For Professor Wangboje: That Art May Live

The origin and genesis of the debate has arisen from various signals from society.  Some stimuli that have fuelled the debate emanate from the university structure and its focus while others, equally enshrined in the university and society’s over determinant values on paper qualifications, have added their bits to the debate.  This second aspect – compounds the debate in a significant way.

In universities all over the world the doctor of philosophy degree (Ph.D) is the highest degree awardable in the pursuance of knowledge.  In Europe where our academic tradition in Nigeria derives from, it is not all academic programmes that accommodate structures that lead to the Ph.D. degree.  The reason is that some disciplines allow for speculation in the generation of thought on thought.  In other words thought is brought to bear on previous thought.  Its nature marks it out as a reactive kind of knowledge seeking.  In its reactive nature thought aspires always to grasp the essential nature of things by striping thought of distractions.  The Ph.D as a degree is a specialized degree that thrives on thought to establish a distinct theory or hypotheses or provide a new or another way of looking at phenomena.

There are other degrees like professional masters or post graduate diplomas that are awardable degrees in disciplines that do not yield to the kind of theoretical thought distillation we encounter with the Ph.D. The fine Arts  post graduated depress and diplomas fall within this category.  The nature of study in the Fine Arts is geared towards the acquisition and advancement of skill in the making of art.  It is for this reason that in the European academic traditions and as adopted for Nigeria, studies in it terminated first at the Diploma level then came the B.A. and M.A. and  later, with the enlargement by the American tradition, the master of Fine Arts M.F.A. degree.  The British M.A., mainland European Postgraduate diploma and the U.S.A. M.F.A. define the same competence in skill advancement in the making of Art.  Art education is about impacting skills in the making of art and other values are simply ancillary to it.

In America some degrees that are dependent on skill and therefore are constrained by their nature to engage in wholesale speculative thinking but  accommodate demonstrative potentials to open  up new ways of looking at phenomena terminate in the professional doctorial.  An example is the Doctor of Fine Art in Directing as an art.  This is one of the rare areas of a Fine Art professional Doctorial.

Others are in Music, Architecture and recently the Illinois Doctor of Design (D. Des).  Others professional doctorial are Ed. D. in art education, M.D. for medical practitioners, D.D. for theologians D. Just for Juris- prudence.   The class and grade of professional doctorial are   many.  But one thing about professional doctorial is that although the credit hour allotted to them may be more than a Ph.D. (whose operation is on a speculative sphere, and where thought is expected to engage in thought to synthesize knowledge) they are not at par.  This is why the Ph.D. remains the highest awardable degree in any university.

From the above therefore many disciplines in the world of learning accommodate a variety and shades of degrees as terminal degrees.  In the Fine Arts where the M.F.A. operates as a terminal degree, America’s College Art Association  (CAA) states this of the M.F.A. degree regarding its status;  “the master of Fine Arts (MFA) is the terminal degree for visual artists.  No academic degree other than the M.F.A. or equivalent professional achievement (in this regard the British MA. and continental Europe’s diploma-my insertion) should be regarded as qualification for appointment to professional rank, promotion or tenure.”

Recently in Nigeria the National Universities Commission  (N.U.C) directed that those holding lectureship positions in universities should earn their Terminal degrees.  This has been taken to mean just the Ph.D and professional doctorial.  Because of this, in some Universities where Fine Art is offered, those who hold the M.F.A. degree have been under pressure to earn the Ph.D as the only conception of the idea of a terminal degree.  Within the convention of the understanding sketched above there are no terminal doctor of Philosophy degrees or professional doctorial in the “making of art”.  So what is the making or arts” terminal degree? Should it be a doctorial in Art History? Art Criticism ? Religious art? Aesthetics and Philosophy of Fine Art? Art theories? History? Religion? Sociology? Anthropology? Material science? Any degree here does not address the inherent problem of skill as a manipulative option and its consequences as far as the making of art is concerned:  this is where the focus of Art Education as a discipline lies.  And it is what defines art education’s methodology:- skill in the making of the arts.  Further skill advancement in the domain of studio art after the MFA degree is obtainable in post studio masters fellowships.  Many colleges and schools of Fine Art in Europe provide opportunities for artists who desire such knowledge.  The Jan Van Eyck Academy of Art in Holland offers this opportunity.

