Thinking Through Images
Jaana Erkkilä
Doctoral student, Department of Art Education, University of Art and Design, Helsinki
Abstract. Visual thinking as a method of research is in major role in my dissertation. My
research is focusing on diversity in school world. I study voices that are rising from the
margins.
My visual work connected with my research work has a methodological value. As a
visual artist and art educator I find the language of images most familiar to me. Still I see
the images that I produce in research process very different from my so called free
artist’s work. I want to focus in my presentation on the difference between artist’s art
work and visual research work based on my own experience. I see them as parallel, but
still different processes.
Sometimes a picture that has originally had its start in the process of research , becomes a
work of art. The purpose was not in making art, but rather exercising visual thinking.
Then something happens and research and art work melt together. I find it very
interesting, if one looks at it in the connection of Martin Heidegger’s essay on the
originality of art (1998). Heidegger claims that there is a happening of truth taking a
place in the work of art. Research is also looking for truth, if not the ultimate truth, truth
of the moment anyway. So, where is the difference of science and poetry, if we look at it
through Heidegger’s theory of originality in art work? American painter Agnes Martin
said in one of her lectures:”The great and fatal pitfall in the art field and in life is
dependence on the intellect rather than inspiration.” I am looking for the meeting points
of artistic intuition/inspiration and intellectual observation.
The images in my research work are not in a place of illustration. As a researcher I think
through visual narratives and they show me such things I could not see through verbal
analyses. In my dissertation there is a place for literal storytelling as well. I am studying,
how visual and literal storytelling is producing knowledge that might be difficult, perhaps
even impossible to bring out in other methods.
In my presentation I will focus on two series of images and short stories based on the
images and how all that is producing knowledge in my research work.
THINKING THROUGH IMAGES
Among many other doctoral students in the field of art education and artistic research I have
been struggling with a form that my research process could be fitted in. Somehow I found
myself wandering in the borderline between art work and something that could be called
research. The field is very open and challenging. In fact everything is accepted, if it works. And
there lies the real problem of artistic research. The problem is actually same as in the field of art
in general: there is no recipe, no instructions, how to make a successful piece of art. You can
have certain guidelines, but the result is never guaranteed. In the process of art there is always
that of unknown, which makes finally the work into a piece of art or just an image of
something. I would say that the same truth is relevant in artistic research. You can write or
visualize your thoughts and you can refer to authorities and those, who have made research
using artistic methods before, but still you are always alone with your work. You can get help
from the others, but the others cannot do the work for you.
There has been discussion about different ways of writing and the meaning of writing in a
process of artistic research ( Hämäläinen 2003, 66). Soili Hämäläinen asks, if there could be
other ways of “writing” than written words. Could research process become transparent and
explained in some other ways than in literal analysis? We are in the process of creating new
ways of writing in a context of research ( Hämäläinen 2003, 67). “Writing” might be producing
pictures, or dancing or performing or talking.
In my presentation I am exploring a form, where I let visual images and written words form a
narrative. H. Porter Abbot defines narrative as “the representation of an event or a series of
events” ( Abbot 2002, 12). Series of events in this narrative is formed of images and stories that
are part of my research process. Nevertheless, Abbot also says ( 27) that where the narratives
actually happen is in the mind. When we look at images that are in connection with some written
or told story, our mind is working in different ways than when we imagine the pictures in our
own mind. In my presentation the visual images are not in a place of illustration, but in a dialog
with words. The images are showing my visual thinking processes and the form of text is
describing the way I progress in the world of words. I hope that this presentation can contribute
to the discourse on different ways of “writing” a research.
I am going to tell you stories.
Once upon a time there was a painter called Pieter Bruegel the elder. No one knows much about
his life, but it does not really matter; it is his paintings and engravings we are interested in. All
the odd creatures are wandering through his drawings and paintings, they are dancing, laughing,
drinking and fooling around. When you look at them, you begin to feel rather respectful and
something that you could call normal. It is a nice and peaceful feeling, to feel normal, like
everybody else.
Your own madness cannot be that bad, because it is described in paintings and those paintings
are hanging in different museums all around the world. You can go and see them in Vienna,
Berlin, Detroit, New York, just everywhere. There are books about Bruegel’s paintings all over
in libraries and they are not placed among psychic disturbances, but among fine art. Your life is
represented as part of the history of art.
One of these days I was thinking about all the people I knew and it hit me that I was mostly
associating with those ones that could be called as outsiders, outcasts, handicapped in one or
another way. So, if they were my friends, I must be one of them myself. How did I get to know
all these people?
Suddenly I understood that they were the ones I had known all my life, right from the beginning
of my childhood, from all the stories that my dad used to read for me and later on they inhabited
the books I was reading myself. They filled the pages in the books and my imagination that was
dwelling inside of my very being. And something that could be called fiction was a real world to
me. But after all, what is fiction and what is reality? Aren’t they one, just two different ways of
representing the entity of life?
