Eclectic Reflections on Language

Eclectic Reflections on Language and the experience of Art


1. Objectives

(all images were removed because they were previously published in this web log)

Fig.1. Pharma, 9 meters by 2,4 meters, Acrylic on Canvas

This was the first project I did during this academic year and it was responsible for the origin of some questions concerning language. One tutor asked me if I didn’t agree that it was just an illustration. And then he added:
-Is a book a work of art? I don’t think so. – this position shocked me deeply because it was an obvious “Yes!” ever since I read Rilke, Goethe, Nietzsche and even Borges recently… When I came back with a few new arguments he said, quoting Wittgenstein, the discussion I wanted to engage was based on a simple semantic barrier like any other philosophical disagreement.
I just thought is was a simple way to avoid a deeper dialogue, where we would probably never agree with each other but where we would share intellectual experience instead of running away from it.
After this tremendously frustrating experience I decided I wanted to clarify my ideas on language and its interactions with art. I immediately realized I had to research different philosophical approaches to language and let them inform my sculpture/installation studio practice.



2. Research


After trying to write contractions of thoughts and feelings related to my studio work (see appendix 1), I realized that “language and the experience of art” is the most relevant subject for my practice. This text is a consequence of those “randomized sentences”, annotated by Simon Bell and me, and intends to be an abbreviation of the thoughts I’ve been developing for the past few months. It concerns various language barriers and texts that I’ve been trying to explore and how they influence my fine art practice.
Anyone who now intends to write or argue about art ought to have some idea of what philosophy has achieved and continues to achieve in our day.
Goethe, p.136


I had the feeling I should write a “serious” document on the philosophical issues that change the way I perceive myself as a practitioner. However I do not intend to do it since I want to step outside the limits of language using intuitive, irrational and unclear connections to make my “stream of consciousness” useful for my fine art work.
3.032 It is as impossible to represent in language anything that 'contradicts logic' as it is in geometry to represent by its coordinates a figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a point that does not exist.Wittgenstein, Online book (pages not numbered)

Even though I can’t accurately describe the interactions and overlaps of the intelligible and language, it is important for me to question if it is only the intelligible that can be approached by language… and also ask if: when one uses language each and every specific experience is first translated into something else, the intelligible, which then is transcribed into words or signs, or not... I believe my creative process occurs somewhere outside the limits of language and I also hope the observer perceives my creations as (at least) barely unintelligible.












Fig.2. Two pages of the Moleskine sketchbook I used over the summer

My research will include Wittgenstein’s thoughts about the limits of language, Ricouer’s combination of phenomenology and hermeneutics, Cultural Materialism and even Nietzsche and Plato’s definitive work. If I had time I would also like to investigate reflective artists (such as Goethe, Jake Chapman, John Cage and Francis Bacon) and identify the strategies they used to overcome some of the problems I’ve been trying to unfold with my reflections. I’m sure many other thinkers whose theories I still ignore, such as Heidegger, would be crucial but unfortunately for now it seems to be unreasonable to include it as a goal.
I already studied some of Susan Sontag ideas on interpretation, some of the thoughts Jorge Luis Borges triggered and Kate Love’s ideas about experience in art.
I’m aware of the Art & Language movement happening in the second half of the 20th century and how important it was in Coventry University. However my research intends to go through a reflective approach on my individual past and interactions with language, literature, systems of thought and artists I’ve been exploring other then describe what others did before in the “Fine Art conceptual sphere”.
Before I start I would just like to explain that the reflections written on this text include questioning the process that is happening at this precise moment: how does the fact that I’m using language to express some of my ideas influence my practice? It obviously changes the way I do my research and that already started changing the way I perceive my work. Hopefully that will end up bringing new elements to the creative process. But the text itself is trying to wonder if its own properties (especially instability) make it an adequate media to record the experience of art’s interaction with language.




3. From the practitioner’s words to interpretation

Art is not about ideas. Ideas are good for writers. An artwork will not endure if it is made to be understood.
Reis, Modern Painters Nov. 2005, page 89

