Transatlantic Reflections on the Practice-Based PhD in Fine Art

Jessica Schwarzenbach, Paul Hackett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317625025
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Teaching Art

Once the US was the only country in the world to offer a doctorate for studio artists, however the PhD in fine art disappeared after pressures established the MFA as the terminal degree for visual artists. Subsequently, the PhD in fine art emerged in the UK and is now offered by approximately 40 universities. Today the doctorate is offered in most English-speaking nations, much of the EU, and countries such as China and Brazil.

Using historical, political, and social frameworks, this book investigates the evolution of the fine art doctorate in the UK, what the concept of a PhD means to practicing artists from the US, and why this degree disappeared in the US when it is so vigorously embraced in the UK and other countries. Data collected through in-depth interviews examine the perspectives of professional artists in the US who teach graduate level fine art. These interviews disclose conflicting attitudes toward this advanced degree and reveal the possibilities and challenges of developing a potential doctorate in studio art in the US.

1 The Notion of Fine Art as Research

DOI: 10.4324/9781315754741-2

A Problematic Concept

Although the significant number of UK PhD programs in fine art mentioned above seem to attest to the acceptance of the PhD in art, artists and academics from the UK as well as from the wider global art community still indicate discomfort as to the appropriateness of awarding the highest-level academic research degree to an artist¹. In 2005, European artists, designers, and teachers of higher art and design education attended Sensuous Knowledge II, a conference sponsored by the Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway. Mo Throp, installation artist and, more recently, Professor of Fine Art at the University of the Arts London at Camberwell, wrote in her summary as chair of Discussion Group B that the members of her group at the conference “seemed to be intrigued by the fact that there still is no common ideas, values or terminology that can be agreed upon when it comes to what artistic research might be” (Throp, 2005). Echoing these thoughts is a quote from P. Rosenbloom, a painter and former course leader of the Master’s in Fine Arts Program at the University of Gloucestershire, in which he wrote, “I think if you could define what research in the arts consists of, you’d be up for … the Nobel Prize! I’ve been to several conferences and no-one seems to be able to agree” (P. Rosenbloom, personal communication, January 30, 2008).

These doubts are not only relative to the current British PhD, but they were also apparent during the 36-year existence of the American PhD in studio art. Chuck Csuri (personal communication, September 26, 2006), an internationally known digital artist and Ohio State University faculty member, believes the unresolved question, which terminated the American PhD in fine art during the 1960s, was the fact that no one could define what constitutes research in fine art.

The above references regarding art as research indicate that some artists and art academics believe that research methods can be isolated from research questions. However, the guidelines established for the PhD in practice-based research in art and design by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council have long held that questions drive methodological decisions. We contend that what in fact fuels the debate about what constitutes ‘knowing’ in art making is a clash of the historic attitudes that are deeply ingrained within the art community itself. It is this division, rather than any sense of the appropriateness of the methodology to the questions asked, that undermines the validity of the PhD in fine art in the minds of so many artists.

Attitudes within the Art Community Contribute to the Mistrust of the PhD and the Notion of Artistic Research

Although artists understand that the fine arts have a visual language of their own, there are two prevailing beliefs that create tension over the notion of research in the art community. The first is that art making is a type of empirical research from which knowledge is gained about the world. Art is thus perceived as being aligned with science and the notion of objective reality with which science is associated. The second belief is that art is subjective, emotive, not rule-bound, but ‘special,’ a form of nonverbal communication and intuitive knowing. The making of art, therefore, is based on feelings and opinion, rather than on facts and evidence, and thus is outside of the realm of research altogether, for multiple versions of reality are acceptable. However, this second notion, while denying empirical verification, often includes an affinity for the philosophical position that considers that truths are established by subjecting propositions to interrogation through reasoning. Thus, while denying the scientific approach, this second position may incorporate a version of logical argument that seems to contradict a position based merely upon intuition and emotion, yet is inclusive of expressive practice.

We will briefly trace these two seemingly opposing convictions from a historical perspective, and then attempt to tie them into their fundamental ontological and epistemological underpinnings.

Art and Science

During the 15th and 16th centuries, influxes of scholars, astronomers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and theologians, etc., streamed into Western Europe, and are thought to have been the stimuli for what we now call the European Renaissance. These émigrés reintroduced Classical education to Europeans through the Ancient Greek and Roman texts they brought with them, resulting in a renewed interest in the study of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, and harmonics.

