Magda WegrzynIn dialogue with the text: The Three Configurations of Studio – Art PhDs1 by James Elkins.

Reading the text made by James Elkins was for me a real relief. Finally, I thought, someone is writing with sense, or at least a sense to me.James Elkins singles out a few possible models in which PhD degree in visual arts can be possible.

In first model he stayed that: The Dissertation is research that Informs the Art Practice.In second model: The Dissertation is Equal to the artwork.In third model: The Dissertation is the Artwork, And Vice Versa.

According to the author in the first model, dissertation or thesis written by PhD candidate is made to inform the artwork. The dissertation can be written in the field of art history, anthropology, archeology, sociology, geography but the art history is the most common choice. Also there are other possible options in which the dissertation is philosophy or art theory, the dissertation is art criticism, natural history, or economics, or any number of fields outside the humanities, or the dissertation is a technical report.In case of art history the main reason why the dissertation is written is according to the author the purpose to 'productively inform art practice' (:148) what 'it is debatable as an assumption' (:148) simply because very often artist have made their own art by, 'travestying, simplifying, or otherwise distorting works and ideas that an art historians might say are most pertinent to their own practice' (:148). The author is talking also about very practical issues connected to writing a dissertation connected to field of art history. He points out on a problem how a dissertation should be written and when student can 'break out the art historical way of writing (…) and speak in her own voice' (:149). I would like to stop a little bit here and to look closer into this situation. First of all if I understood the problem correctly, artistic researcher through writing her dissertation in the field of art history used to have a lot of knowledge about some historically defined period of time because her work is somehow connected with it and as a next step she tries to proof/analyze the way in which her art practice is or not similar to it, and tries to explain those similarities or differences through the written text of dissertation. She builds historical context for her work and situates herself as a part of tradition to which she belongs. She takes from a tradition and in the same time tries to auto-analyze her relation toward it. In this case she acts like her own art historian which seems to me odd and obscure. But in another case when she takes from art history and is not auto-analyzing herself in manner of art historian, she treats art history only as a source of inspiration, she writes in her own voice, explaining why something was interesting to her in art history in a context of her artistic practice, is she not only writing an artistic statement ? Or there are both components: artistic statement and an artistic research? I must say that I am now a little bit lost.In relation to dissertation made in a field of philosophy he writes that very often philosophic dissertation may be 'thought of as organic development of the artist's statement' (:150) but 'students who construct elaborate theories about their work sometimes use theory not for it content as much as its rhetorical force (…) hiding what is actually of interest in the work' (:150).In case of dissertation connected with art criticism, the matter of self-reflexivity seems to be very important. The author points out that ' the idea that self-awareness as a desideratum for PhD-level instruction needs to be treated as a problematic assumption, not as a guiding principle'(:153) and that

1 Elkis, James (ed.). The Three Configurations of Studio-Art PhDs in Artists with PhDs:On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art. Washington DC: New Academia Publishing,LLC, 2009. pp 145-165.

sometimes 'artist have made compelling work even though they had no idea of the critical matrix to which their work belongs' (:150). Also in my personal opinion, this type of dissertation my provide temptations to match to currently most fashionable and up-to date critical views and even stop to think fully independently.From the part about connections between art an science, interesting to me is the sentence that: 'the relation between art and science, in which the artist borrows whatever she wants from science (…) means that new degree will not be a combination of science and art in the way that that a dual degree in biochemistry and genetics would combine those two disciplines' (:154). So the question seems to be how to name this relation, what kind of relation exactly it is if is it not the one mentioned above?In the second model the author specified two possible options which are: research and artwork comprise a new interdisciplinary field and research and artwork are understood as wholly separate projects. In the first one 'the non-art field or fields are all taken to be equal contributors to a new constellation of interests' (:156). In second one the 'configuration of fields is not understood as potentially coherent project, but as a juxtaposition, whose rationale does not need to be analyzed'(:158) because as we can read further 'art if often produced, in the company of many disparate interests that do not, at least for some time, seem to be directly linked to one another'(:158) .In the third model there are also two possibilities. In the first one the 'dissertation is intended to be read as art, and the visual practice as research' (:160) . In the second one 'there is no research component: the visual art practice, together with its exhibition and supporting materials, simply is a PhD' (:161) .

