Andrea P dissertation final 24Jan2017 · 2017-05-29 · ! 5!!...

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How does the use of words in the visual arts impact on

the experience of the viewer?

Andrea Phillips

ART603 Thesis

BA (Hons) Fine Art (0506)

January 2017

Plymouth University

Word count: 5771

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Contents

Table of Contents Contents ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

Table of Figures .......................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................. 4

IHF and Memory ........................................................................................................................................................................ 5

Long and Language ................................................................................................................................................................ 13

Barbara Kruger and Signs ................................................................................................................................................... 22

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................................................. 26

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................................................................. 28 Figures ................................................................................................................................................................................... 30

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Table of Figures Figure 1 The Divided Meadows of Aphrodite ............................................................................................................... 6 Figure 2 Ship's Bells: Chrysalis – Crate ......................................................................................................................... 10 Figure 3 Chrysalis ................................................................................................................................................................... 11 Figure 4 Poema Enterrado ................................................................................................................................................. 14 Figure 5 Transference .......................................................................................................................................................... 18 Figure 6 A Moved Line In Japan ....................................................................................................................................... 20 Figure 7 ‘Flash Flood’ ............................................................................................................................................................ 21 Figure 8 UNTITLED (I shop therefore I Am) .............................................................................................................. 23

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Introduction

This thesis is an exploration into the work of artists that have as part of their process made use of

the written word. The main three artists in focus will be the concrete poet, Ian Hamilton Finlay, the

land sculptor, Richard Long and Barbara Kruger, the American conceptual pop artist.

There are many strands of discussion around these chosen artists as they all use text in very

different way as part of their process. Ian Hamilton Finlay (IHF) focuses more on the past and

memory. Whilst Richard Long’s work is in the moment and he uses language to record that

moment. Barbara Kruger’s in contrast, is perhaps about the moment and the future and she uses

her work to elicit political change in the viewer. Memory, Language and time are embedded within

their practice, and are the three main elements used to communicate the meaning and the impact of

their work.

By blurring the boundaries in this case between Art and literature, conceptual artists attempted to

create a space between themselves and what had already gone before. They wanted to create an

arena of controversy that enabled them to take advantage of the ‘uneasy tension’ they were

creating by doing something new. (Erber, 2012) Arguably, by breaking down the barriers between

disciplines, a dual comprehension exists that makes the artwork more accessible to the viewer, by

communicating meaning visually as well as through language.

The simply act of reading is ubiquitous and part of our everyday existence, we may not realise the

in depth power language has to provoke meaning in artwork. The simple act of looking also links

back to a time before we understood or used language so perhaps just looking remains as powerful

to the viewer, as it allows the viewer the freedom to interpret meaning that is not directional other

than visually. Whilst It could be argued that the investment and waiting by the viewer in the act of

reading does not guarantee a greater understanding of the artwork, it is accessible to anyone that

can read to take part and in and relate to the written word in a way that is less ambiguous than just

looking. Further direction from the artist is perhaps a welcome aid to some viewers of art.

There is a slippage, when boundaries are blurred in the visual arts. Using text as well as imagery,

threatens the purity of what has gone before. The three chosen artists in their very different ways

utilise this slippage / tension to varying degrees. This reflective study will give an account of any

uneasy tension or slippage by investigating why artists that use text as part of their process in the

visual arts, can perhaps enhance or limit the impact of their work.

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In order to understand the sometimes-‐visceral affects a work of art can have on a viewer, I will be

looking into the work of the graphic ideologist Ferreira Gullar and the act of reading. (Erber,

2012:75) Roland Barthes, the semiotician and theorist, and his ‘quality of words’ and how they

function in the environment. (Linker, 1990) Also, the theories of memory, by Henri Bergson, and

his, ‘attempt to overcome the dualism between representation and matter in contemporary thinking

about perception’. (Rossington, 2007:93)

Time, duration and the ephemeral, and the way memory can provoke meaning and nostalgia are all

important factors when exploring the impact of artwork. Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles

Sanders Peirce, though very different in their approaches they both simultaneously intended to

gain an understanding and a way to measure signs and symbols and how this may affect meaning.

IHF and Memory In the 1950’s, IHF started out as a writer of plays and short stories. By the end of the 50’s his

writing became very symbolic and led to a visual experimentation of words, becoming equally

interested in the appearance of words and how they are arranged, as much as he was to the

meaning of the words he chose. He became known as a visual poet and his work was described as

Concrete Poetry.

There are many layers of meaning and links to the past, often influenced by ancient philosophical

thinking and classical literature. He works in riddles and rhymes and leaves clues for the viewer.

