Dear Terry, Martin,

It looks like that Art and Design subjects, because they were out of universities for some centuries were research-less. The fact is really the opposite. Art (and Design) where part of academies of Art, that had (guess) academic teaching, learning and (OF COURSE!) research since 1563. ART academies started their activity far before the “research university”. In fact, the "research university” copied the type of knowledge production (updated, timely, and connected to “the world") existing in the ACADEMIES (of Science, Letters, and… Art). 



Anyway, one must state simple facts:

1. In many prestigious universities, today, there is a offer of what is called “art project-based PhDs” (mostly in UK Higher Education institutions)

2. Contless people have earned their PhD through this fashion since, at least, the year 2000.

3. This fashion is accepted and encouraged by government and independent bodies that rule, evaluate and assess research and universities in several countries (in Europe) as a way to progress in the disciplines they are based on.  

4. These disciplines are regarded as the motor of creative societies of the future ESPECIALLY because they have a methodological “je ne sais quois” that others don’t have. 



Instead of trying to understand what is this “je ne sais quois” of these fields, in this list, we have been bombarded by criteria, methods and bureaucracies that tend ignore their uniqueness. 



There is also a prejudice that Art lacks methods, that Art lacks rigor, that Art is inspirationally based and not thoughtfully determined. 



Another prejudice is that Artists don’t have to communicate clearly about and with what they are doing. Like in Maths, or Physics, there are peers and an established cultural setting that “reads” the works and validate them to proceed into the Art system. If I don’t understand much about High Maths I will no question its clarity. If I don’t know much about Arts, I should abstain from qualifying it as obscure. This prejudices are, therefore, the result of ignorance (both historical and critical). 



I must say this also: Art is hard work and time consuming, Art is expensive and highly lucrative. Art is highly methodical. Art is creative and, most of all, Art is able to address the core of human concerns. 

And Art, like History, are by definition not instrumental (Dewey was wrong) and therefore looks resilient to the type of knowledge production that some of you advocate for PhDs. 



A doctorate in Art can never be considered a “professional” doctorate since there is no such thing as an Artist's profession like there are Engineering professions. Artists have careers, have an art practice, are authors, in a sense, retained the meaning of the medieval “liberal arts”.  



(half an hour elapsed…)



I just read Peter Murphy’s (it was quite funny if he was the former Bauhaus lead singer :0))) article that Ken suggested and I agree with most of what is written. In fact, i find it particularly brilliant. However, I find also that some references are missing: Baumgarten and Nelson Goodman. Peter, I think, will understand this. Baumgarten because was the one that proposed Aesthetics as a science of sensitive cognition but also as a science to study Art. Goodman because he wanted to place Art as part of a general theory of symbolization.

Also, what I find incomplete in the paper is a connection between imagination as part of an aesthetics epistemology and a “theory of explanation” . If someone does this it will be an achievement, and a breakthrough in our discussions. 



I was trained as an architect and, for us, drawings are made to explain things. 

Let me give an example:



Thesis: I am a Doric column (says the drawing).



Evidence: I belong to a Doric temple with my siblings. (says the drawing)



Warrant: Columns with a proportion 1/6, with a simple drum like capitel and drop directly into the stylobate are Doric (says the drawing).



Backing: I was made by an Architect, they know how to draw Doric columns (says the drawing).



I also had the experience of working in an architecture studio in which discussions with drawings included rebuttals, qualifications, warrants between several people (of course cultivated in architecture). The drawings (images) had the power to explain, to contradict, to back and give warrants in making decisions such as distribution systems or ingress systems and, of course, the general looks of buildings. But it only works if you are cultivated in the field. 

If I show a drawing of a doric column to some people they would probably exclaim: what a strange bottle! In the same way that I would read mathematical expressions as odd lyrics of strange musics. 



In conclusion: Images, technically constructed images (drawings, illustrations, sketches) are the only definitive evidence that there is such thing as imagination. 

Imagery, Images are undoubtably externalizations of imagination. Illustrations above all. 

Sets of images are normally explaining things, firstly because things are things, secondly because most of the things were drawings (images) before becoming things.



warm regards,



Eduardo







Eduardo Corte-Real

PhD Arch.

Associate Professor

Professor Associado com Agregação

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Av. Dom Carlos I, nº4, 1200-649 Lisboa, Portugal

T: +351 213 939 600













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