Some artist lecturers who have earned theory doctorial and are teaching in universities have collaborated in many instances with university authorities to diminish the value of M.F.A. as a terminal degree in the making of Art.  Because of this many M.F.A holders have sought admission into various postgraduate programmes where philosophy doctorial are obtainable to simply earn a Ph.D. in the studio programmes since such degree have not  been designed for the studio. The contradiction that the option of human science doctorial habours would be addressed in due course.

Those who are in the vanguard of M.F.A. holders who are lecturers acquiring theory doctorial or professional doctorial have put up such arguments as:

1. The quality of M.F.A. teaching in recent times is not adequate to produce the caliber of personnel artistic practice and teaching needs.

2. Those who have earned the M.F.A. and are teachers in the universities hardly produce art any more. They rather prefer to write articles and some articles they write do not have any bearing with their studio focus. So why shouldn’t they go and get the doctorial degree.

3. Some are of the opinion that since it is a demand in the academy that one earns a doctorial  (by implication their only conception of a terminal degree) why not earn it and damn them.

4. Some yet insist that the M.F.A. in line with the Euro American educational traditions which we have inherited, artists, art practice and those holding tenureship positions in institutions should not be subjected to the distractions of thoughts thinking thought as in the Doctor of Philosophy degree in non “art making” courses.

The first three positions are laden with myths, contradictions and fallacies.  This section hence will be devoted to highlighting the inherent structural problems that some of the positions put above habour.

I

In art teaching two departments are central to its focus, viz: practice and theory.  Practice is weighted at 75% while theory takes 25%.  Apart from the general studies and faculty courses, art education focuses on impacting skill in making.  This implies that what is bequeathed as knowledge in studio courses is focused on the acquisition and development of skill.  Such a skill is beyond the skill of the crafts man.  Thus in art education even where the bequeathal of skill is the focus, what that skill ends in as a manipulative option becomes central to art teaching. This is where art theory becomes important.  Art theory here has nothing to do with GES course, History, Criticism and Sociology inputs in art education.  Art theory comes at the level of critical practice when a finished class assignment is evaluated and this is based on  “purposive intention” which an assignment addresses.  Thus in art education purposive, intention begets practice and practice instigates the evaluation of how far skill was manipulated in meeting with a purposive intention.  Consistency in this level of relationship between intention, practice and evaluation generates the dialectical cycle of art education.

Old masters or traditional art educationists are agreed that it is better at the students formative years to ensure their foundation in perception, visual acuity and representation of forms are emphasized.  What is not learnt at that stage can amount to a frustration in the matured life of an artist who recognizes his/her deficiency in his/her avowed vocation.

Frank remembers asking Professor Wangboje of blessed memory during a dialogue with the Creative Arts students in 1978 in Uniben why they were not made to write project reports in various studio areas as graduation requirement.  He replied that, that focus is for the graduate class or programmes.  The focus of the B.A. degree therefore according to him focused on entrenching the objectives and passion for practice.  The teacher he says encourages this focus by practicing avidly.

The master of Fine art (M.F.A.) degree as a terminal degree is not a skill development programme.  It is a skill advancement programme.  In that regard it is assumed that participation in the programme explores options that aid further understanding in manipulative skills that were taken for granted at the first degree level.  This is why the programme accommodates courses in conceptual development.  Thus courses that relate art to philosophy and a proper understanding of the language of vision, aesthetics and art theories take center stage.  Invariably again, as the programme runs, these courses diminish in favour of practice.  This is because the aim of the degree is to make a master of “art-making” in the recipient.  The recipient of the MFA is not trained by the degree to be a teacher.  But because impacting knowledge in the studio is dependent on practice, those who have professional practice degrees are called to provide the needed fragments of knowledge in it.  Terminal degrees by their nature are specialized recognition of competence in the areas of study they define.  As research degrees their recipients have been equipped to convey knowledge in the areas where they obtain.  It is in this same vain that a Ph.D  holder is called to teach because university  teaching is about research in the disciplines where it obtains.    In this regard the College Art Association of America States inter-allia  that “Degrees in education and related fields shall not be required except for faculty appointed  specially to teach courses in education.  Similarly, education degrees should not be regarded as constituting appropriate preparation for teaching studio art.”