I became so happy, so relieved, when I read (Varto 2007) that a real scholar, Mircea Eliade, had
been mixing fiction and fact. Actually he said, that they are just different parts of creative
writing, different ways of telling things. He has mixed everything, research, fiction, storytelling,
diary writing, anything that you can imagine. And he says that it is research. He gives me a
permission to call my visual work research, even if it would be also art. I don’t have to be
academic in a way that so many scholars are: writing and writing and making quotations and
referring and showing how endlessly knowledgeable, and too often also boring, they are. I can
do research in visual world and use the words in my own way. Or can I?
I am researching diversity, voices in the margins, among other things, and what would be a
better way to do it than through art? Marcel Proust has said that art is a mean to show, how
different we are, art reveals the differences in how we see and understand the world; without art
all that diversity would stay invisible and unknown ( Proust 2007, 248).
In 1556 Pieter Bruegel the Elder made an ink drawing and soon after the drawing was engraved
and published by Hieronymus Cock. The picture tells a story about school and when you look at
it, you wonder why there is so much talk about good old days with tranquil and peaceful
students in past and so many lunatics in our days. There is a Latin proverb under the picture and
it says that if you send a stupid ass to Paris, he won’t return as a horse. What should you think
about that? Does it mean that there is no point in trying to educate stupid children? Or if you
look at the image, is the donkey the only one who tries to study?
When I was teaching at secondary school, I put a reproduction of this image on the door of my
classroom. I thought that it was kind of funny, because there used to be such a lot of discussions
about restless pupils and learning difficulties and some teachers were really on the edge of
nervous breakdown. So, I just wanted to make a note that it might not have been all that easy in
former times either. Actually I thought that today we have it much easier.
I mean that at least most of the pupils do try to learn something. They are not little monsters,
who do their best to destroy the mental health of the teachers. Are they? They are quite sweet
young human beings with different backgrounds and personal qualities. But there is not much
talk about the good sides of the children of our time. The teachers are mostly interested in
discipline and control. It is forbidden to beat pupils nowadays, but I can bet that there are many
adults, who would be more than happy to give a few slaps to children. But I tell you, children
really want to learn, if we adults don’t make it too boring for them.
So, I fancied the images of Bruegel and thought that it would be interesting to see, what the
pupils think about his works. I had read about the usefulness of using images, I mean works of
art, as a mean of constructing self and understanding both art and life through the pieces of art (
Räsänen, 1997). I thought that I might as well try to understand ways how my pupils are seeing
the world. That would mean a lot of work. First the pupils should make some interpretations on
work of art and then I should make some interpretations of their works and then I would
understand both my pupils and myself, if the theory of experiental art understanding: a work of
art as a means of understanding and constructing self ( Räsänen, 1997), is true. I made really
many photocopies of Bruegel’s paintings and engravings. There were such as Children’s games,
Everyman, Carnival of Lent, Mad Meg, Poor Kitchen and Rich Kitchen among others. And of
course The Ass in the School.
I asked the pupils to make an interpretation of this particular image. I asked them to choose one
theme of the picture that was most interesting to them. There were many rather boring
interpretations and I thought that what a lousy teacher I am, because I cannot make them to
make better pictures. Because, that is the way , how it works in the school world: a good art
teacher makes the pupils make good pictures and everybody is happy, even the parents.
This is what my students made. They were constructing themselves and getting better
understanding of life and art. They understood that violence and destruction is not dwelling just
in the world of videogames and action movies; it can be art history and real life as well. And I
thought that this picture of school world is not very sweet. If the teachers are getting headache
because of their pupils, what kind of agony are the pupils experiencing?
As a researcher I am facing a serious question. If art education has a meaning in constructing
self and getting better understanding about life in general; if I take seriously a paradigm that
claims that making art by pupils gives them better tools for thinking and making independent
conclusions about nearly everything in life, how does teaching art influence on me as an artist
and a human being? If I am occupied by art education 23 hours a week, year after year, should it
not have some influence on me too?
Interaction is the word of education today. We should have interaction, teaching should be
interactive. Martin Buber ( 1999) expresses it so wonderfully in his book You and Me; we
should face each other equally, not acting like there was me and it or them, but as there were just
you and me. Strange, how often teachers are talking about pupils as “ hard material, challenging
substance”. I wonder, if the teachers do understand that pupils are real people, not just part of a
narrative. Pupils do not just “happen”, they are living creatures.