Sometimes his work embraces polarities like war and peace, and political agendas. At the same

time there is a pastoral element to his work and a simple affection for everyday objects like, chairs

that have poetry carved into them, and blankets that are woven into with expressions of war and

peace.

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Figure 1 The Divided Meadows of Aphrodite

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The Divided Meadows of Aphrodite, Fig. 1, originally a design for a postcard by IHF and collaborator

Ron Costley, was also made into a woven woollen blanket for the Maritime exhibition at Tate St Ives

in 2002. Director / Curator Susan Daniel McElroy writes a description in the show catalogue;

This is a graphic image of a white inscription in Greek and English on a black background, which proposes binary oppositions, or exchanges in meaning, The bi-‐lingual inscription The Divided Meadows of Aphrodite is halved by an aerial outline drawing of a modern warship, an aircraft carrier. But we have to go back to Aphrodite-‐Greek goddess of love in classical mythology in order to begin the game. In the juxtaposition of an armed warship and Aphrodite, Goddess of love, we have plenty to meditate upon. (Daniel-‐McElroy, 2002:3)

IHF was much more interested in the conceptual meditation upon things, not concerned with the

actual process of making, and so he would often collaborates with highly skilled craftsmen like Ron

Costley in Fig. 1. He was a great thinker and lover of the ordinary, and made conceptual links that

can at first seem tenuous until the viewer spends time de-‐coding meaning, then the work develops

and more in-‐depth layers unfold.

He worked in many different ways and with a variety of skilled collaborators making and

constructing a diverse range of objects from woollen blankets woven with multi-‐lingual images, Fig.

1, to engraved brass bells, Fig. 2. Some of his themes, for example boat’s names and where they

were registered, flowers, and stories of the sea, could take the viewer on a journey into the past,

and perhaps provoke memories.

The reoccurring themes of war and peace are linked to IHFs three and half years of active service in

the Royal Army Signal Corps as he saw service in Germany at the formative age of seventeen,

returning at nearly twenty-‐one. Before he was called up he had spent a brief time at Glasgow

College of Art, and prior to that he had been evacuated as a child to the Orkneys. After the war he

returned to the Orkneys and for a while became a shepherd, his pastoral work is perhaps

influenced by his time there, as he developed his ideal of ‘Sweet Philosophy” in which he found

visual happiness amongst classical philosophers. (Tate online resources, 2006)

In Fig. 1, the image containing the words Divided Meadows is that of a landscape. Aphrodite, the

goddess of the divided meadows of land and sea is also the goddess of gardens, spring and of tender

plants and flowers, these are recurring themes that feature in many of IHF’s other works. In this

work, Aphrodite is represented armed as at Sparta, after which Finlay named his garden, ‘Little

Sparta’, in Lanarkshire.

IHF first settled in Lanarkshire in 1966 in a property called ‘Stonypath’ which in 1978 he renamed

‘Little Sparta’. After a long battle with the Inland Revenue about tax payments, he produced a series

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of works titled, Et In Arcadia Ego series, 1977, also known as ‘Little Spartan wars’. Themes around

the French Revolution and warfare, set in the pastoral setting of his own garden, were about nature,

culture and how the law is woven into culture. (Tate Online Resource: 2006)

Finlay recognised that a sense of estrangement from the past was something that had not always been felt by the ‘moderns’ at all times in history. His exemplary models were the leaders of the French Revolution who looked to and lived the example of the classical as well as projecting the modernity of their future. (Sleeman, 2009:199)

IHFs career began with the written word and evolved into visual poetry and then into ‘one word’

poems. These poems consisted of a title and one word. In the 1960’s he first anthologised these

poems in his magazine titled, ‘Poor Old Tired House Number 25’. (Tate online resource 2002) These

one-‐word poems linked to concrete poetry and the earliest use of letter arrangement to enhance

meaning. Shaped poetry was first recorded in the second centuries in the Greek anthologies of

‘Alexandria’. (Edmonds, 1912)

In 2002 there was an exhibition at Tate St Ives of IHF’s work titled ‘Maritime Works’ (Tate St Ives

March-‐June 2002). At that time, I started working in the gallery, spending around thirteen hours

per week for three months immersed in the work of IHF. In a very long and rectangular gallery,

there was a particular exhibit I found haunting called ‘Ships Bells’ (Fig. 2). A ship's bell is an original

fitting on all boats and usually has the ship’s name engraved upon it. The bell was used to

communicate with the crew when it was time to change guard, or, in stormy or foggy seas to alert

other vessels of their presence. In this work Finlay removed the bells from their boats, and replaced

their engraved name with a one-‐word poem. These twelve bells were placed at head height along

both sides of the gallery, each bell represented one hour on the clock. They took on a presence and

became intriguing objects all polished shiny gold, with new bell ropes that hung down below. Their

shapes cast shadows, their silence and loss of original purpose, evoked a powerful and wordy

impact of sea voyages and loss. Next to each bell there was a series of one-‐word poems, one that I

still remember was titled ‘Bilge’. Having no idea what that word meant, I had to look it up and now

know that it is the area in a boat below the water line where two sides meet and where a mixture of

fresh water, sea water and engine oil residue all mix to create an oily dirty liquid that it also

referred to as ‘bilge’, or ‘bilge water’. I almost felt like I was at sea on the boat from which the bell

once belonged, watching the bilge water swish about below deck.