Cabrita Reis is one of the artists that is frequently mentioned in the discussions I have with Craig Cooper while making collaborative[1] work. We have been to a private view in Camden Art Centre this year and even though I partially agree with this quote (because art is “not just about ideas”!) I still found this first half of the quote a non-sense because during his presentation in Camden he explained ideas and meanings in the work he was exhibiting.
One might ask: If it is not about ideas, what is art about? All I can write about art is that it is often about something which is not an idea. I believe I’ll never define what art is but intuitively as a practitioner it is quite easy to declare it is frequently about what can’t be said. This is the main reason why Plato’s mimetic theory doesn’t harm my unclear feelings on art. It is not because art’s purpose, function and redundancy are rationally questionable that I will stop trying to make or enjoying it. Besides it is possible an imitation of an imitation can build a clear consciousness of the original object since one will become aware of what is involved in the creation of an imitation; this happens through the interpretative process (and its limitations…).
Susan Sontag’s essay Against Interpretation played a crucial role in the process of clarification of my opinion and Cooper’s divergences in what concerns interpretation. During these discussions I realized that on the one hand we agree about all the practical issues and political and philosophical ideals we want to express, on the other hand we think and feel differently about the importance of language in the interpretative process (specifically about meanings we want to word for the observer), and how destructive or creative interpretation is. Language plays “the main role” in the process of interpretation but what is unclear is if it should influence perception right from the beginning or not. Another problem is how language can unveil the works intentions after the initial encounter (in interviews, texts and conversations with the author). I don’t see any of these as limitations to the work. I also don’t believe interpretation is as destructive as Sontag wants us to believe:
In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Sontag, page 98


In this essay semiotics are rejected as a valid method to enrich an artistic production. Nonetheless for me interpretation is the “other half” of the creative process and I would be quite happy if anyone wanted to analyze my work. For a practitioner the problem is usually the opposite: How can I use the observer’s full potential? As a consequence of that it becomes crucial to influence the process of interpretation and to ensure the observer, even if confused, has an idea of the layers of meanings and intellectual depth/vastness of the work. I don’t feel the same way about referencing other practitioners because those tend to reduce the emotional space of the work and disqualify some of the intentionally mysterious content.
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus allowed me to be aware of the limitations of language when used to influence interpretation or the public perception of a practitioner’s production. Still my intuition asked me not to stop talking and writing as much as possible about it. But some text kept haunting me:4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly.
Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly.
6.421 It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)
6.522 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. Wittgenstein, online book (pages not numbered)

Could it be that talking about my intentions as a practitioner was a simple redundancy? It’s a risk and it might get the practitioner into trouble every now and then but if we don’t talk and write about our creations to a certain extent we will never be able to induce what is the best consequence possible of the creative process:
162. It used to happen, and still does, that I dislike a work of art because I’m not up to appreciating it; but if I sense some merit there, I try to get at it and this often leads to the happiest discoveries: new qualities are revealed to me in these things, new capacities in myself.
Goethe, page 19

How can this happen to the observer if the artist does not elaborate about it? If it truly is “avant la lettre” very few, if any, will be ready for it. It’s quite likely that without anything else feeding the observer in such a situation he will lose any interest on further investigation just because he dislikes it (taste is usually strongly determines someone’s initial perception and further interpretation of the work). If it’s truly new, people have to find alternative ways to engage with it: one of the many possible ones and probably the most effective is the intellect and the power language has over it.

3. The power of the intellect (in progress)
It is possible for people to produce works which are null and void without being bad, null and void because they lack substance, not bad, because the writer’s mind is informed by a general pattern of good models.
Goethe, p. 15

I believe a similar phenomenon in the visual arts is a perfectly contextualized contemporary work that didn’t involve any visual intelligence, intuitive sense of composition, or spatial impact. The reason why I believe this equivalence can be made is because I feel the visual arts ultimate “substance” is the intuitive and the sense of visual and emotional awareness.
Susan Sontag mentions “the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability” in the quote above. In general I tend to value the intellect and its complexity as one of the main creative tools. Unfortunately sometimes it has consequences that apparently do not help the progression of art. There are few surprising examples but I’ll just illustrate this idea with the biggest Portuguese stadium:


Fig.3. Benfica Stadium, The stadium of light, built in 2004


This freshly made building is supposed to be cutting edge architecture and yet visually the concrete is as upsetting as disturbing. The “intellectual excuse” given by the architect is the concept of a negative shape of the seats visible from the outside. As a Portuguese and a visually sensitive person I started looking for a solution to avoid all that grey and keep the pretentious speech of its creator as true as it ever was.

Fig.4. An imaginary proposal for a circular mural

I enjoy conceptual art but I believe it requires a certain level of intimacy. Not just the scale has to be small enough not to disturb visually sensitive people; it often also requires an excellent title or some text to go along with it which is definitely not the case. Architecture like design has a utilitarian function as well as a visually pleasing inherent goal. The question that strikes me is: If the intellect went as far as making bad architecture look good, what happened to fine art that we might not be aware of?
Unfortunately students in Art School are widely aware that the intellect determines the judgement of tutors almost exclusively… It is not uncommon too listen to a student saying to another:
-You know it is all about what you say in the tutorial. You can get an A with anything or nothing if you know how to talk about it.
This is the ultimate proof the intellect got its revenge on art not through interpretation but through studio practice teaching and assessments. But is there any area where intuition and desire overwhelm the intellect? Maybe advertising…