Geometry began in Egypt as a method to restore property boundaries after the yearly flooding of the Nile. In Greek, “geometry” means, “the measuring of the earth.” Thus, the conception of drawing squares over the silted valley floor became the basis for the study of natural order and the principle of spatial law on earth as embodied by the archetypal forms of the square, circle, and triangle. Harmonics was considered the study of the succession of universal proportional relationships, which defined the interplay between the movements of the heavens (astronomy) and the earth’s spatial order (geometry) (Lawlor, 1982, p. 6).

The Renaissance conception of harmonics was a reorganization of the sixth century BCE Pythagorean mathematical laws of musical harmony, which had been expanded by Plato and his Academy. This harmonic order, or rhythmically repeated proportions, became the analogies of symmetry, a correlation of ratios, which the Ancient Greeks believed attained universal consonance. This idea of symmetry was not the equally balanced stasis, which we understand the term to mean today, but was an aesthetic conception achieved through the interplay of proportional elements of parts in relation to wholes (Ghyka, 1977, pp. ix–x).

The geometrical proportion recognized throughout the Classical period and the Middle Ages, the Golden Section, became known during the Renaissance as the Divine Proportion, a term reflecting the authority of the Christian Church, which holds God as creator of the universe (Ghyka, 1977, p. xi). It is defined by the irrational number Phi, 1.618 (irrational numbers are numbers that have decimal expansions that never end). Phi occurs when a whole is dissected into two sections, where the ratio of the whole is approximately 1.618 times the larger dissection, and the larger dissection is approximately 1.618 times the smaller dissection. The proportional relationships applied to the Golden Section are also associated with the Italian mathematician Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (c. 1170—c. 1250), most commonly known as Fibonacci. He introduced a numerical sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.) that produced the best whole number approximations to the Golden Section proportions, thus stabilizing the ratios around Phi. This particular repetitive proportional relationship is evident throughout much of the natural world, and has been applied by humans to structures in music, numbers, anatomy, architecture, painting, etc. (Elam, 2001, pp. 6–7).

During the 15th century, artists such as Piero della Francesca became more accomplished at applying geometry, proportions, and mathematics, and a new vision of the artist emerged. The artist was no longer seen as a mere craftsman, a passive member of the guild, but as a dynamic thinker and designer who discovered through his art practice a preexisting system of proportions which lay hidden within the structure of the universe (Ghyka, 1977, p. ix). The artists who sought hidden laws for universals were viewed with similar respect as the scientists who also studied the secrets of the physical world.

Thus, Geometry, the study of spatial order through the measure and relationship of forms, held special status in Renaissance intellectual life. Albrecht Dürer wrote in 1535, “Now the sole reason why painters … are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist” (Dürer, 1935/2011, pp. 1–2).

This new interest in mathematics and geometry was also the basis of the emerging technique of linear perspective, which made the representation of depth more convincing within pictorial space. The initiators of this projective geometry were Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), sculptor, goldsmith, and architect, and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), poet, humanist, and architect. Mathematics was becoming the foundation of both the arts and sciences.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was the most well known of the Renaissance artists who strived for greater knowledge of universals and the inherent design of nature. Not only did da Vinci contribute to fields such as mathematics, architecture, physiology, mechanics, hydraulics, physics, philosophy, geography, engineering, and botany, he also made investigations into natural phenomena through his own art practice in areas such as proportion, anatomy, optics, linear perspective, movement, and the qualities of light. In addition, he expanded the theory of aerial perspective through careful empirical observations of the atmosphere. He found that through the use of blue tints, loss of contrast, and blurred detail, distance could be portrayed on a two-dimensional plane as well as through proportional size.

Da Vinci demonstrated his own conception of the intellectual authority of art as a method of inquiry by writing up precise records of his studies in painting. His Treatise on Painting (1582) documented his extensive empirical methods of observation and the combination of words and images he used to communicate his scientific investigations. He employed careful measurements and suggested rules for their applications. He favored visual observation based on experience above the other senses, and believed that painting was a science that was capable of perceiving the inherent design of the universe, and was thus a form of knowledge in its own right (Campbell, 2003).

