Direct observation counts more in courts of law than in social science. Statistical analysis leaves the individual case described by arbitrary constructs. Each medium exposes certain dimensions of human experience and obscures others. The medium we draw from in this paper is fine art, particularly visual art. Artworks provide a number of dimensions for realizing experience and for creating knowledge.
Works of art provide new gestalts and ultimately new grounds for confidence.
The work of one particular artist has caused us to recognize a changed role of interpretation in educational research. Magritte, a Belgian surrealist, painted from 1920 until 1967. By unexpected juxtapositions of common images, such as bedposts and sleigh bells, he challenged viewer expectations. He focused attention on the artist as interpreter, and drew from the observer's experience a greater awareness of the tenuousness of our assumptions about reality. Magritte claimed that his paintings were not so much transmissions of thought but provocations to thought.