists’ ongoing interest in the art of socalled ‘primitive’ cultures. In 1907 Picasso visitedthe Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro where hewas confronted with what he described as ‘all theseobjects that people had created with a sacred, magical

purpose, to serve as intermediaries between themand the unknown, hostile forces surrounding them,attempting in that way to overcome their fears bygiving them colour and form’. He immediately beganreworking a painting he had titled ‘Les Demoisellesd’Avignon’ (fig 4).

Fig 4: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso [France] 1907

Fig 5: Fang sculpture [West Africa]19thC

Picasso never actually visited Africa, so his experi-ence with African cultures was limited to selectedencounters through dealers, collectors, and otherartists being influenced by African artefacts arrivingfrom the newly formed French colonies. These cross-

cultural encounters profoundly inspired early Cubismwhich is arguably one the most influential move-ments in the history of modern art.This superficial identification with another culture

can also disrupt the social cohesion on the interpret-

DONNA WRIGHT

er’s local society. Removed from any sources of so-cial support or contextual reality the centre will ini-tially rage against the chaos of the new. Picasso’ssubject matter was not novel; European artists hadlong been representing prostitution and femalesexuality. His use of strong, bold colour and flattenedsurface had already been formally introduced andwas at that time indicative of the Fauves. The publicoutrage that the painting engendered was clearly aconfrontation with an image so culturally unfamiliaras to render it grotesque in the conventional sensibil-ities a European imagination. Because our percep-tions and interpretations are formed out of definedcultural identities and viewpoints, physical featuresof visual culture are ‘quickly analysed and organisedinto meaningful relationships’ (Freedman 2003:66).Freedman suggests that the eye scans for familiarstimulus based on our memory store, and when wesee an unexpected and alien form ‘we often focusour attention on it, attaching it to our related know-ledge of form, in order to make meaning’ (2003:67).She then observes:

Our first response to visual form is to determinewhether it is familiar and whether and how wewill engage with it [...] We tend to look longestat things that are intriguing, but not overwhelm-ing [therefore] people who view a work of artthat is apparently unrelated to anything theyhave seen before might respond as if it isthreatening […] Unfamiliar images can resultin misunderstanding and discomfort at the sametime that it can enhance and enrich (2003:65-69).

Visual features that are viewed out of context requiredeeper levels of information gathering for satisfact-

ory recognition. This processing of visual dissonancecan prompt us to find a more complex meaning orconstruct a new message. Sullivan notes that whenour ‘perspectives are radically disrupted existingframes of reference are unable to account for the newexperience’ (2005:36). This activates a reflexive re-sponse that in turn encourages reflective deliberationon the unfamiliar in order to make it familiar, andthereby building on conscious self-knowledge. Artpractice can act as an agency for creating and con-structing interpretations as inquiries take place, andthe flexible, performative quality of making art cangenerate new ideas while embracing a diversity ofpositions and perspectives.Inside the Addaura caves on the slopes of Monte

Pelligrino in Sicily is an extraordinary engraved wallpanel, part of which depicts a group of 13 figures insome form of dance or ritual. The engravings onlimestone cave walls are variously dated between8,000 and 11,000BC. The figures are drawn in anaturalistic stylewith exceptional skill and an assured-ness and understanding of perspective, foreshorteningand anatomy. The small Meditteranean island of Si-cily has been continually influenced by contact withmany cultures. Sicilians have one of the most inter-esting and diverse genetic heritages which reflect avery early, common ancestry withMiddle East, NorthAfrica and the Caucasus region of west-central Asia,and this dates back at least 8,000BC coinciding withthe development of agriculture (Oppenheimer andBradshaw Foundation 2008). While a number of in-terpretations have been put forward these engravings(fig 6) are clearly representative of the community’scultural beliefs and customs, and as a language,forms an overarching narrative that is familiar tomost cultures around world.