As the 15th century moved into the 16th, the growth of secular values supported by increased scientific inquiry challenged the primacy of the Medieval Church’s authority over knowledge. By 1514, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) had proposed the heliocentric theory, and almost a hundred years later, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) made use of a new instrument, the telescope, to further confront established tradition by challenging the idea of the universe as a divine construction. He supported his findings through the careful analysis of planetary models in conjunction with copious mathematical calculations. When, in 1610, Galileo published his Starry Messenger, he contradicted 2,000 years of a knowledge tradition that was based on the writings of Aristotle and had been transposed by St Augustine into the foundation of Christian cosmology.

Galileo, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), and Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), as well as the Englishman Francis Bacon (1561–1626), were all part of a progression of theorists and scientists who began to remove the religious dimension from the information of the physical world. Francis Bacon, in particular, is pertinent to the discussion of the artist and his affinity with science.

In their book, Ways of Knowing, Moses and Knutsen (2007) describe how the craftsman became the basis for Bacon’s model of empirical research. Francis Bacon was a lawyer, politician, and philosopher who respected the ordinary artisan more than Church theologians. Bacon disagreed with the traditional philosophical method of presenting a general proposition (or accepted truth), and then using this accepted truth to clarify particular observations (deductive reasoning). Bacon argued that this process could not create new knowledge, as the observations privileged already established truths.

By watching the artisan, Bacon formulated a scientific method that could produce knowledge in response to a variety of circumstances. This procedure, although new to science, was inherent to the crafts and, as noted above, had already been the basis of Leonardo da Vinci’s work a century before. Bacon found that the craftsman (or artist), unlike the scientist, did not begin with general axioms or truths, but used his ordinary senses and relied upon testing and experiment to reach a conclusion. Bacon believed the scientist must also begin with systematic observation, much as the craftsman begins his praxis, and by using multiple observations of particular phenomena, the scientist could then build toward more general truths (inductive reasoning).

Although Bacon championed induction, he, like others of his time and those who came after him (Johannes Kepler, Renee Descartes (1596–1650), John Locke (1632–1704), David Hume (1711–1776), etc.), realized the senses could not always be trusted. Thus, Bacon surmised that reason and common sense were needed, as well as acute observation, and that the most reliable methodology for knowledge acquisition would necessarily be a combination of inductive and deductive processes (Moses and Knutsen, 2007, pp. 20–24). Bacon’s 17th century model of scientific method was founded on the working procedures of craftsmen, and this inductive model continues to be one of the primary methods of research and experiment in the visual arts today.

In Art and Illusion, art historian E. H. Gombrich (1993) supports the notion that art can be science when placed within the context of Western tradition. He claims that the paintings and sculptures enshrined in museums are products of incessant scientific testing. He surmises, however, that we tend not to take notice of this experimental aspect of art anymore, as what these works once explored is now part of what we consider everyday knowledge.

Art considered as a scientific process appears throughout European literature. French critic and writer Roger de Piles (1635–1709) was adamant concerning the intelligence of painting and the particular science of art, which for him consisted of the methodical knowledge of artistic materials, such as color, and the ways different substances affected the viewer (Puttfarken, 1985). Marten Kemp (1992) writes that Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), a painter and the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London, declared the new institution to be founded upon the “scientific principles of art,” with a curriculum that focused upon nature and the human form. The first professor of anatomy at the RA, William Hunter, was considered an even greater empiricist than Reynolds. Hunter was “utterly committed to observational science, founded upon minute scrutiny, systematic description in words and images, and inductive analysis” (pp. 78–79).

Art as inquiry, then, is not a notion created by those who introduced the PhD in fine art, but has a long tradition within the visual arts. In 1836, the English landscape painter John Constable (1776–1837) stated in a lecture, “Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?” (Constable, 1836/1998, p. 69). Constable created a sequence of cloud studies while systematically experimenting with the chemical compositions of paint along with direct reference to a specific place, Hempstead Heath. The artist worked in conjunction with a meteorologist as well as a chromatographer while he closely examined atmospheric phenomena.

Other 19th century artists, such as Claude Monet (1878–1891) in his Post-Impressionist phase, examined particular aspects of light and produced a series of works showing multiple perspectives of the same subject under different lighting conditions, i.e., the walls of Rouen Cathedral, footbridges, and haystacks.

Is this kind of activity really research? Stephen Bann (1970) writes that both Monet and Constable show a commitment to a kin...