The Language of Art
Posted by ben on 27 May 2007 at 06:14 pm | Tagged as: responses/reviews
I’ve been having an ongoing conversation with several friends involved to various degrees in the art world about the verbalization of art. I think I first became really aware of this phenomenon when I started going to Artpace openings. They require artists-in-residence to publicly discuss their work both at the beginning and at the end of the residency. In addition, the curator writes a few paragraphs about each resident’s installation which is posted on the web site and provided in pamphlet form by the entrance to each gallery. The effect of this prominent placement of explanatory remarks on the work is, in some cases, to create a fractured experience of art.
It’s a complicated problem, and probably one that I will be returning to, but I’d like to make a few comments on the effect of this tendency to wrap visual art in language. A lot of art critics have expressed distaste for “wall text” in museums and galleries. Two that I can think of off the top of my head are Dave Hickey and Tyler Green. I feel that the need to clothe visual expression in language distracts from the nature of the work — and forcing artists to write statements and discuss their work publicly has the perverse effect of rewarding artists for their verbal skills, when of course, the reason they became artists is usually because their ability to express themselves visually is stronger than their ability to express themselves verbally.
Historically, at least in America, the tendency to depend on verbal explanations of artwork seems to come with the rise of the Modernists. As noted in the Tyler Green post linked above, Alfred Barr pioneered the idea of using wall text at MoMA. Around the same time, it was Clement Greenberg, through his critical writing, who really shaped public perception of the work of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and others. Not coincidentally, this the same time that visual art began to move more explicitly into the philosophical realm, a trend which became more and more prevalent up into the 1970s.
Last night I was discussing some of this with Kate Green, Artpace’s outgoing curator, and she pointed out that there really aren’t any art critics these days that have anywhere near the authority of Greenberg or Rosalind Krauss. In other words, the critics now seem to follow the trends determined by a robust art marketplace rather than creating those trends. The most recent major art critic to shape public perception of art we could think of was Dave Hickey, who I realized later, played an important role in marginalizing the critic. Hickey, along with Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe and others, have advocated for a more aestheticized visual art, and pushed for a move away from the academic, conceptual art of the recent past. I think we are finally seeing the fruits of their labor; although in many settings (including Artpace) art is still packaged to some extent in linguistic trappings, this is beginning to seem more and more anachronistic.
I think that these comments are, in general, correct. There are several related factors that are not mentioned. To begin with, the aesthetics has always been the subject of philosophical speculation. Aristotle and Kant devoted entire books to the subject, filled with ideas the Clement Greenberg used in developing is own works: Avant Garde and Kitsch or Homemade Esthetics.
Similarly, the Art Critic for the Nation is Arthur C. Danto, a professor of philosophy by profession. We can not ignore the reviews written by novelist John Updike either. Even the “explanations” of art by Sister Wendy wrap the experience in language and attempt to explain the art to an un-sophisticated public, in much the same way that the overly verbose museum wall citations do.
Perhaps the epitome of this verbalization of aesthetic experience is to be found in the short lived journal MEANING, now anthologized in a book by the same name edited by Susan Bee and Mira Schor. When considered as different aspects of a human search for meaning, then there is no fundamental difference between art and words, just a translation to a different language. This is a denial of the very idea of an aesthetic sense.
I have been, at times, as disdainful as one could be towards wall texts. At other times, I don’t care so much, it’s not an issue. And, sometimes, I am grateful for wall text. Especially if I’m wondering if a particular material is wood, or polyurethane foam, carved to look like wood. Y’know, the text has utility.
I used to despise audiotours as much as one could despise audiotours.
But now, I am a full-on audiotour advocate. (Though I almost never use them.)
In this podcast age, there’s no excuse for an exhibition not to have several dozen different audiotours. Downloadable to the iPod you already carry in with you, even. One podacst tour from the curator, one from the artist, one from some other artist, one from a Creationist, one from an Evolutionist, etc etc. So, instead of presenting the official dogma of an exhibition, an audiotour can provide varying perspective. Like DVD voice-over options, an exhibition can be given new life with each commentary, and give the scholars plenty to study and anybody interesting reason for return visits.
Or, as a visitor desirous of the “pure” experience, you can choose to go without.
Wes-
Thanks for your comments. I’m looking forward to checking in with MEANING. This is a topic that could fill several books (and surely has).
You’re right to point out that philosophers have long been fascinated by aesthetics, but it seems to me that artists have rarely been so interested in philosophy as they have been in the last century.
You point out that “there is no fundamental difference between art and words, just a translation to a different language.” This is true in many senses, but it is also true that when artists create works of art, they are (with some exceptions) generally focused on expression through a visual or physical media that is not verbal. The statements, explanations, and other verbalizations (including titles, in some cases) are often tacked on later and tend to dilute the original intent. This is merely out of a sense of obligation, and one that I think artists need not have. (I notice on your web site that you don’t title your pieces, so I assume you understand what I’m getting at here.)
Now the exceptions to this are just as important. Japanese ceramicists have a tradition of naming their tea bowls to the point where the title becomes a meaningful, poetic part of the bowl. And then of course there are artists like Lawrence Weiner who take language into the gallery setting, and Fluxus composers with textual scores.
All of these examples are brilliant (IMHO) combinations of different media. But in these examples, the artists found that they wanted to express something that required using language in a way that is central to the work, rather than as a pedestal or a frame for the work.
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