For those who think that the M.F.A. degree content is not adequate for the needs of art teaching, one is wont to ask to know what degree else is in the “making of art” which can help the situation.  We think they should rather be thinking of revaluating content to meet with the needs of the time.  Our observation if we are to take side with the logic of the first group is to advocate for a review of the M.F.A. programme to meet with the social responsibility of the artist in the present.  In Paradise Battered (p II) Jegede made this point loud. Except for some new M.F.A. programmes many of such programmes in Nigeria today need updating.  A regulatory body should also see to the adherence to such standards.  Usually a regulatory body that is an organ of the Guild that oversees the community of artists and the performative potentials inherent in its members usually advice on remedies if there is need for some.  The artist body should be thinking of some designated schools where government should invest in for post studio master courses.  Such programmes are further skill advancement programmes.  In Europe such programmes run at par with the post doctorial regarded as thought advancement programmes.  The skill advancement and thoughts advancement are separate but complementary approaches to the quest for knowledge.

The NUC programme accreditation has been on for some time now.  In a cursory discussion with artists at the Lokoja SNA conference Dec. 2001 on university studio programme accreditation opinions expressed was that SNA members accredited the art programmes Yes it is true. But they did, without the mandate of the society of Nigerian artists (SNA). Thus while they are SNA members they were on their own since they did not derive a mandate from the SNA or since the SNA has not prepared a guideline on the education of its would-be-members.  In some disciplines the NUC accreditation is one thing and the professional body’s accreditation is another.  And indeed it is to the defined focus of professional associations that most universities defer.  This is because as a body they have determinate criteria no matter how contingent it may be.

The society of Nigeria Artists under which purview these matters fall is not yet up and doing simply.  If it desires to be responsible it must help the Nigerian society by providing for the needs of the country through an adequate preparation and grooming of its members by providing guidelines on what should obtain in an artist’s training.  Academic programmes are not determinate in their structures.  As structures that articulate fragments of knowledge they are liable to revaluations or revisions.  This helps to meet with the anticipated gains derivable from such a programme as an ambit of learning that is relevant to culture hence society at large

II

The M.F.A. holder art teacher in a university if properly trained knows that his/her focus is to practice art so he/she can have some experience to fall back on in pedagogy.  As an academic it is also mandatory for him/her to constantly convert experience into the knowable.

To convert experience into knowledge has never ended at the level of pedagogy. The studio space for teaching is a vibrant research atmosphere where ideas thoughts and concepts are tested towards effectiveness in a teacher’s vocation. Beyond his/her programmed tools for observation, are students’ responses and attitudes that enrich the outcome of expectations.  By their nature, they become unmilled experiences.  To capture them as thoughts distilled into knowledge is one of the research objectives of the Art teacher.  He/she is also expected to show through exhibitions and installations his/her creative output.  The art teacher’s creative output is important for two reasons.  The first is that he/she gains further experience through practice in the way he/she guides his/her students.  The second is that he/she inspires his/her students through practice.  A teacher’s practice according to Professor Wangboje is a fundamental tonic towards instilling in the student the required passions for the studio.

Maturing towards the teaching profession is a long journey from our personal experiences.  The aptitude and consciousness to convert experience into knowledge or show works to the public as a creative output requires the guidance of experienced senior colleges in a university setting.  This drive and encouragement we must say is lacking in our universities currently.  When the graduate artist teacher is under pressure to publish or perish, the teacher is forced to write.  The value of what he /she writes and the way it aids his/her academic growth become non issue in some instance.  At the points of desperation paternalistic attitudes begin to emerge.  Papers are accepted irrespective of subject matter.  Text books which are not ideally research materials to aid the furtherance of knowledge become accepted within the publication classification.

What is indeed needed in teaching is a structured tradition in doing things that relate to academics.  In the days of yore, a new entrant into academics was not unleashed on students as a teacher without a mentor who is a senior colleague.   Looking at some of the problems of publishing and lecturing in the university recently and the way the mentoring tradition had died out, a colleague simply asked, “with what incentive is he expected to do such extra work”. And who obeys an elder in these days of warped  values.

The artist it must be remembered is a man or woman of few words.  If he or she decided to be a teacher a period of positive tutelage to arrive at an anticipated end was necessary. Ola Oloidi and EI Anatui have at various times elaborated on this issue in relation to the functions of cerebration that  we would no go into it here.  Their clarification focuses on the different locations of functions in the brain as it appertains  to intellection where reason operates and emotion where art emanates from.

In some universities where the workings of art making and its relationship to teaching are hardly known, there is a general insistence on publishing.  The value of exhibitions or monumental works in public space are hardly valued.  Again the hazy and  uncoordinated nature in which such important structures to art education are taken is a factor of an uncoordinated artist’s body policy.  We refer to the C.A.A. once again regarding statements that validate as appropriate researches, the creative engagement of the artist teacher.  “The work of visual arts faculty is not extra academic.  Their commitment to creative work production, expression, research, etc. should be regarded as the same as that of academics  in other disciplines.

