From Fine Art practice to PhD setting new parameters

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From Fine Art practice to PhD -setting new
parameters

• Dr Malcolm Quinn
• Reader in Critical Practice
• Research Co-Ordinator
• Wimbledon School of Art

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Every PhD in Fine Art should enable a new
understanding of what Fine Art is, was and can be
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The framework for higher education
qualifications in England, Wales and Northern
Ireland - January 2001

• Descriptor for qualifications at Doctoral (D)
  level Doctoral degree
• Doctorates are awarded to students who have
  demonstrated
• i the creation and interpretation of new
  knowledge, through original research or other
  advanced scholarship, of a quality to satisfy
  peer review, extend the forefront of the
  discipline, and merit publication
• ii a systematic acquisition and understanding of
  a substantial body of knowledge which is at the
  forefront of an academic discipline or area of
  professional practice
• iii the general ability to conceptualise, design
  and implement a project for the generation of new
  knowledge, applications or understanding at the
  forefront of the discipline, and to adjust the
  project design in the light of unforeseen
  problems
• iv a detailed understanding of applicable
  techniques for research and advanced academic
  enquiry.

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The requirement for enhanced disciplinary
knowledge excludes research to provide content
the admissible research dimension in a play
about the Suffragettes is that which relates to
the discipline of drama rather than research into
the Suffragettes Research in the Creative and
Performing Arts A Review of the 2001 Research
Assessment Exercise by the Arts and Humanities
Research Board
What we lack in art and design research are
developed accounts of the progress from a
practice to a research project - a project not
just with its own parameters, but one which
changes the parameters of the practice from which
it emerged - which is why I am turning to the
practice of writing, rather than Fine Art
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Changing the Parameters of the Practice of
Writing
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The Research Project
Menards work, perhaps the most significant
of our time, consists of the ninth and thirty
eighth chapters of the first part of Don Quixote
and a fragment of chapter twenty-two (Jorge Luis
Borges Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote).
Menard did not want to compose another Quixote
- which is easy - but the Quixote itself . . .
His admirable intention was to produce a few
pages which would coincide - word for word and
line for line - with those of Miguel de Cervantes
( (Jorge Luis Borges Pierre Menard, Author of the
Quixote).
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The Methodology
The first method he conceived of was relatively
simple. Know Spanish well, recover the Catholic
faith, fight against the Moors and the Turk,
forget the history of Europe between the years
1602 and 1918, be Miguel de Cervantes . . . but
he discarded it as too easy (Jorge Luis Borges
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote). To be, in
some way, Cervantes and reach the Quixote seemed
less arduous to him . . . than to go on being
Pierre Menard and reach the Quixote through the
experiences of Pierre Menard(Jorge Luis Borges
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote).

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The Outcomes
It is a revelation to compare Medards Don
Quixote with Cervantess. The latter, for
example, wrote . . . truth, whose mother is
history, rival of time, depository of deeds . .
. Written in the seventeenth century . . . this
enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of
history. Menard, on the other hand, writes . .
. truth, whose mother is history, rival of time,
depository of deeds . . . History, the mother of
truth the idea is astounding. Menard, a
contemporary of William James, does not define
history as an inquiry into reality but as its
origin. (Jorge Luis Borges Pierre Menard, Author
of the Quixote) ( (Jorge Luis Borges Pierre
Menard, Author of the Quixote).
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The Contribution to Knowledge
Menard (perhaps without wanting to) has
enriched, by means of a new technique, the
halting and rudimentary art of reading this new
technique is that of the deliberate anachronism
and the erroneous attribution . . This technique
fills the most placid works with adventure. To
attribute the Imitatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand
Céline or to James Joyce, is this not a
sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual
inclinations? (Jorge Luis Borges Pierre Menard,
Author of the Quixote).