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| Art. Language. Full Stop Jānis Taurens, Philosopher | |
| Supplementing letters and words with drawings, so that children can learn to read more easily, is the usual way that alphabet books are designed. Figures or sentences painted on a canvas, photo enlargements of definitions printed in a book on a gallery wall, or even whole blocks of text, sometimes combined with documentary photographs, was a challenge to the 1960s art world, but even this, acquiring the label “conceptual art”, became a kind of art ABC. Interest about language in art has remained – as confirmed in a number of this year’s exhibitions taking place in Riga, where both a direct reference to the image and text as well as a less direct transformation of conceptualist strategies has been used. Contemplating what I’ve seen at the exhibitions and comparing it with the linguistic turning point in art which took place almost fifty years ago, what I really want to do is to give some recapitulatory and concise generalization, which could finish off with the words: “Art. Language. Full Stop.” However, such a generalization is not based on art phenomena of themselves, but rather on our preconceptions about them, as what we understand by the term “art” is a variable. It is similar with language – as soon as we abstract ourselves from the position of being its user and attempt to turn theoretical reflection towards it – nothing is self-evident anymore. Language as a system can be isolated from speech and specific utterances, along with semantics and syntax the way linguistic expression is used, therefore the pragmatics, is also significant, and one could go on like this. A description of these separate categories could turn into a boring introduction into the philosophy of language, but – as a reassurance to the reader who looks upon any kind of theory with suspicion – there is also another way of arriving at a broader view of the relationship between art and language. Namely, bearing in mind the warnings reiterated to philosophers a number of times about an overly one-sided diet(1), let us turn to various aspects of the use of language in specific works of art which have appeared on the Riga art stage. Exactly what we understand by the term “language”, its vagueness, the inability of theory to strictly define all the important aspects for the understanding of a linguistic expression, opens up a wide area for the most diverse interpretations of certain kinds of art, and for the classification of the works themselves. Furthermore, such a viewpoint on language isn’t foreign to art – this is confirmed by the response of the publishers of Art-Language to Catherine Millet’s question of whether language is a characteristic medium of art. I’d like to cite this Art-Language response from 1971 in full: “Language – supposing that we agree on what we mean by it – was, at first sight, a less ambiguous medium than the plastic method. Ambiguity has been seen at times as a necessary aspect of art. On the contrary, recent works have intended to put things in order with as much clarity as possible, and paradoxically we have become aware of the ambiguity that can inhabit language. For us, language is a medium for conserving our work in a context of investigation and interrogation. Probably, it is a specific medium of art, but above all, it would have to define a little better what is and what is not art.”(2) Linguistic vagueness or ambiguity will serve as my guideline in an analysis of various works where language is used. I’ll start with the Text is Image exhibition.(3) In reality, text is an image only if what’s stated in the text holds us hostage, fascinates us and doesn’t allow us to escape from the enchantment created by the text’s meaning. In this sense, none of the texts used in the works at an exhibition is an image. The text of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ could create enchantment – for isn’t the anger of Achilles expressed in poetic form (Hegel) a striking enough image? However, Juris Boiko in his digital printouts shows us an increasingly illegible Ancient Greek text, the meaning of which can only be understood by a few nowadays (classical philology is not an important branch of the “consciousness industry”). There is ambiguity in the title of the work as well – Fragments of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ as Read by a Hungover Cretin – because the capacity to even read the text correctly (that is, in accordance with contemporary conceptions about the pronunciation of the Ancient Greek language), partly removes the negative purport inherent in the designation “hungover cretin”. In Boiko’s work there’s a number of pages of text, which however still remains unintelligible, whereas the other extreme is represented by individual words or other symbols, white pages or hilly relief models carved out of books, in which not only nothing can be read, but even the book form can only just be surmised. Language theory since Freges has insisted that a word only has meaning in the context of a sentence. If there isn’t a context, then we think one up, or it is dictated to us by the customary forms of life. What do these words and symbols really mean: Esc, Home, Pause, Break, End, (reading vertically) or Ctrl, Home, Alt (reading horizontally)? Nevertheless every user of a computer (an inescapable form of life, which I too am using right now,) will recognize them, and the fact that in Ēriks Božis’ work Spied! Spied! Spied! (‘Press! Press! Press!’) (2003) they are written on real computer keyboard keys is an almost too direct reference to this.