One of the major problems of art teaching in Nigeria is its location in faculties whose major focus is to generate thoughts and theories on previous thoughts.  As minority members of such faculties and given too to the fact that artists are men/women of little words, a kind of an over ridding has taken place over the years.  This is considered dangerous where some studio masters who for personal ambitions have acquired theory doctorial compound irrelevant problems to art education.  Naturally as we shall see later in this paper such degrees dampen upward aspirations toward the making of art in favour of writing.  To compensate for that loss of “purity” in the creative domain artists who acquire they doctorial have aligned often with the majority of faculty members to advocate for conditions that kill art which is publishing just journal articles. They do this by an inordinate focus on publishing as well as encouraging their universities to value journal articles to the disfavour of exhibitions. Their progress has led to the embrace of wrong conceptions regarding the evaluation criteria for studio artist teachers.  Professor Uche Okeke, at University of Nigeria, and Professor Wangboje at Ahmadu Bello University and University of Benin, sustained traditions in art teaching in the universities where their influence held sway.  Some modern day professors are beginning to think that it is fashionable to abandon tradition for extra academic sentiments where studio teaching is concerned.  This situation has become irreverent and has exacerbated the problem of art teaching today in most universities in our country. Its results is the scampering back to universities by art  teachers to earn the PhD.

Contemplating this problem in our defence of the tradition Professor Wangboje bequeathed to art education in Nigeria, some people have asked whether  art education’s age-long tradition is the only limit of the possible? Our answer is in the affirmative -  yes - in so far as Nigeria remains the touch bearers of the Euro-American traditions of education.

Nothing has put the Western tradition under pressure to change to doctorate degree for the studio so far, and we have not got as far as they have gone at least with post-studio masters programmes.  If they do, in no distant time many Nigerians would earn such degrees and it would not be a problem.  But where there is the absence of a studio doctorate for the arguments advanced in the first sections of this paper, what is the value of a PhD degree in history, religion, art history, art criticism, philosophy, etc., as speculative disciplines to the making of art as an academic programme.?  How can those degrees impact further knowledge in studio teaching whose focus is the making of art? Have we just become higher degree hungry that they must be acquired for their sake as badges and personal decorations as “doctors”? or is it because it has become fashionable  to be addressed “Doc” at faculty  and departmental corridors and  meetings?

In history, the excessive academism of art practice had produced  protest from well meaning critics.  Praxiteles in Greece, Paolo Ucello and Michelangelo Buonarrotti in Italy, Jucques Louis David in France, at various time have been given strong negative evaluation for researches that aimed to improve art.   This  is because, with such researches focused on improving skill in the making of art, much of Weston evaluation thought they resulted in sterile art. The way it is becoming the vogue in Nigeria today how can a Ph.D in art history equate with a Paollo Uccello’s mathematical research obsessions then, to render form properly in perspective?  Yet Vassari said of Uccello that the greatest artist to have lived after Giotto would have been Uccello if he spent half the time he put understanding the working of the mathematics of perspective to drawing objects from nature. As Professor Martin Kosemani and Dr. Isaac Okonny of the University of Port Harcourt said recently, there is a way individuals have come to arrogate to themselves the onus of fixing the locus of evaluation and values regarding community ethos on themselves “without recourse to tradition or a consensus of the organs concerned with the generation of new values and ethos for society

III

Our major dilemma then is why engage in that which is not valuable to the artists objective to the making of art? If a Ph.D. were considered valuable for the artist’s education as a process it would have been designed long before now.  This section will be addressing those whose thought is simply-why don’t acquire it since it is the demand.  In this regard our focus would be to shed some light on how the creative arts- (the arrest of thought or fossilization of thought-) and the Ph.D  (the thought thinking thought”) discipline relate to one another as valid and autonomous knowledge disciplines in the learning industry.

The skills development and acquisition disciplines were never part and parcel of university education.   Where they appeared in the universities for the first time they were accorded autonomous status as schools or colleges. This is because as stated before now a university in the Euro American tradition is predicated on reactive knowledge.  It is reactive knowledge that allows for the free reign of contemplation and thought processes in the construction of alternative theories arising from previous thought exercises.  Because of this, standard university disciplines are held in esteem because their focus is narrowed to the theory of practice or consummated acts of humanity.  This is the underlying essence of the doctor of Philosophy degree with its root at the end product of contemplation.