As for James Elkins that for me those last options are the most interesting one. And I would like think about them in context of painting. What is interesting to me in this medium is the fact that it allows me to focus and to show a big part of thinking which I have in totally different form than in writing. Sometimes I have only assumptions, sort of intuitions, 'Borgdorff's unfinished thinking' which I can not explain, express or grasp verbally but its easier to me to make it in painting. I think there a lot of truth in popular opinion that a lot of visual artists are not good in explaining with worlds what they just did. And for me that is OK. For me this is a situation similar to translation from one language to another. We can try to match some meanings, but it is not one to one situation, and I hope it will never be because for me that is the beauty of it. But the question is if they should be in the context of the academy? James Elkins pointed out on two very important issues. 'To find artworks that imply they are themselves the repositories of knew knowledge and the results of research, even though the knew knowledge cannot be adequately translated into words' (:159). And 'It is (...) true that it is deeply problematic, (…) to claim that the work of visual art should be understood as research and as producing new knowledge while at the same time insisting that the research and knowledge inhere in paint, clay or pixels of the art itself and not in a language' (:160). I would like to make my comment to the second sentence. I think that is totally understandable that the knowledge in painting does not inhere in paint, from the same reason in which the knowledge in written language does not epitomize in a letter or even with comparison to music, where a producing a new knowledge in music does not inhere in a note. But despite of that, paint, clay, letter, pixel or note depending of its usage can be part of a language or better they can be understand as notation of the thought/idea. For me to think and to understand not necessary means to think and to understand through words. I agree with the sentence that 'What is understood in the communication is not necessarily grasped on cognitive level. Understanding is also emotional, subliminal, unconscious, latent, and very often after the event'.2

2 Shevtsova Maria, Performance, Embodiment, Voice: the Theatre/ Dance Cross-overs of Dodin, Bausch, and Forsythe, Cambrige, New Theatre Quarterly, Cambrige University Press, 2003 pp.3, doi:10.1017/S0266464X02000015.

For me painting is a language and paint can be similar to letters, the way of using a of paint I can compare to a word and the whole painting to a sentence. But as I said before the problem lies in a translation and in a communication. And back to James Elkins, his third model and to the question which I have asked before if the translation/the process of informing in words should take place especially in a context of the academy. The written language seems to be easier qualified as something more objective, and the written content as objectively easier to judge or to estimate. People who are not art practitioners, or are art practitioners in a manner of spoken or written language, very often have problems with understanding a work of art made in a different non-written language, simply because they do not know them. Or in another words some people are not able to understand a non-written work of art without literally reading it, how they used to do with a written text. They are trying to translate something, which they had experienced into language that they know. The problem lies I think in education and in practice. I think that the way of communication of the viewer both in words and in non-words way should be free choice of an artist, but again, we are talking about the degree in the academy. How to proof, to judge, to make a comment about a work of art if not in words? It would be wonderful if someone would like to make a comment of my painting by making another one, or to express her opinion in a dance form, but is it really possible? Or maybe that is the way how it should be and how culture usually works? Or maybe I am wrong and this kind of thinking make a work of art harder to understand art to everyone else form outside of the artistic field? I really belief in power of non-written ways of communication, and really belief that they are far more universal than prevalent English, but I do know how to proof that in the context of the academy, academy which seems to not believe anymore that: 'what you see is what you get', but should we blame her for that?And in the end, in the text made by James Elkins we can read that: 'Derrida tells how he declined to accept visual work in lieu of written work, because the visual work was incompletely conceptualized'(:157). Thinking about this sentence I have remembered that I had read somewhere and I will quote it from memory that Picasso used to say: 'I wonder why people are not trying to understand singing of birds but they are trying to understand painting'. I think that Picasso has no right any more. In my opinion people are now trying to conceptualize both. I think that in one day - what is in tune with natural human need to have an answer and a knowledge about everything- we would have a poetry without a mystery, what can be in fact interesting, but my inner voice says to me that I should be quite happy that this is still a song of tomorrow.