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  • Artist Scholar: Reflections on Writing and Research
  • Steven E. Gump (bio)
G. James Daichendt. Artist Scholar: Reflections on Writing and Research Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2012. Pp. xxiii, 161. Paper: ISBN-13 978-1-84150-487-2, US$25.00, UK£15.95.

G. James Daichendt’s Artist Scholar: Reflections on Writing and Research is situated in, and thus captures, a curious moment: The book demonstrates the effects of institutionalization and professionalization on the specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge. By serving as a window into the ongoing evolution of the academic fields of art and art education, which Daichendt describes as lacking clear disciplinary homes, the book displays tensions yet anticipates transitions. Indeed, this book is almost equal parts description of the history and present state of art and art education in US higher education, response to the situation, and call to action for supporting the (apparently inevitable) development of PhD programs in studio art in this country.1 In Daichendt’s assessment, writing—particularly scholarly writing—is a vehicle for furthering this evolution.

Of course, Daichendt, a professor of art and design at Azusa Pacific University, did not write this book to serve its fascinating subtext. Instead, he wrote it primarily for students and faculty members in master of fine arts (M.F.A.) programs in the visual arts in the United States in order to reflect on the place of art and art education within the university system and to increase awareness of the value of writing to artistic practice. A philosophical preface by John Baldacchino (Teachers College, Columbia University) on the general incompatibility of social scientific methods with art education is followed by an introduction, seven chapters, and two appendixes meant to exemplify potential work of the artist scholar. Ultimately not a ‘how-to’ guide, this book is different from most instrumental works on scholarly writing in that the intended readers are [End Page 170] not being asked to behave in a manner that is inconsistent with their natural (artistic) selves: Writing, for artists, is described as a self-focused activity that remains secondary to the production of art itself. Daichendt seems to prescribe writing as a tool for thinking; he invokes ‘thinking through words’ (6) in a manner that would be familiar to, for example, essayist and critic Arthur Krystal.2 Overall, though, the ‘artist scholar’ is a concept that I wish Daichendt had interrogated and developed further: On one hand, the idea is a dialectical fusion, in which each persona maintains a unique identity; on the other, it becomes a transcendent, organic whole, something altogether new and different, formed from an intermingling of opposites.3 But perhaps this unresolved ambiguity is intentional and integral to the architecture of the book.

Early chapters set out to define ‘artistic scholarship’ and, in the process, draw parallels between art production and writing as forms of inquiry. Daichendt quotes Pablo Picasso as having said (what can be translated as) ‘I never made a painting as a work of art, it’s all research’ (50)—an unofficial mantra of the art-based research movement, which itself ‘values the visual over the verbal’ (122). Subconsciously, perhaps, and reflecting the project of Ernest Boyer,4 Daichendt boldly defines ‘scholarship’ as bigger than but also inclusive of the concept of ‘research’: ‘Scholarship is . . . a descriptor for the inquiry, reflection, interpretation and thinking processes that artists engage in their disciplines’ (21); it thus ‘encompass[es] all the aspects of artistic practice in the university’ (21). Artists, I feel, will have an easier time understanding and categorizing art as scholarship (or research); Daichendt, reflecting Baldacchino’s preface, is continuously conscious of the conflict between the ‘values of the [art] profession’ and the ‘ideals of the university’ (41).

Near the heart of the book is a short chapter entitled ‘Artists and Writing’ (chapter 4). Here, Daichendt mentions, and seems to take for granted, an ‘animosity artists have toward writing’ (66) yet suggests that ‘writing is not as complicated or multifaceted as art making, otherwise we would all be writers and not artists’ (63). These statements seem to antagonize the artist and scholar personas—inasmuch as, within the academy, ‘actual art product[s]’ are still relegated...

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