#text.art

“...the extent to which language enfolds the visual or, alternatively, the threatens constantly to overwhelm language: 

Re: the images within the cryptics:

"The image [...] essentially provides an ambiguous and therefore vague framework of associations. [...It] defines an object in its visual manifestation without ambiguity but cannot make reliable statements about the possible meanings or implications of that object. [...] If we distinguish — as Michael Titzmann does — between meaning and information, identifying the former [i.e. meaning] with 'linguistic articulability,' then pictures have no 'meaning'. While the image is characterised by the concreteness and completeness of all visual elements, every 'world' depicted via text remains abstract and incomplete." (10 ¶1)

Re: difference between the semiotic systems of image and text

Michael Titzmann (in ‘Theoretisch-methodologische Probleme einer Semiotik der Text-Bild-Relation’ in Wolfgang Harms (ed.) Text und Bold, Bold und Text, DFG-Symposium 1988, 371) states that a basic difference between the semiotic systems of image and text, is that the base unit within an image — i.e. the “simplest element capable of bearing meaning” — possesses a lower capacity to influence or direct a viewer in comparison to that within a text. Grammar imposes specific meanings (or purposes) on each word which function in relationship to other words, whereas, within an image every perceptible element can potentially serve as a “differentiator or bearer of meaning”. Hapkemeyer states then that, “The expression of unambiguous substantive meaning, therefore, cannot be accomplished without the word. (10 ¶3)

(This doesn’t holds true for creative writing or fine art imagery, though… does it? Within poetry, for instance, each word might have a grammatic and symbolic purpose; similarly, the composition of an image give clues to how an image should be interpreted?)

Re: Influence of text on image and image on text

The use of image and text within a single work allows its operation operate on two levels: the image is “semanticised” by the text through which an unequivocal meaning is gained; and the text is “referentialised” (10 ¶5).

The work is, however, split in two parts: one which is viewed and another with is read. (Hapkemeyer describes this as a “disadvantage”.) (10-11 ¶5). Their relationship may be complementary or antagonistic (bringing to mind Sontag’s comment that “All photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions”), or might “inject a level of meaning not foreseen in the image” (10-11 ¶5).

But: “textual semantics dominate over the semantics of the image and assume the function of structuring meaning: interpretation, focusing, and establishment of hierarchies with respect to the image are all dependant upon the meaning supplied by the text.” (11 ¶1).

Re: Lessing

Centre Georges Pompidou

On Kawara, Today Series [1]

saw some others of these in Hamburger Bahnhof, I think, though they were displayed without the boxes // less striking display in the Pompidou but they're with full context here (i.e. the box)

box contains a cutting from the day's newspaper ( in this instance, the New York Times) with the date and page number visible // the content seems to have been selected arbitrarily > that is, it's not the front page, nor is there any obvious narrative present through the successive days 

the paintings themselves are all uniform, except for the changing date > they immediately historicise the present // THIS HAS COME UP SOMEWHERE ELSE ON THIS TRIP > APT, collecting work as historicising the present 

the series is dated (i.e. old and old hat) but I think it gives me permission to pursue the crossword paintings as a form of history painting through inclusion of the image (or images... projections?)

Collection

Marcel Broodthaers, Le corbeau et le renard [“the fox and the crow”] > non-QWERTY keyboard > or has it just been rearranged? The A swapped with the Q, the Z with the W? The 1 and 0 keys also seem to be missing? // Salle blanche [“white room”] > brought to mind Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s plague of amnesia

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965 :D

Miklós Erdély, Theses on The Theory of Repetition, 1972-3 > "explores the concepts of repetition and resemblance, and questions notions of the original” // from the theses:

13. Since man can stand neither the catalepsy of total identification nor the dizziness of continuous change and diversity, he regards the sphere of resemblances and analogies, rhythmical changes and dialectical periods as his own. He looks for the same in the different, and the different in the identical. The man of intellect, however, can only recognize himself in total change.

Art & Language, Map of a thirty-six square mile surface area of the Pacific Ocean west of Oahu, 1967 

Rémy Zaugg, Sans titre, 1988 [2] > carefully printed black type over a lascivious (haha) white paint > it works?

Paul Klee, Pfeil im Garten, 1929 [3] > Russell Craig says Klee’s blurry lines are monoprinted

Mondrian’s edges are really imprecise, nearly sloppy

It’s hard to take photos of Barnett Newman’s work

Picabia, L’oeil cacodylate, 1921 > was this in one of Polke’s prints? // hmm, Man Ray photographed it, but I’m not sure this is what I remember

Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 (1964)  

★ Gil Joseph Wolman, l’horreur de l’horreur, Saigon, c. 1958 [4] > tape transferred to canvas // HHHHHH Un homme saoul en vaut deux, 1952 [5]

★ Jean-Louis Brau, The Ghoo that Jack Built, 1963 [6]

Lettrism — Isidore Isou intended leftism a “total project simultaneously theoretical and practical, aesthetic and political" > influenced Guy Debord, François Dufrêne, Brau and Wolman // my research at the start of the year was on-point

Futura and Rot concrete poetry journals // Hansjörg Mayer and Max Bense > Bense was a "philosopher and mathematician influenced by C S Pierce's semiótica and was interested in the implications of cybernetics for art" > cf. dude in Venice

Jasper Johns, Figure 5, 1960

★ Cornel Brudascu, Portrait d’une génération, 1970 [7-8] > technique for cryptics

Andy Warhol, Advertisement, 1990

Mel Bochner, Voices, Peter Freeman, Inc.

Is Truth Zilch?: Mel Bochner’s Show at Peter Freeman Thrives on Misinterpretation

In a 2006 interview with the Brooklyn Rail   ’s Phong Bui, Bochner offered a glimpse into his relationship with language. Commenting on how people read his paintings, he said that “a work of art lives by being continuously misinterpreted.” So how then could one interpret, or misinterpret, Bochner’s paintings?

We know that language is not to be trusted. Perhaps this is the paradoxical “truth” to these paintings. Simply put, truth—in words, paintings, and by extension, their interpretations—is simply a construct.

Mel Bochner with Phong Bui

Notes

>> on a gallery wall, it takes you outside that space > could be called ‘the visible universe’ > allusion to sight is important // gradations could be on the side > don't need to be labeled, given the specificity of the text and the fixing of the canvas to the wall / gradations could actually be on the front  as a series of straight lines // would handwritten text detract from the exactitude of the statement? the geometry of the lines could offset this, possibly // maybe it could be two canvases > black and a white one? whatever, the colour is important // typographic text with bruised surrounds radiating out to a flat colour > text as the centre of the universe, its big bang 

Lawrence Weiner, Statements

One standard dye marker thrown into the sea

One aerosol can of enamel sprayed to conclusion directly upon the floor”

A 2" wide 1" deep trench cut across a standard one car driveway

One quart exterior green industrial enamel thrown on a brick wall

Ambiguity within these "as to whether one was nominating as art what was referred to by the text, or offering the text itself as some sort of art in itself" (25)

Universe paintings