Fig 6: Limestone Carvings of a Ritual Dance [Sicily] 8,000-11,000BC

Both Matisse and Picasso’s overt fascination withall things ‘primitive’ in art and cultural practice hada profound effect on the language of art in Europein the early years of the 20th century. It providednew ways to communicate the complexities of aculture rapidly moving into modernity. Matisse fre-quented the Mediterranean region, including its is-lands, from as early as the late 1890’s. Could it be

that during his travels in and around Sicily he wasprivy to local knowledge about the Epipaleolithiccaves on the slopes ofMonte Pelligrino? The centraldance circle in Matisse’s Joy of Live (1905-6) andhis famous wall mural, The Dance (1910) show astriking resemblance to the form, composition andfluidic style of these primitive carvings.

Fig 7: Joy of Life, Matisse [France] 1905-06

DONNA WRIGHT

Fig 8: The Dance, Matisse [France] 1910

Freedman (2003:21) suggests that ‘cultural differenceis profoundly illustrated and supported through thevisual arts’. She also reiterates the importance ofimagination not only to individual artistic productionand interpretation but also in the way in which itpulls us as human beings toward collective socialexperiences; ‘old symbols mix with new and groupfeelings mix with the personal as imagination be-comes the storehouse for, and a medium in whichvisual culture is created and interpreted’ (Freedman2002:32). Sullivan proposes that art has the express-ive capacity to give vision and form to thoughts,ideas, and feelings, and argues that ‘the capacity tocreate understanding and thereby critique knowledgeis central to the visual arts and that artists are activelyinvolved in these kinds of research prac-tices’(2005:73). He goes on to state that ‘the processof making art and interpreting art adds to our under-standing, as new ideas are presented that help us tosee in new ways’. He also believes that our ‘questfor understanding sees individual and social trans-formation as a worthy human enterprise for “toknow” means to be able to think and act and therebyto change things’ (2005:74).This interpretivist worldview suggests that all

knowledge is socially constructed from subjectiveexperience and inference, and therefore whilemeaning is sought and made within a context, thesubjectively experiential process allows for multiplemeanings to be accommodated (Schutz and Luck-mann 1973). Sullivan (2005:96) notes that ‘meaningis made rather than found as human knowing istransacted, mediated, and constructed in social con-texts’. The discursivemethod of interpretivist inquiryplaces art practice as the making of subjectivistmeaningwithin amaking-meaning theoretical dimen-

sion. A dialectic method within an interpretivist do-main of inquiry places art practice as the change di-mension between agency and action. As a changeagent, meaning made through making art is bothconstructivist and transformative, and as the know-ledge is grounded in the practice of making throughknowledge that is culturally contextualised it ‘entersinto communities of users whose interests apply newunderstandings from different personal, educational,social, and cultural perspectives’ (Sullivan2005:100).Sonesson (2004) suggests that pictorial semiotics,

as a particular point of view, can be applied to thedifferent forms and conformations produced by hu-mans in their efforts to gain access to and to navigatesuccessfully through life. Bal (1994) uses the termfocalization as a structure of semiotic mediation. Inrespect to visual images the focalization is on thedirect content of visual signifiers, such as the dot,line, light and dark, and composition. Focalizationis also already an interpretation or subjectivisedcontent because what we see in our minds-eye hasalready been interpreted. With a visual image, thesame object can be interpreted by different focalizers,which allows for complex readings that can mediatebetween what a culture suggests and what experi-ences are really actuated.Freedman assigns images much more complexity

than written language because of their immediacyand the way they influence us on subtle levels. Shesuggests that ‘they affect us in ways that may not berealized through simple (recognition) perception andare more highly memorable than written or verbaltexts’ (2003:96). She believes that art for instance,can induce intellectual surprise and generate newexperiences; people use their imaginations to create


art and when we view it the connection betweenemotion and cognition ‘challenges us to think aboutour relationship to it’ (2003:96). As Congleton alsosuggests, ‘art demands that we not remain coldspectators. It can take hold of us and shake us, chal-lenging us to reach beyond our known sphere byexpanding our “experience”‘ (2004:295).The work of art or the practice of making art is