In the creative arts, we encounter the practice of theory. The lived experience of man become metaphors in the mind of the artist that need urgent ‘deposition in time” as “abiding images” that define time and reflect on man’s  lived experience and erstwhile culture. What the society presents is what is converted into allegories fossilized  as smith words, shapes caught in stones, pictures captured in colours and shapes and sounds crystallized in music.  In this regard as Dr. B. N. Unegbe of the University of Port Harcourt says the artist becomes a medium or a diviner whose stimuli derived from what the society provides deposits them as signs of the time. And for an artist to be relevant to society he/she must never end this divination urge.  Actions constitute theories because they emerge from an intellectual ferment of a people.  Changing intellectual ferment of a people which is not static further informs adjustments in culture that informs the artist product.  So what the artist deposits as the synthesized stimuli of the time becomes art.  Its value is that while thought flies with time and can be lost, the artist is the only one who has always managed to arrest fleeting thought into shapes that define time with as art works as abiding images.  Hence he is a practitioner of theory, a medium and a diviner.

The other human sciences are focused on man’s lived past.  Man’s lived past has no other value except to bring into the present a lost reality.  That reality fanned into the present helps man to know and appreciate where he is coming from.  That mournful retrieval of the past which is the focus of the humanist is aided so much by the details of the fleeting past which the artist captured as abiding images of time in various art works that have been made.  This is why Solomon Wangboje, Ola Rotimi,  Wole Soyinka, Ben Enwowu, Chinua Achebe, Flora Nwapa I.N.C. Aniebo, Laz Ekwueme and a host of other artists have had  analysis of their works occupying libraries in  critical and evaluative works on them. Where these works not worth what they are would so much time have been spent by the human scientist looking at them? The business of the human scientist is to interact with art works while the  business of the artist is to create art for its human value.  Were the above artists also encumbered with the mere contemplative disciplines would they have provided for the other humanists what they need to be relevant to the society? Just show is a critic who has attained a commensurate status as an artist and a critic combined?

The university to us should be steadfast in its role as a protector of disciplinary focuses and not a violator of disciplinary focuses.  The creative arts never appealed to the universities to host them.  The universities felt that there was the need to host the creative arts disciplines along with the theory minded discipline so as to generate a harmonious and proximate relationship in its responsibility to society, which is to fan knowledge alive without ceasing.

Because of the extra theoretical demand on the creative artist’s cohabitation with the humanist, some creative artists are of the opinion that the humanist be barred from writing   on the products of the creative artist.  If he must write, he has to create what he has to write on also.  At that level the economics of the division of labour becomes a fad and a fiasco.  It would compound the development of the university’s focus as identified earlier. It is important to state that within the ambits of knowledge structuring the creative arts disciplines, where skills are acquired and advanced and those   that aim at the extension of knowledge through contemplation, a complementary role is established.  This is in the way the product of skill in the things man makes or his actions provide the needed structure to contest hypothetical positions and thus construct or reconstruct theories.  Theories constructed further illuminate on and furthers the products of skill and advancement through the development of techniques.

This is what a healthy relationship in knowledge structures in the university should be. Where this is not the case, the arts would die a natural death in the university environment.  The creative arts and the contemplative arts as disciplinary focuses indeed enhance each other.  This state of relationship has remained up till date in Euro American traditions.  The argument in Nigeria to conform because the university says so is wrong.  This is because it panders to argumentum and verecundiam or an appeal to what the authority has said even where the premise is wrong.

Another paradox of the demand from yet another point that the studio artist obtain a doctorial to be relevant in the university system in Nigeria is amazing.  It is a part of an adoption of western values that debase skill.  One contradiction of this demand which skews the university focus in Nigeria is this; can the appreciation or enjoyment of an object be greater in value than the object and its maker? This is precisely what the human sciences do.  Their relevance is to appreciate and enjoy the art work. From the study of History Religion English Sociology Anthropology Philosophy etc each as human science disciplines depend on these deposits of time (art work) from various focuses to further knowledge in their disciplines.

They do this as uncommitted participants by collecting statistics on peoples relation or reaction to the creative produce, how well such works reflect society, how such works relate to their time, the subliminal or actual consciousness and state of mind of the artist who did the work etc.  this is how they generate their theories or confront thought.  The works its would appear were made for their enjoyment.

By the university’s demand then, the artist who works in a university setting should create his/her art work, take a holiday form creativity, watch society take statistics on how people relate to his work, how people enjoy his/her work then produce a fruitful reading in a theory.  After this he/she goes back to create some and watch again!

