Constructing Artistic Integrity: An Exploratory Study

This thesis explores the concept of artistic integrity. A historical foundation for artistic integrity is laid to provide a context within which eight artists' constructions of the concept can be placed. To date, little research has been conducted to discover how artists feel about artistic integrity, despite the fact that the concept is used frequently both in the popular media, and in arts and creative industries policy and research. Secondary research into European Romanticism and the growth of the creative industries traces the complex development of artistic integrity through to contemporary New Zealand. Grounded by an internal-idealist ontology, a subjectivist epistemology, and an interpretive paradigmatic framework, qualitative, semi-structured interviews with eight artists were conducted to investigate how artistic integrity is perceived by those working within the New Zealand arts environment. The multifaceted nature of the history of artistic integrity is mirrored in the complexity of the responses from the artists involved in this research. Key themes to emerge from the analysis of the interview data were the personally constructed and contextual character of artistic integrity, its importance to the artists involved, and its social contestation. However, the opinions offered on these themes were often very different, and occasionally even contradictory. The artists' responses illuminate how differently artistic integrity could be interpreted throughout the creative community, and question the validity of current uses and definitions of the concept. Most importantly, this research provides an opportunity for artists to offer their understandings of artistic integrity, as surely it is artists who should be determining the validity and meaning of their integrity