situated in specific discursive schemas that carry se-miotic peculiarities which serve the function of thesociety, constrained by particular cultural values.We continually create personal and cultural meaningfrom visual culture which reflects knowledge, beliefs,and attitudes stimulated by an overlapping array ofimages we might have seen in the past. We cross-reference other images and other forms of culture inthe process of making meaning […] through artmaking and viewing we shape our thinking aboutthe world and ourselves (Freedman 2003:91-93).Mitchell states that ‘vision itself is a cultural con-

struction; it is like a language that you have to learnhow to speak […] vision is not just a mechanicaloperation of the eyeball, but a complex cognitiveprocess that has to be learned’ (Interview inDikovitskaya 2006:244). Because images are culturalcarriers they can effectively facilitate efficient repres-entations of specific cultural viewpoints and identit-ies. Alphen (2005) further suggests that art is a cul-tural creator in that it has the power to shift ourthinking and to change the way we view ourselves,our world and our interaction with it. Congleton(2004:295) supports this assertion. She states, ‘sincethe aesthetic experience entails both affective andcognitive activity, it can lead to deeply integratedthought […] art does not exist in a vacuum, but restson human experience, both the artist’s and viewer’scultural, historical, and psychological contexts’.

Freedman suggests that ‘the ability to interpretand respond to global visual culture in a sophisticatedmanner is essential in the contemporary world’ andthat ‘the social life of visual culture is being re-defined on a global scale as hybrid cultures are estab-lished and visual technologies shape the freedom ofinformation crossing international borders’(2003:21,104). This allows for the nurturing of inter-cultural appreciation in the communication processand a respect for the various collective and individualidentities between cultures. Through the establish-ment of creative, experiential ideas-spaces for sharingmeaning, the resulting reconstitution of information,ideas and values can produce new contexts whichcan serve as inclusive meeting places for makingsense of uncertainties in new environments. Theseideas-spaces also provide underlying conceptionsthat initially anchor and stabilise meaning, allowingthe imagination to create, enhance and enrich ourknowledge about the world.Arts practice has therefore always provided collab-

orative spaces for intercultural negotiation linkingspatial conceptions and processes to multiple, inter-connectedmediums for the production and receptionof new information. These spaces encourage a con-tinuing discourse that promotes deeper understand-ings about our global community. The experienceof art-making and visual-imaging can facilitate cre-ative dialogue across cultures, providing an oppor-tunity to broaden our expressive range of makingmeaning. This in turn provides a context in which tosupport knowledge discovery that may facilitate in-tercultural understanding. Creative practice expandsour awareness of differences and similarities in exist-ing cultural lifeworlds and with this new awarenesscomes the opportunity to share understandings andto break down cultural barriers.

ReferencesAlphen van, E. 2005. Art in Mind : How contemporary images shape thought, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Bal, M. 1994. On meaning-making: Essays in semiotics, Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, California.Bodley, J.H. 1994. Cultural anthropology: Tribes, states, and the global system,Mayfield, California.Carter, R. 2003. Mapping the mind, Phoenix Paperback, London.Congleton, J. 2004. ‘Using art to teach diversity awareness’ International Journal of the Humanities, 2(1):293-304, Common

Ground Publishing, <www.Humanities-Journal.com>.Dikovitskaya,M. 2006. Visual culture: The study of the visual after the cultural turn,MIT Press, Cambridge,Massachusetts.Freedman, K. 2003, Teaching visual culture: Curriculum, aesthetics, and the social life of art, Teachers College Press,

Columbia University, New York.Kroeber, A. 1987 [1952]. The Nature of Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Lotman, Y. 1990. Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture, (trans. Ann Shukman). Indiana University Press,

Bloomington, IN.Mitchell, W.J.T. 1990. Iconology, Image, text, ideology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Mitchell, W.J.T. 2006. ‘An interview with W.J.T. Mitchell’ cited in Margaret Dikovitskaya, Visual culture: The study of

the visual after the cultural turn, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Oppenheimer, S., and Bradshaw Foundation. 2008. ‘Journey of mankind: Peopling of the world’, Bradshaw Foundation, <

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com >Schütz A., and Luckmann T. 1973. The structures of the life-world, translated by R.M. Zaner and T. Engelhardt, Heinemann,

London.