Can  the artist read himself properly where he is a medium depositing the fleetly thoughts from society?  Is it not critics hose sole work which is to enjoy the produce of art that have the capacity through reflection un-encumbered by creative pressure to provide insightful reading of art works to depths that even surprise the artist in terms of the sign his/her work bears?  Is it not critics who at times even aid artists through fruitful reading to change the theme of their works as well as  see in their works what they had taken for granted in the shapes and imagines they created?

Something must be wrong with the psyche that has lost a sense of this symbiotic relationship in the knowledge industry’s division of labour.  It portends great danger for society.

In the art of surgery a doctorial degree is not obtainable in it.  This is the same with the creative arts.  Can it then be right to ask a surgeon to earn a degree in art history where he can study the history of rendition of masterpieces of human anatomical drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci?  Anatomy relates to his work and can provide him with some knowledge.  But how can that knowledge further skill in surgery? Or a surgeon can take leave after some surgery collect statistics and report on those who died and how they died from the scapel and go back once again to begin to cut up.  Sir Joshua Roynolds tells us that art emanates from the animal vitality in man.  He also stated long ago that art dies in the arid excesses of reasoning.

A Ph.D degree in its structure is an essentializing academic discipline.  By this, it seeks narrow and determinate ends to the idea of things or phenomena.  The M.F.A. degree or the creative act is expansive and indeterminate in its structure and it is informed by many disciplines.  Even where a painter is convinced about an allegory in his/her painting inspiration, the process to achieve his/her end involves qualitative and quantitative leaps.  A stroke of colour  or line on canvas  instigates reformulation  of intent until he/she is done with a painting.  It is regarded as a quantitative leap because he/she is not replicating craft.  He/she always creates a virginal art form.  That quantitative leap is what accords his/her work an aesthetic quality.  The attribute of the aesthetic invests a work also with taste.  These become the grounds for the quantitative leap or decisions that aided the end product of his thoughts as a painting.  The narrow ambiences of doctorial focus is not designed to help the artist be creative in this regard as Professor Olumide Olusanya of the University of Logos has argued.  Herbert Read, John Dewey, Santayana are some of the many philosophers who also hold this view.

For those who propose for a Ph.D for the studio artist teacher any how, their error and fallacy  lie in their  inability to appreciate the disparate nature  and focuses of  both  disciplines.   Such proponents are also guilty of ignoratio  elenchi when they say that, Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi or Uche Okeke in recent times would not have been professors.  They base their argument an recent moves by Euro American universities where non terminal degree holders in theory disciplines are required to have Ph.D and for artists M.F.A. now. This evidently is a misreading of the signs of the time.  Browsing through the Web in Euro American institutions where our heritage in academics is located, that order is not relevant to the creative Arts discipline.  Those cultures have not also designed doctorial for such disciplines. The fundamental premise is, if one is accorded the status of a master artist, what status else can go beyond that? Is he expected to now begin to produce “ mistress pieces” to qualify for a Ph.D? The creative act lies in the domain of the cognitive hence it is a sensuous operative.  Judgments in it are subjective to a very high degree. How then do we admit in evidence two paintings by one artist as one qualifying for a masters and the other for a doctorial?

As we conclude it is important to look at some pragmatic situations as they relate to the course of the development of art education in Nigeria. Professor Solomon Ona Irein Wangboje of blessed memory holds the enviable record of being the first black to earn a doctorial at the New York school of Fine Art.  When he began his carrier as an academic in Nigeria he knew the value of his degrees and the way they relate to art education. The structures he set on ground for art education then were unencumbering as it is today with what later day Professors and doctorate degree holders are plotting to do with art education. Twelve years before his date with faith he had expressed some worries regarding the publish or perish mania in our universities. He also pointed to the reality that the practice of art has been the worse for it as often as artists earned the doctorial degree.  It is instructive to hear   him out in the brief forward he wrote to Dele Jegede’s exhibition titled “Paradise Battered”: 

“After establishing himself as a well-known painter and cartoonist, Dele embarked on a new course of study in the United States of America which enabled him to join the few Nigerians who hold a doctorate in Art History.  Our fear based on previous experience was that he would abandon his studio practices in favour of writing and publishing academic papers as a sure way to get to the top in a very competitive academic community which demands that you either publish or perish.  This requirement has lately been stretched to such ridiculous extent that  the studio artist who has contributed in no small measure as a good image maker  for this country is often at a loss to justify his presence in a University community.  He is sometimes forced to abandon his studio practices to the detriment of the arts profession.  Dele Jegede has happily proved to be an exception by his ability and determination to combine his academic pursuits with studio practices.  Thus, he is doubly armed with the necessary tools to embark on a crusade of enlightenment in the visual arts with his critical  essays and reviews as well as his cartoons which have enabled many of  us to have  an insight into contemporary experiences in the Nigerian society”.

