When you look at a piece of visual art, is it like communicating with it, as in a conversation with someone in which you query and suggest, resolve and confirm? Or, is it like reading a text in which the words, as signs, are fairly stable in context, and require you to conform your passive thinking to what seems to be stated or claimed by the work (as if it were a surrogate for a an exposition in text)?
If visual art has a "vocabulary" does that mean that shapes, colors, texture, etc., are signs with predetermined meanings already encoded; if so, what are some examples? Personally, I am reminded of Surat's notion (copied from psychology of his day) that the "movement" of lines suggested mood states: upward for joyous, downwards, for melancholy, and the like, coupled with appropriate warm or cool coloring. Kandinsky had a similar notion regarding shapes and color. Mondrian eschewed the diagonal for a long time because it was too ambiguous, neither vertical nor horizontal. Generally, viewers and artists are always proclaiming that there's a correlation between text and image in explaining art. For almost 300 years the History of Art has been based on text. That text explains art, defines terms, and settles what's right and wrong in art interpretation. Even now, In fact, a whole generation of art students has been drilled and trained in explaining the purposes of their art practices in a carefully written "artist statement" in imitation of art historical text. Most frequently, these statements follow the format of the scholarly prospective or abstract and state the problem and then the solution, with the art serving as proving evidence. That's precisely what art historians do in their written papers. Most frequently, these student statements (always in textual form) identify a heretofore neglected "intersection" between two or more cultural and formal tropes which, naturally, the artist has been the first to notice and redefine as a new art content. Thus art demonstrates a predetermined theory. It is expository and didactic, a truly refined academic practice. It all begins with a fairly fixed "vocabulary" of words and terms. If visual art is more like conversational speech, then it offers a kind of free-association and organic give and take, in the same way that people define their mutual understanding of a topic with words, made-up words, gestures, inflections, immediate context, and the like. In this there is little that is a-priori fixed and absolute. Much besides words must be integrated into the "conversation", even the relevance of seemingly unrelated events and motives, interruptions, values, you name it. A conversation may take an unexpected turn that alters its initial purpose and lead to new consequences. This is usually avoided in a clear text, especially an academic text. So what is it? Is it more appropriate for the art viewer to regard the artwork like a text that one reads and conforms to or is it more appropriate to regard the artwork as a participant in a conversation that may become free-ranging, or unplanned, or organic for both the viewer and the artwork (serving as the surrogate partner in conversation)? Saul seems to prefer the open-endedness and inclusiveness of art that is like speech. Kate puts the emphasis on the artist's activity, like undistracted writing. Michael is wavering, depending on the art form, but prefers to think of art as like writing. Dr. Laguna declares that one must know the vocabulary, presumably to "read" an artwork. Mando says art is like speech because of "stories" he learned as a child. Were these spoken or written and if spoken, did they change each time they were recited? What are the expressions of speech, in what does speech consist? What are the expressions of text, in what does text consist? I'm not sure. wc
