Most visual artists claim that words have no role in their artmaking. But I think that words are central to artmaking. Everything artists do is related to language although it's not clear whether words or images come first. It may be back and forth. There are no images that exist without words and no words without images even though no specific relationship is predetermined or universal.
Mando claims that he doesn't create with words. But is that possible? Is this a case of the intentional fallacy? His claims may not determine what he does. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, January 31, 2011 11:17:58 PM Subject: Re: representation I'm so glad that I don't create with words mando ________________________________ From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, January 31, 2011 4:01:27 PM Subject: Re: representation Nothing startling in that. Every breath you take is new and never before and never again. I'll go further and claim that the "new" arrangement of shapes (sorry, form is the design, not its parts) could not be in your mind until you actually "created" them materially. Your mind had an urge, a desire, not even a proof that what you were about to do materially would be of any formal newness at all in the sense of being unlike anything you ever saw before, let alone what the "world" has seen before. Artistic creation is acting on hunches, urges, hopes, fascinations, allure, beliefs, play. It always involves some reliance on remembered patterns, habits, images, knowledge, likes-dislikes, even formulas. The newness is minute, often unrecognized not only by the audience but by the artist too. Artists struggle to create responding to those urges and too often the urges just served up yesterday's warmed-up leftover. No one can predict a creation. No one can claim to be creative before the act. No one can predict or prescribe the "new". The new is a surprise. Be alert! wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, January 31, 2011 4:11:50 PM Subject: Re: representation In my mind, lets say i'm creating a relationship of forms and colors that never existed before in my mind or anywhere else. A new design of a common thing. ab ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, January 31, 2011 9:19:04 AM Subject: Re: representation In a message dated 1/31/11 11:33:06 AM, [email protected] writes: > If I present something I create in my mind, that would > be a representation, would it not? > ab > Three things. When you say 'present', what do you have in mind? If you imagine an image of a unicorn, do you call that "presenting" the image in your mind? I'm just trying to clarify here. There's no absolute "should" or "shouldn't" about what you call things. (One might argue there's a relative should or shouldn't. For example, if you're talking to a shepherd in the Andes, you "shouldn't" call things by their "names" in Swedish. But that's only if you want to be understood.) Let's say by "create in your mind" you "mean" the image in your mind is unique, unthought of until you thought of it. By that standard, the image of the unicorn is not created in your mind, though you may still want to say that just by conjuring up that image you are "presenting" in your mind. Third, and this is the important point, neither you nor I has a clear notion of what's behind your use of 'a representation' there. You have an image in your mind, but why do you say it "represents" something? Because it in some way resembles something? Suppose it's of a statue you haven't materially sculpted yet. It seems somewhat strange to say your image resembles something that does't exist. More strangely, perhaps, you may say it now "represents" a now-non-existent material thing that you are going to fashion in the future. But what is that saying beyond that one day you are going to sculpt something the retinal image of which will "look like" the image you're now imagining? What, precisely, is 'represents' meant to convey beyond 'resembles'? I'm not asking you to to clarify all this stuff. I'm just trying to convey how blurry our notion of "represents" is in the mind, all our minds. Roughly speaking, 'resembles' can be defended as a non-nesting-doll word, but 'represents' can't.
