Thinking Like An Artist-Researcher About War

In Method Meets Art (2015), Patricia Leavy argues for thinking like both a researcher and an artist in order to create socially useful works. Christine Sylvester teams up with visual artist Jill Gibbon to think through one of her drawings and practices that can radicalize art/war consciousness and motivate action. Both authors bear in mind words George Grosz screamed nearly100 years ago: "What does it matter if you spend your time gold-plating the heels of boots or carving Madonnas. People are being shot…” The essay unfolds from a brief remembrance of debates about art and function and considers what it is to think like a researcher-artist (or not, as is often the case in IR war studies and art making) on issues of war. The co-authors then present separate viewpoints on the drawing and end by working together toward a researcher-artist mode of being, doing and thinking about war through art.