After PARADISE BATTERED how many time in its 16 years has Dele Jegede exhibited?

The centrality of this dilemma for the vitality of the creative arts was once again expressed by Wagboje at the planning stage of Africa Studio, a journal of creative practice in 1996.  The journal is a publication of his protégées who share in what he epitomized as a creative artist and a professor.   The focus of the journal is simply to provide grounds for practicing artists and teachers of art to report on their artistic practice and experiences teaching art.  The forward he wrote for the journal sponsored by the Association of Wagboje school of Creative Artists (AWanSCA) reads thus:

“This journal which has set out in clear terms the road it intends to travel, could not have come at a more appropriate time to satisfy the long felt need for a publication that is devoted to studio practices in the arts profession.

 The emerging trend of ‘splitting’ the visual arts into four compounds, namely: production, history, aesthetics and criticism as separate disciplines in their own right, is phenomenon that is yet to take firm root.  But whatever happens, the studio artist remain a major player because what he says and how he says it with his preferred medium to express his thought, ideas, feelings and experience, will continue to provide the subject matter for the art historian, the aesthetician and the critic.

The paucity of journals devoted to the visual arts has remained a nagging problem in Nigeria.  Its consequence is evident in our Universities and other institutions where the ‘publish or perish’ fever continues to take its toll on those persons who must publish in order not to perish.

As we welcome the maiden edition of Africa Studio, it is important to remind ourselves that many similar journals in the past began and ended with a maiden edition for lack of support.  However, given the wide scope and coverage of the arts profession by featuring articles that traverse the entire arts spectrum, the editors have taken a wise decision.  Thus, with a broad base and readership, Africa Studio is guaranteed a healthy life and sustained growth for the benefit of the arts profession”.

When in 1997 he was preparing to go to Namibia, AWanSCA was preparing an exhibition and a conference to mark his 68 birthday.  His singular wish for the conference was the tabling of the dilemma of the creative artist in the university regarding his age long worry on the death of art in respect of he theoretical degree demands on the artist.  In his words on a Saturday afternoon in December of 1997 while at a meeting with this kinsmen at Ekenwhuan campus of Uniben  Benin City during a send forth meeting, he said to Frank Ugiomoh (one of these writers) “The nature of this problem and the way it relates to art practice is central to my mind and I would like that it be discussed during the conference.”  Before the conference, he transited. Professor Wangboje’s desire lives on today in the cause of the defence of creative practice or the practice of theory. Wangboje was not theory shy. He earned a doctorate in art education.  His was a professional doctorate.  The academic demands of that doctorate as Dr (Mrs) Stella Idiong of the University of Uyo reveals, is an extra 30 credit units above the 60 credit units minimum of the MFA which he earned earlier.  A research Ph.D. at its end also totals 60 credit hours. If he stood in stout defence of practice as a means to an end in art education he indeed was operating from experience based on tradition.

Progress is anchored on tradition and tradition makes progress through man’s inherent reflexive nature. History instructs that many times before, the limits of the possible had been confronted by excessive academism and art was completely debased.

Plato’s deriding of the artists of his milieu, Vassari’s Life of Artists, Joshua Reynold’s negative evaluation of the arts of neo-classicism are such points in history when reason overshadowed genuine creative outburst and produced debased and eclectic art.  And we remind you of that wise saying of Joshua Reynohds again, “Art dies in the arid excesses of  reasoning”.

The university as a citadel of learning remains a protector of disciplinary focuses.  Where it is not able to do this in special regard to the demand for Ph.D’s for art teaching, the blame falls squarely on faculty members.  They have become victims of argumentum ad populum.  But they need to be excused because they are misguided by departmental members in the discipline who should have instructed them on the status quo. 

Where we admit the above alibi, it is of common knowledge that the attainment of higher degrees, as Dele Jegede makes known in his worry, signals another academic direction and orientation. According to Jegede: “The significance of further studies for me lies not merely in the  acquisition of two additional degrees but also in the tremendous challenge which this process actuated.”