4. The experience of Art changing language? (in progress)


Fig. 5. Monumental Sculpture (May 2005)


In the beginning of this academic year I started giving more importance to advertising as an influence or resource I could use in my Work. When I say advertising I include video clips, outdoors, television adverts, flyers, newspapers… all media that deal with the means of promotion. As a consequence of that new attitude I realized I could change a work completely just by changing the title’s context using exactly the same method I use with found objects. This immediately changes the titles status as well as the work itself:

Fig. 5. Ooops I did it again (October 2005)



In an attempt to undermine the theory/practice binary, still tenaciously holding on in art school parlance, an auxiliary intention was to posit the idea that we don’t have to bring words to art but rather that we can use the experience of art as a form of criticism itself.
Love, p. 157

Would this experience be a form of criticism? What are we saying about Britney Spears? We are obviously recycling her words just like we recycle garbage.
Since we thought this would be an effective way of commenting on society’s consumerist products we decided to take this idea forward and do an assemblage premeditatedly idealized to change one of the most powerful slogans on the TV. By coincidence it advertises one of the worst companies in the world in what concerns the world’s population health: I’m lovin’it – McDonald’s slogan.

Fig. 6. I’m lovin’it


6. The experience of language informing my studio practice (in progress)

…the reason why experience is so inaccessible to us now is because neither the events of modern life, nor the individual who perceive them, have sufficient authority to translate their experience into something we might be able to call “experience”.
Love, p.159


Advertising is almost a synonym of post-modern life. And the visual pollution and bombarding it does on everyone takes the time and pleasure away from the experience of looking at a photo, appreciate beautiful women (or man if that is the case), pay attention to details and engage a dialogue with what surrounds us. The wish to recycle this experience with visual language made me feel interested in a Marks & Spencer window poster.

Fig. 7. M&S poster for the winter collection 2005/2006



Fig. 8. The back of an assemblage in progress

Fig. 9. Assemblage in progress (front view)

The frustration I felt while I was writing these reflections for a couple of days made me try to find a more personal (non-collaborative), intense and emotional way of using the found objects I had lying around in the studio. The advertising and the scientific icons merge in an explosive, expressionist and pleasure full performance/experience/installation/revelation… what is usually called an epiphany.


Fig. 10. Detail of the “epiphany installation” with a section of M &S poster, microscope, T-rex skull print…

Any request to write tens to galvanize meshes of thought, which have been circulating for some time but haven’t necessarily surfaced in any particular formation.
Love, p. 157


Fig. 11. The result of the “epiphany performance”

200. No one can control what is really creative, and everybody just has to let it go its own way.
Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, page23



Fig. 12. “An installation like a painting” detail of the “epiphany installation”

Past, present and future exist simultaneously, as it’s proved by dreams – John William Dunne


Fig. 13. The first work I did this year with my initials (MF- Manuel Furtado), found signature, overview of the “epiphany installation”

7. Hermeneutics (research needed before I start writing)
8. Cultural Materialism (research needed before I start writing)


Bibliography
Goethe, J. W. V., Maxims and Reflections, Penguin Books Ltd., 1998
Sontag, S., A Susan Sontag Reader, Penguin Books Ltd., 1983
Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Project Gutenberg
(http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5740), 2001
Love, K., After Criticism New responses to Art and Performance, article: The experience of Art as a Living through Language, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005

Intended Bibliography (with time table of the projects development):

1. Ricoeur, P., Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1965, Eng. tr. 1970)[2]

2. Barthes, R., Death of the Author

3. Agamben, Infancy and History: Essays on the destruction of experience

4. Terry Aegleton, Illusions of Postmodernism

5. Arthur Koestler – the roots of coincidence

6. T. Niven-Wilder – The Bridge of San Luis Rey

7. David Levin, the opening of vision (1988) – models of postmodernism

8. The life and opinions of Tristrom Shandy (1760) Lourence Stern.

9. Edelman, G. M., Tononi, G., Consciousness, How Matter Becomes Imagination, Penguin Books, 2000

10. Heideger, Being in time

11. Foucault, M., ???

12. Derrida???

Over Christmas holydays I hope to chose four or five of these titles and focus my research on those exclusively.
Craig’s article from database.



[1] Work jointly, esp. In a literary or artistic production. – Oxford English Reference Dictionary
I thought it was relevant to find the exact meaning of this word because until recently used to say cooperative work instead of collaborative. Cooperate means to work or act together (as well as three other meanings) according to the same dictionary. This means that it is less specific then collaboration.
[2] This book is very likely to be one of my choices because it concerns interpretation, hermeneutics and phenomenology.