Une conférence donné par Jacques Cohen

« In the academic field of the visual arts, the author of a doctoral thesis must at once create and carry out scholarly research. This dualism has led me to apprehend my teaching of visual arts and my writing on (and of) this practice as both, and intrinsically, artistic and visual. Such an ‘expanded’ concept (see Beuys) has led me, in a perhaps ‘postmodern’ fashion, to alter the more traditional meanings of the doctoral thesis, of teaching and of the visual arts as such. In other words, I have sought to let my teaching (oral practice) and research (written practice) be guided by the notion of "other" (---). Hence the strange choice of title « Art and Other: Teachings »… In this way, my rather heterodox study, set out in 7 sections and 7 volumes (2700 p.), successively relays and narrates each of the 26 weekly sessions which took place over the course of 1991-1992, in a seminar titled « Visual Arts: Otherness and Teachings ». A text, most often in dialogue form (80 to 100 p.) attempts to stage the three contributions carried out by each of the 19 students enrolled and participating in the potential artwork of their potential « teacher-artist ». »

This was the summary of the Jacque Cohen’s doctoral research titled Art et autre: enseignements, defended in 1994 under the direction of Pierre Baqué at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Photos : DR