A Story about a Donkey in the School
A donkey wanted to learn to read. He bought a pair of obstacles, because he had seen that the
scholars wore such things. He was wandering around a village and finally saw a house that could
be a school. He put his head through a window and looked inside. Oh my God, thought the
donkey. This is how they learn to read! He saw two men sitting inside the room and both of
them had a young boy between his legs. A third child was sitting on the floor without pants and
his face was full of passive sorrow. He had a book in his hand, but he did not seem to have any
great interest in the book. The men, who must be the schoolmasters, or at least one of them, but
which one, were holding the boys gently and smiling quietly while the boys were studying
something that was hidden between the legs of the schoolmasters. Could there possibly be letters
or something else that could help them to learn how to read?
The donkey felt somewhat uneasy and decided to look into another window.
The methods that were used for learning to read in the other room were even more peculiar and
still as surprising as in the first room. What on earth do they teach in this school, thought the
donkey. There were two boys reading books, one of them even asking something from the other
reader, who however was concentrating on his own reading and not paying any attention on
things going on in the classroom. And what kind of things! The schoolmaster of this room was
pushing a thick piece of wood into, dare I say what, into a pupil’s asshole. And another pupil
was serving his bottom for the same kind of treatment. How did this help them to learn reading
and other things?
And the donkey thought that if he only could read, he would know what was written on a board
on the classroom wall.
Night was falling and the poor donkey had not yet learnt a single letter. It was turning wild in the
school. There were crawling creatures on the floor. Small ladders had appeared out of nothing
and there were children trying to climb up the ladders and an adult looking monster was lying on
the floor and trying to swallow those children. The donkey got very much afraid and he decided
that school is not for him. He can do without reading, if learning demands so much pain. And
the donkey left his obstacles behind and returned where he had come from.
Looking for truth, waiting for an answear
Martin Heidegger (1998)says in his essay On the originality of work of art that there is a
happening of truth in a work of art. At first sight/ hearing it sounds very abstract and I must
admit that even if I thought that it sounded great and true, I did not quite understand, what it
actually meant.
I have found for my part that looking for truth, which I think is a process of research, is done
most successfully through visual and literal narratives. I keep writing stories and most of that
writing is worth of nothing as such. And I keep drawing, making prints, cutting blocks of wood
and linoleum and throwing away most of that as well, but sometimes, in rare and preciscous
moments I can see that these stories show me something I didn’t know to look for or could not
imagine that things like that could exist. And that is a moment of truth settling down in a work
of art. I know for sure that I could not have found these things through rational reasoning,
through theories and scholarly readings. I do not say that someone else cannot reach “ happening
of truth” through pure intellectual reasoning. But I do want to emphasize that there are other
ways as well and that using methods of art we can get surprised by something quite unexpected.
For example when I have been making visual interpretations on my pupils works and on the
other hand writing stories, there has been two main things that have been repeated all the way:
discipline and interaction, meeting one another. One thing that I learnt is: the main subject
taught in school is discipline. It is not mathematics or history or art, but it is discipline and how
to be in control and to be controlled by someone else. If you want to learn to read, as our
donkey, you might have to look for that learning from somewhere else. And if you want to learn,
how to meet other human beings, it is not easy to learn that either in school. It has been studied
long ago that children learn through example and role models. When there are problems in
somebody’s behavior, we teachers turn our look at parents(or even television) and say that they
have been bad models for their children. But we rarely think seriously, what kind of models we
are ourselves. Do we really treat our collegues and students in a manner that we appreciate and
regard as a good way for creating a positive atmosphere for learning new and probably rather
complicated things? Or do we act in a way that a little donkey, who looks into our classroom is
all puzzled and feels only pain and decides to go away? And donkeys are not stupid, nor lazy.
They are very strong and able to carry more than most of us. And I would say that it is a credit
for a donkey not to turn into a horse. The school world does not appreciate diversity and donkey
is definitely something else than a horse and a horse is different from a donkey and could not
cope in such circumstances than donkeys are doing all right.
All the way through my doctoral studies I have been troubled by the concept of discipline. I have
been thinking back and forth, what do we mean, when we talk about discipline. There are
hundreds of proverbs about discipline.
The most common way of interpreting discipline is to create timetables, rules, commands, to
build structures and make roads to final goals. Somehow the word discipline includes a word
control. We think that when there is discipline, there must be someone to see, if demands are
fulfilled and the discipline followed. An American painter Agnes Martin has written about
discipline in the most beautiful way. She has said: To go on without resistance or prejudices is to
have discipline. To go on, when all hopes and desires are left behind, is to have discipline. To go
on without any speculation connected to oneself, non personally, is to have self discipline (
Martin 1990, 15).
And finally. “ Since we are not in control we need not worry about life, nor much about our own
lives but wait in readiness.” (Martin 1999, 74)
Bibliography
Abbot, H.Porter (2002) The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge University Press
Buber, Martin (1999) Minä ja sinä. Juva:WSOY
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