(4) The word “BEIGAS” [meaning “the end” in Latvian], which gets cut into the skin with a knife, as we see in a close up in Krišs Salmanis’ video work (‘The End’, 2002), makes us think of The End which we see on the screen at the end of a session at the cinema, and together with the blood which forces its way out onto the skin, and the thanks expressed to Gina Pane in the video work’s credits, invites us to read this as an ironic judgement about the conclusion of a particular period in the history of performance and body art. The author’s explanation on a little piece of paper on the wall with the words “ironic résumé of body art” is superfluous – one could generalize that in an exhibition where language is used in works of art, such a secondary use of it as an explanatory text is just as unnecessary as a photograph of a painting next to the painting itself.(5) The visual form of the works in the cases described has only merely filled in the place designated by one or another category of language philosophy (for example, “life form” and “context”). Not a concrete visual form characterised by size, colour and so on, but the semantic space formed by categories is what gives meaning to the work (just the text or its elements alone is not sufficient). But how many and how heterogeneous are the possibilities opened up by such a semantic space?(6) Let’s take a look at another exhibition with the title Language, which unites three artists, winners of the German Ars Viva contemporary art prize.(7) Here, too, without describing all of the works, one can determine the boundaries for the use of language, when the principle of inaccessibility of meaning gets used. This kind of inaccessibility itself has significance, if we are aware of it – for example, a text which we hear is in some exotic or dead and consequently incomprehensible (Ainu or Miao) language, but at least we know that it’s a description of the image, even though the image itself (a photograph) may be painted over with black paint. Of course, in the end we find a description of the same photograph in the English language and we understand that the image is nothing special, that the important thing is the activity of definite incomprehension or comprehension itself (Juergen Staack’s works from the series Transcription. Image, since 2008). Even more inaccessible is Darwin’s ‘Notes about Research on the Voyage of the Ship Beagle’ which Philipp Goldbach has transcribed in pencil, word by word, in letters approximately a millimetre high (from the series Micrographs drawings, 2006–2009). None of us will ever read Darwin’s book reproduced in this way, and one could try to assert that the large piece of paper behind glass is purely decorative, yet the significance of this art work is also formed by the fact that we realize that the author has read this text and understood it. Comprehension could be doubted, however, in other works in this series, where, for example, ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ or ‘The Phenomenology of Spirit’ have been transcribed.(8) In this case the comprehension is similar to that which we gain from large scale photographs of blackboards at German universities – on the blackboards we can still see the traces of chalk, evidence of erased text, and the only sense we can assign to these, in principle unfathomable texts, is the aura surrounding the concrete names of the universities involved (Goldbach’s Blackboards, 2003 and 2009–2011). The university towns could call to mind certain thinkers (Frankfurt – Adorno and Horkheimer, Freiburg – Heidegger) and the atmosphere associated with these names. In this case, though, atmosphere isn’t some mystical medium of language meaning, it is nothing more than the experience of reading certain texts(9), but let’s not harbour any illusions (I don’t think Goldbach does either) – for a contemporary art exhibition visitor Kant’s or Adorno’s philosophy is just as foreign as Ancient Greek. | |
 Daiga Krūze, Krišs Salmanis. How to become an Artist?. Book with 100 blank pages. Rīga: Ūdens, 2004 | |
