Evidence Based Art Practice

Like the thrust for evidenced based medicine, my approach might be called evidence based art practice.
The pay off on this approach is mostly for the individidual artist struggling alone to unlock his creativity.
The quality of evidence used in decision making  can be difficult to access For those unfamiliar with the quality of different data as evidence I refer you to the Wikipedia article on Evidence based medicaine.That article will provide the reader with a broad outline of kinds and quality of evidence .

For the individual artist, it will help evaluate the evidence value of  books such as Ralph Mayer's The Artist's Handbook, or the compare and contrast study such as Pavel Macchotka"s Cezanne: Landscape into Art,to Robert Hughes Nothing If Not Critical, as well as more traditional "scientific " studies  like  John M. Kennedy's The Psychology of Perception ,Ellen Winner's Invented Worlds-the Psychooogy of the Arts,
or the long history of experimental works on aesthetics.

Of particular interest to me are the following kinds of studies: material and technique studies like Ernst Van De Wetering's Rembrandt--The Painter at Work, or Claus Grimm's Frans Hals; particular critics like Robert Hughes, historical studies like Jacques Letheve's Daily Life of French Artists, Wittkower's Born Under Saturn, sociology of art studies that study the sociology of the art world, the socialization of  artists into art careers,  and life cycle studies of art careers; studies on teaching of art like Carl Goldstein's Teaching Art; studies of creativity like Margaret Boden's Dimensions of Creativity orRobert W. Weisberg's Creativity: Genius and other Myths,or the work at U.C. Berkeley; individual life histories like The Journals of Eugene Delacroix,;and finally many of the more traditional art historical studies,and "scientific studies" on perception,
etc.


Finally, I must disclose my intellectual bias:  against Levi Strauss,Roland Barthers.