William wrote: > 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)?
Your question poses two predetermined answers, but I don't think what happens is described by either choice. Art-as-text tends to descend into mere illustration, so that if you know how to "read" the various forms, you can educe all the nifty stuff in the image. The comparison with a conversation falls short because the work of art does not change, does not talk to you responsively, but you do change and "dialogue" with yourself. At least I do. Speaking of my own experience and practice, when I look at a WoA, I usually do so silently (not often engaged in a conversation with another person about the work). All of my apprehension of the work is an internal mixing of resemblances to other works, to external objects, to my memories of previous viewings of the same piece, to my reaction to the colors, lines, scale, etc. These connections are made without any internal propositional discourse: I don't propose and analyze anything to myself--as all of the associations bubble up in my head, certain connections or implications just occur almost intuitively. (It's at that point of grasping such a connection that I actually form a verbal statement, which I say to myself and sometimes jot down on a piece of paper so I can recall it later.) By the way, your original question asked us to compare art to writing, not to text. I construed writing to refer to marks on paper or the like, not the complicated cultural and social phenomenon of "text." | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
