George Smith and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
By CHRIS THOMPSON | November 29, 2006
TEACHING DOCTORS: Smith prepares academic artists. |
When the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts gets its final permissions from the state Legislature in early 2007, Maine will become home to the first Ph.D. program in visual arts in America. The Portland Phoenix caught up with IDSVA’s founding director, George Smith, to find out more about this ambitious undertaking, which has been in the works for about a year and a half.
Can you tell me a bit about the genealogy of your program? What convinced you that it was time to commit to making it come to life?
SMITH Teaching theory to MFA students convinced me that artists are incredibly smart. They love theory and philosophy because they love resolving abstract problems, which is the basic process of a studio practice. And yet there has been no Ph.D. designed especially for the artist who wants to pose philosophical questions at the highest level of academic scholarship. Hence the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.
How would a student's course of study unfold over the three years in the program?
We will admit roughly fifteen students and begin in mid-May with a twenty-five-day intensive residency at Spannocchia Castle in Tuscany. Spannocchia is an organic farm that is cultivated by intelligent people seeking answers to the global ecology situation. This fits in with our own concerns in eco-aesthetics. And the remoteness of the castle lends itself to deep thinking and prolonged discussion.
The Tuscany intensive begins two courses. The first is a class that continues online when the intensive ends; and the second is an independent study that is designed during residency and then conducted online with a recognized leader in whatever the field of research.
The second semester begins with a six-day intensive residency in NYC. The focus is on art as historical becoming, and here again, the residency transitions to online instruction with a worldwide faculty.
Second and third year proceed along similar, though more narrowly focused and advanced, lines. This increasing concentration leads to the dissertation, for the completion of which most students will need another year or two beyond the three-year curriculum.
Your first year's program entails a "critical intervention" at the Venice Biennale. What does this entail?
If we want students to “get” art phenomena like the Venice Biennale, then they should see it as it’s happening — while the art is still hot. So the first thing is to set students loose in the Biennale. But then we want to pose questions as a community of artist-philosophers trying to understand the significance of aesthetic spectacle on a global scale. And the point is to “intervene” then and there, as critical participants. As such, critical intervention implies cultural responsibility.
This raises the stakes considerably for art education — the arrival of IDSVA means that the MFA will no longer be the only terminal degree in town, that there'll be another level of rigor and qualification possible for those who wish to pursue it. Why do you believe that this kind of academic traingin is necessary for artists today?
First, we know that artists have been relegated to the fringes of academia, wherefrom they are rarely included in the formal academic discussion of art. Consequently, undergraduates and graduate students learn how to make art from artists, and they learn the meaning and function of art from scholars who for the most part do not make art. So we want to give art practitioners the training and credentials necessary to bring them into the center of the art debate.
Secondly, we know that rigorous intellectual training for the artist means enlightening the hand and eye as well as the mind. What you wind up with is an artist-philosopher, whose knowledge embodies thought and creative action. Given our present conditions of existence, I believe any hope for the future lies in a philosophy of action. Such is the promise of the artist-philosopher.
What remains to be done in order to make the program operational?
We expect to present a bill to the Maine state Legislature in January, which, if it passes, will grant the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts the authority to confer the Ph.D.Email the author
Chris Thompson:xxtopher@hotmail.com.
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