Thoughts on Combining Theory and Practice

I have been thinking about the extent to which combining art theory (placing art into a historical, critical context or dialogue) and practice (making art) offers positives and pitfalls.

When theory, in the sense of oral and written critical discourse, advances in its own realm without the experience and understanding developed through the practice of making the art, it enjoys distance from the art work under examination or the art work being created. Likewise, when making of art advances in its own realm, it enjoys distance from the dialogue of the audience who receives the work. Separated feedback loops, I propose, dampen strategic motivation for purely derivative work or for illustrative work that matches oral and written articulation of theory.

But conceiving an artwork is in part intellectual endeavor. Why deprive the person conceiving the work from participating in the intellectual discourse of the work, its predecessors and its successors?

Critical discourse, at least as presently constituted, tends toward institutionalization, which ultimately tends toward reduced dialogue and reduced variance. When theory becomes ingrained, and hence, practically asleep, one hope of jolting it into waking is surprises from practice, from someone not immersed in the ingrained dictum creating something powerful enough to bypass the dictum and illuminates. If practice is part of theory, it would seem to leave less room for eye opening surprise.