Translated into an egoistic, materialistic vernacular within a society that places undue premium on the face value of certificates and hankers after labels, prefixes and suffixes – earned, awarded, snatched or assumed – advanced degrees, particularly in art, are supposed to set in  motion, the process that would eventually  culminate in total disengagement from the practice of art. In other words, one is expected to be anything but a practicing artist  who has crowned an initial grounding in  studio art with advanced degrees, say in art history or art education.

Indeed, no less a friend than Sina Yussuff emphasized this unhealthy tendency when upon being told that warm afternoon  in 1979 that I was on my way out of the country, he wore a forlorn look.  He looked miserable and felt dejected out of sympathy for me. In a way, Yussuff was right: there was ample evidence to support his contention that the deeper you are into the academics of art, the farther away you are likely to be from divine inspiration, the type that finds outlet in materials for exhibitions”.

 If one is a practicing artist and teacher and earns a degree in art history later it is expected that a particular academic need for the department or the fulfilment of a personal ambition informed it.  That academic need or personal ambition should be beneficial to the university.  The leave of absence and the degree redirects his/her aspirations as a teacher. It implies as it is with the academic community that the focus is tailored towards research or “thought thinking thought” as it is with the humanities. Where this is not the case, it has simply wasted an  institution’s man hour for vain glory.  If, as it is with all lecturers in Nigeria, one desires to become a professor, what chair would one occupy? A professor of art or a professor of art history or both combined?

As Wangboje had lamented such degrees had striped the studio of doing artists to mere writers.  Art education is only meaningful in doing and teaching.  If I earn a doctorial and it adds nothing by way of a methodological know how to my discipline which is the “MAKING OF ART” them that degree is useless to manage the academic community as far as the university focus is concerned.  As a sculptor Frank cannot teach sculpture any better with a Ph.D. in history or philosophy, so why the thought of it at all if one is sincere to academics? Some Ph.D degree holders are not better teachers in their disciplines the way some M.F.A. degrees are equally bad teachers.

There is a measure of humiliation that attends to the pursuit of degrees outside the studio.  A would be candidate for a doctorial in a non studio discipline would have to encounter another masters degree to be at home with a new discipline even in art history.  Many artists who aspire to theoretical degrees often end up with art history.  Our observation is that many of them end up as bad art historians because their foundation in the discipline at the under graduate level was weak.  Art history for studio courses is a supplement to studio courses and it serves to supply for the studio’s pedagogical needs. Higher degrees are not grounds for foundation building so what you have lost remains lost because the foundation of the discipline was not properly entrenched since art history was not the artists focus of hearing at the first degree.

A better alternative would be to develop a doctor of Philosophy programme for the creative arts.  In doing this it would serve the demands of social pressure for those who would wish to be addressed “doc” along faculty corridors.  It will also keep the artist focused in his/her discipline all the while. The demands of another masters would not be needed.  He/she would be consistent with one methodology. He/she would have moved from one phase of development to another in the same discipline.  The academic community would gain immensely by it because such attainments would be consistent with a recipient’s learning all along. But where there is no higher degree beyond the M.F.A. developed for the creative artist for now can we respect the “spirit” of tradition which is a legacy Professor Wangboje and Professor Okekeleft for the cause of art teaching in Nigeria?

As a developing nation, the value of post modernism has been that the Euro-American seemingly hegemonic hold can be discarded  for a contingent reality.  In our case a felt need for a PhD in the creative arts as a discipline in the  “making of art” then becomes a matter of a peoples will backed by a commensurate programme that defines its need beyond what the M.F.A. offers.

As a panacea, in Japan the education philosophy there favours proactive or creative thinking.  Japan has programmes for Ph.D. in Fine Arts not even the D.F.A. What Japan does with the PhD in the Fine Arts some engineering doctorial projects in Nigeria have addressed?  If the Ph.D. has become an obsession for the creative artist nothing stops Nigeria from generating a synthesis between Euro American tradition and the Asian tradition.  But until that is done can we allow creativity a free reign in the mind of those who have always captured fleeting time and moments for the rest of humanity to live with so that they can confront their past in the frozen allegories and abiding images of time?

As a postscript, what stops the body of artists  SNA from initiating moves for a National Institute  for Advanced Studies in the Creative Arts.  It is generally assumed that Africa does not have a defined art historical methodology.  But when thoughts on art historical reconstructions are considered Nigeria has always been the country to full back on because it hosts great artistic traditions after Egypt and the Sahara regions.  Can such a country afford not to have such an institute, where a healthy practice of theory and theory of practice can find grounds for synthesis?