| Would this then mean that we can compare, for example, Juris Boiko’s digital print pages with a few pages from Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and Philipp Goldbach’s handwritten texts or the blank pages of Daiga Krūze’s and Krišs Salmanis’ book ‘How to Become an Artist?’ (in the Text is Image exhibition), and Goldbach’s blackboards with their erased text? Let’s return to what Art-Language tells us about the ambiguity of language – if such ambiguity is inherent to understanding, without which the meaning of linguistic expression cannot be imagined, then ambiguity is also inherent to incomprehension, the loss of sense, an erased or unwritten text. That’s why the capture of this ambiguity is so important (whether it’s with the assistance of a hundred blank pages or a few square metre sized photo prints), because the use of language or, to use Wittgenstein’s term, the diversity of language-games is irreducible. (And consequently – the multiplicity of the cases where the language is not understood and the point has been missed too.) Wittgenstein emphasizes this in the 23rd paragraph of ‘Philosophical Investigations’, addressing the reader: “Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others!” – and writes the most diverse language-games in a column: “Giving orders, and acting on them – Describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements – Constructing an object from a description (a drawing) – Reporting an event – Speculating about the event – Forming and testing a hypothesis – Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams – Making up a story; and reading one – Acting in a play – Singing rounds – Guessing riddles – Cracking a joke; telling one – Solving a problem in applied arithmetic – Translating from one language into another – Requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.”(10) Let’s observe here that “constructing an object from a description (a drawing)” could also be done in silence, thus as if without involving words, and why not fabricate an art work in this way, for example, Donald Judd’s boxes. And still – Wittgenstein calls it language (language-game)! Therefore, to discuss conceptually tended art – as in the 1960s or as now – we cannot formally select the usage of linguistic expressions (a word, sentence or text) in art as a criterion(11), because the conceptual content, which undoubtedly is linguistic, can also express itself non-linguistically. In the middle of this review of exhibitions I’d hoped for a small interlude, mentioning a number of small exhibitions or installations in which language operates in this “object production” regime, but now, in place of an interlude, I shall have to compose a postlude in two parts, which should lead to the “full-stop” invoked at the beginning of the article. First of all, Invitation à l’Étude by Nick Mauss(12) – it’s the second part of the installation or display that is specifically interesting, and is located in the gallery’s auxiliary room, where the most diverse items, 18 in total, are found on a table. These include Mauss’ drawings and historic photographs as well as books. Here I’ll focus only on the “formal” conditions of perception of one element of the installation, abstracting from the message of the work, namely, questioning how the text operates (the book at an exhibition such as this). Initially we perceive it as one thing among others, like a book in a home or more likely in a museum – from three books, two have been published in the early part of the previous century, in addition they have both been opened at a particular page. This encourages us to flick through the book as we would at a friend’s house. In my hands I have the list of works, where Charles Henri Ford has been named as the book’s author, but in the opened book I notice a Raymond Roussel story. Leafing through the book, I find out that Charles Henri Ford is only the publisher and that in the collection of stories by various authors there’s even a story by Henry Miller... Everything described – a certain visual impression, the semantic perception of people’s names and sentences, certain of my activities – are moments (the list isn’t necessarily exhaustive) which can be important, if language is used in the art work or if it is constructed – “I am on the very verge of what we likened to the greatest wave of paradox”(13) – using the space of possibilities for moments important to understanding, which pragmatics-oriented semantics allows us to construct. Niks Mauss himself uses the concept l’ensemblier to describe his approach, a term which in early 20th century France denoted a hybrid profession – “not really an interior designer, nor an architect” – and which can just as easily be used to describe an artist who is also language oriented, who works not really with language, not really with material objects, including images. Similarly the l’ensemblier concept (“one who puts together”) can be almost literally applied to Laura Prikule’s and Eva Vēvere’s joint work Zikurāts (‘Ziggurat’).