DONNAWRIGHT

Sonesson, G. 2004. ‘ Current issues in pictorial semiotics’, Lecture one: The quadrature of the hermeneutic circle, Cyber-semiotics Institute, Lund University, Sweden.

Sullivan, G. 2005. Art practice as research: Inquiry in the visual arts, Sage Publications, California.Vosniadou, S., and W.F. Brewer. 1987. ‘Theories of knowledge restructuring in development’, Review of Educational Re-

search, 51–67.Waldrop, M. 1994. Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. Penguin, Penguin.Wright, D. 2007. ‘Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place (Books 1–3)’, Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia.

IllustrationsFigure 1:Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Gauguin, 1897, Oil on canvas, 139.1 × 374.6

cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.Figure 2: Cruel Tales (Exotic Saying), Gauguin, 1902, oil on canvas, 130 × 92 cm, Museum Folkwang, Germany.Figure 3: Seated Buddha Akshobhya (?), the Imperturbable Buddha of the East, [Tibet] 9th–10th century, Metropolitan

Museum, New York.Figure 4: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Pablo Picasso, 1907, oil on canvas, 243.9 × 233.7 cm, New York: Museum of Modern

Art.Figure 5: Fang sculpture, [West Africa]19th Century, Paris: Musée du Louvre.Figure 6: Addura Cave Ritual Scene, [Sicily] 8,000-11,000BC, Limestone carvings at Monte Pelligrino.Figure 7: Le bonheur de vivre (Joy of Life), Henri Matisse, 1905-06, 175 x 241 cm, Merion, PA: Barnes Foundation.Figure 8: The Dance (second version) Henri Matisse, 1910, oil on canvas, 260 × 391 cm St. Petersburg: The Hermitage.

About the AuthorDr. Donna WrightDr. Donna Wright has a Bachelor of Arts – Fine Art, Graduate Diploma in Adult Education and Training,Master of Arts (Research - Arts and Social Sciences) and a Doctor of Philosophy (Arts and Social Sciences).She has been an adult educator for 17 years, working in both the vocational and higher education sector. Shehas been involved in cross-cultural education and curriculum development since 1991 and currently consultson global educational design. Donna specialises in communication and creative innovation and as such herscholarship is diverse, covering visual and creative arts practice-based research, social systems theory, culturalsemiotics, intercultural communication, theories of creativity, cognitive psychology, visual studies and education.Donna's interest lies in reviving the communication tools of visual and creative arts practice by placing theminto positions to act as vehicles for fresh and innovative approaches to our continuing investigations into thehuman communicative process and its complex systems of mutual understanding.


EDITORS Mary Kalantzis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. Bill Cope, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Robyn Archer, Australia. Mark Bauerlein, National Endowment for the Arts. Tressa Berman, BorderZone Arts, Inc., San Francisco and Melbourne,

University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia and San Francisco Art Institute, USA.

Judy Chicago, New Mexico, USA. Nina Czegledy, University of Toronto and Concordia University, Montreal,

Canada. James Early, Smithsonian Institution, Anacostia Museum Center for

African American History, USA. Mehdi Faridzadeh, International Society for Iranian Culture (ISIC), New

York and Tehran, Iran. Jennifer Herd, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane,

Australia. Fred Ho, New York, USA. Andrew Jacubowicz, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Gerald McMaster, Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada. Mario Minichiello, Loughborough University School of Art and Design, UK. Fred Myers, Department of Anthropology, New York University, USA. Darcy Nicholas, Porirua City Council, Pataka Museum of Arts and

Cultures, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Daniela Reimann, University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz, Austria. Arthur Sabatini, Arizona State University, USA. Cima Sedigh, Global Education and Health Alliance, Sacred Heart

University in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. Peter Sellars, World Cultures Program, University of California, Los

Angeles, USA. Ella Shohat, Departments of Art & Public Policy, Middle Eastern & Islamic

Studies, New York University, USA. Judy Spokes, Arts Victoria, Australia. Tonel (Antonio Eligio), University of British Columbia, Canada, and

Havana, Cuba. Marianne Wagner-Simon, Berlin, Germany.

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An Intercultural Aesthetic Dialogue: Creativity and Innovation Across Cultures

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