(14) Even though here, too, texts have been used – stickers with the names of art institutions, books, and notebooks where visitors to the exhibition can describe their institutions – their role in the visual perception, in comparison with the objects used in the installation, is tiny. In this work of art, the linguistic moment emerges as the critical potential of language. Namely, certain installation objects are understandable in the context of institutional critique, but the working principle of art – even though it may be 90 per cent material – is linguistic. Language in this sense is like – if we return to the Art-Language conclusion cited at the beginning of the article – “the researching and questioning context”, which likens the perception of a work to the understanding of it, as opposed to purely visual enjoyment or the traditional notion of aesthetic pleasure. Here a visitor to the exhibition could ask: if the influence of language on art is expressed not only in the pure or linguistic conceptualism which began in the 1960s, but also – without delving into nuances and simplification – material installations (which could also include elements of performance and interaction), doesn’t that provide evidence of the disappearance of art quality criteria? Finally – that’s how he might continue – for a conceptual or linguistic understanding, Ivars Drulle’s torn off covers from crime novels in the Russian language (Obozhonniye zonoi, 2012) are just as good as Leonards Laganovskis’ perfectly printed W. Shakespeare’s telephone book.(15) How should one respond? Art and moral purists would call the examples examined as decadent degeneration or postmodernly ironic permissiveness – anything can be put together with anything else like in Marģers Zariņš’ book ‘Mock Faust or a Corrected and Expanded Cookbook’ (which, by the way, came out in 1973), but the qualities specific to art are lost. But quality is not some timeless concept: it is directly connected with a definite understanding of art. Consequently, an objection is something like a tautology: art which doesn’t correspond to the criteria of good art, is not good art. A critical opinion, however, could be projected from completely different positions as well. That would affirm that language in art belongs to the past and is only suitable for yet another Latvian art classification, which could be comparable to, for example, “non-conformism”, “unofficial art” and other terms discussed by Mark Svede.(16) So that I can put a full stop at the end of this article and not a question mark, I’d like to turn once more to the one-sided diet mentioned at the start (a gastronomic theme being the bass line for this article). Adorno reproached Kant’s and Hegel’s aesthetics for this kind of diet or inadequate knowledge of art, but the argument is important as to why such grand theories were possible, if at the same time their authors weren’t even particularly well-informed about art processes. The reason is simple: as maintained by Adorno, art at that time was oriented towards holistic norms, which individual art works didn’t challenge. The denial of holistic norms, their questioning and investigation, corresponded to the thinking strategy established by conceptualism, and the question is, does this strategy, which in a variety of ways also used language, continue to be current? If language is a medium of art, which determines a definitive form of it, then similarly as Adorno speaks about opera’s internal crisis of form, we can say the same about textual art works. Alban Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’ (1925) marked an unreachable moment, as well as the highest point of reconciliation between complete adherence to the text and the “freedom to the final note” of the musical structure which isn’t possible to repeat, whereas by naively continuing to create operas, composers already condemned themselves to inferiority. We could likewise assert this about art – today the simple replacement of a picture with letters, even if it gains the public’s appreciation, will be an “internally trivial, ephemeral” activity.(17) Yet language, as I wanted to show, shouldn’t be simplistically regarded as some new art medium (right from the very beginning Josef Kosuth, as well as the Art & Language group, objected to this kind of reading). It should be viewed as a way of widening the space for the conditions of understanding art, independently of the means of expression used. The function and understanding (these would be two sides of the one coin) space of language is spacious enough, and art with all its means of expression, including language itself, has appropriated it only in very small measure. Such a view – if I may jest here – makes one evaluate any abstract field of colour from the viewpoint of a citation, an ironic reference, appropriation or painted over image/text, however the time when one could obtain abstract art from any work simply by turning off the gallery’s electricity, as was recommended by Borges and Adolfo Bjoy Casares, has passed.(18) Here it may be appropriate to remark that the borders between literature and art are sometimes very fragile – all it takes is to change the rules of the game (similarly as, by pushing a chessboard to the side of the table, making one side of it hang over the edge and announcing that this is the new playing field, you can gain an unexpected solution to an insoluble chess problem), and a little story by Borges and Casares will become a curatorial idea or conceptual work of art. I’ve always wanted to tear out pages from one of Borges’ volumes, pin them to a gallery wall and announce that this is my work of art. My respect for fine literature has stopped me from doing this, and now I see that Ivars Drulle, with his torn off crime novel covers, has beaten me to it. As Daniil Kharms would write: “That’s all.” Full stop. /Translator into English: Uldis Brūns/ 1 “A main cause of philosophical diseases – a one-sided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example.” (Wittgensein, L. Philosophical Investigations, 593. §.) “Hegel and Kant were the last, who, speaking without beating about the bush, were able to create major aesthetics without understanding anything about art.” (Adorno, T. Aesthetic Theory [Early introduction: the outdated in aesthetic theory].) 2 Millet, Catherine. Interview with Art-Language // Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology / Ed. by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson. The MIT Press, 1999, pp. 263–264. The Art-Language magazine is connected with the Art & Language conceptual art group, with its changing membership. Its first edition came out in 1969 with the subtitle “The Journal of Conceptual Art”. 3 kim? Contemporary Art Centre, 09.02–18.03.2012. Curators Inga Brūvere and Aiga Dzalbe wrote the title of the exhibition in capital letters TEKSTS=ATTĒLS [TEXT=IMAGE], however, the title’s graphic form doesn’t nullify (even more so – it hides) the hidden contradiction in the declaration, which is like a challenge to which the exhibition should provide an answer. Does it do that? 4 Obviously, the fact that the keys are placed in the form of a cross and that the word “mājas” [home] is found in the centre, gives Božis’ work additional significance, but its analysis and interpretation isn’t the task of this article. (This note also relates to the other works mentioned in this article.) 5 The curators could justify themselves by saying that we can see something similar next to the Freedom Monument. 6 I have only written briefly about three works in the Teksts ir attēls exhibition, but I think that this is sufficient for formulating the question. 7 Ars Viva 2011/2012 – Sprache / Language / Valoda. Rīga Art Space, 18.02–22.04.2012. 8 These works weren’t exhibited in Riga. 9 Compare with Wittgenstein’s notes about the atmosphere of words in his ‘Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology’ (Vol. 1., 243, 335, 337, 339. §§.): Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie = Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988, pp. 49–50, 66–68. 10 Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations. The German text with an English translation by G. E. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Revised 4th edition by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p. 15. 11 I will add that Tony Godfrey (and not he alone…) uses this kind of criteria in his consistently good book about conceptual art, even with all the possible disclaimers, (see: Godfrey, Tony. Conceptual Art. London: Phaidon, 998, pp. 7–10). 12 kim? Contemporary Art Centre, 08.02–18.03.2012. 13 With this phrase, Socrates leads into his idea that in an ideal state, philosophers should rule. See.: Plato. Valsts [The Republic]. Translated from the Ancient Greek by Gustavs Lukstiņš. Rīga: Zvaigzne ABC, [2001], 118. p. l. For the fragment mentioned in other editions see: 473c. 14 Contemporary Art Centre Office Gallery, 16.03–13.04.2012. 15 Both works are included in the To Be or Not to Be (26.01–21.06.2012) exhibition, which as a collection of paraphrases on the theme of Hamlet’s monologue is on display in the Daile Theatre second floor foyer. Leonards Laganovskis, with reprints of his earlier works, called the cycle The year 2012 (2006–2012), and the last of these works is the aforementioned Shakespeare’s Telephone Book, in which of course there is Hamlet’s number as well (7240285). A paraphrasing of the title of Nikita Mikhalkov’s famous film ‘Burnt by the Sun’, in turn, can be read in the title of Ivars Drulle’s work. Although these two works mentioned are, overall, worthy of attention from an art and language relationship point of view, the exhibition doesn’t go beyond the principle of illustration, paraphrase or charade. 16 See Mark Svede’s article ‘An Aggressive Apologia for the Nonconformist Paradigm’. I had the opportunity to read a translation of this article (the original is in English), which is currently being prepared for publication. 17 To see Adorno’s views in detail, see the chapter dedicated to opera in his ‘Introduction to the Sociology of Music’. This work can be found in the 14th volume of the Suhrkamp Publishing House collected works of Adorno (Gesammelte Schriften, 1962–1986). 18 See his short story A New Kind of Abstract Art from ‘Chronicles of Bustos Domecq’ (1966). | |
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