It is not for everyone this work that some may find intriguing, and enjoy the process of un-‐ravelling.

The art critic, Martin Gayford wrote in his review,

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Finlay is a difficult artist. His work is terse, and he deliberately does little to help you understand it. But, if you give them time, you will find his strange marriages of words and things begin to work on your imagination. (Gayford, 2002).

In Fig. 2 You can see engraved on the bell, the inscription ‘Chrysalis Crate’. In this work IHF is referring to his earlier from 1996, which you can see in Fig. 3.

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Figure 2 Ship's Bells: Chrysalis – Crate

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Figure 3 Chrysalis

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The art critic Lucy Li writes,

At its core, Finlay’s art explores meanings that spring from metaphors, as well as the implication of translating the natural world into language. When a word becomes assigned to an object, a metaphor and its accompanying ambiguity are triggered. For example, the title of his sculpture of a trapped but winged propeller, Chrysalis (1996), immediately evokes a potential for fleshly metamorphosis and cathartic rupture, establishing a parallel between soaring flight and developing life. The dialectic between the work’s title and its presence transports the propeller and absent chrysalis into the artificial universe of culture, albeit at the risk of temporarily belying the work’s physical reality: a lifeless, lonely mechanical device trapped in a “wooden” crate which is actually welded in stiff bronze.(http://www.artcritical.com/2013/06/21/ian-‐hamilton-‐finlay/byLucyLi)

According to Henri Bergson the French philosopher, influential on many thinkers in the first half of

the twentieth century, experience matters more to an individual than a scientific rationalism for

the understanding of reality. (Bergson in Rossington, 2007) He argued that there are different ways

by which we learn and remember things. His work orbited around solving the hypothesis that there

is a dualism between representation and matter that alters the way we think about perception.

The term memory is not singular but rather combines two different kinds of memories. The first, habit memories which consists in obtaining certain automatic behaviour by means of repetition and which coincided with the acquisition of sensory-‐motor mechanisms. The second is pure memory, which refers to the survival of personal memories. Bergson argues that most forms of remembering combine these two kinds of memories referring to the mnemonic systems dating back to classical times, for example, he suggests that their methods foreground ‘pure memory’ precisely in order in order to put it in the service of ‘habit’ memory. (Rossington and Whitehead, 2007: 93).

Finlay’s work, if Bergson’s theory on memory is to be taken into consideration, depends upon the

viewer’s own experience and memory, by, on the one hand using recognisable objects whilst

changing their use as in Ship’s Bells’, (Fig. 2), and by having the bell pulls so obviously and

beautifully on display, it tempted the onlooker to reach out and ring the bells, a remembered

experience perhaps or a simple desire to make the bell ring and create a sound from earlier

memories. Either way this was an impossible exhibition to invigilate as it involved the prevention

of such bell ringing or indeed any kind of contact with the artwork apart from the act of looking.

Finlay was perhaps aware of this when he made this installation and on quite a few occasions, from

my own observations, it would be the demographic of the over-‐fifties that could not seem to resist,

much to their own embarrassment, the pulling of the bell ropes.

Walter Benjamin the cultural critic and philosopher questioned Bergsonian theories on memory

arguing that ‘he found the Bergsonian-‐Proustian model of memory wanting in its particular

emphasis on the individual'. (Reader, 2007:94) Benjamin observed ‘where there is experience in

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the strict sense of the word, certain contents of the individual past combine with material of the

collective past’ (Benjamin, 1973:161).

The French essayist, poet, novelist and critic Marcel Proust who had been very influenced by

Bergson, a relative of his by marriage, almost unwittingly supports the claims of Benjamin who

references Proust in ‘On some motifs in Baudelaire’,

Remembrance of Things Past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were. (Proust in Benjamin,1973:159)

Proust had written many volumes under the same heading ‘Remembrance of Things Past’, in the

first came the heading ‘childhood memories’. Proust talks about how he is transported back to a

time in his childhood by simply dipping a freshly baked madeleine into his tea. It is through taste

that Proust is transported back in time in a involuntary way. (Roland Barthes the semiotician and

theorist, also talks about this in his theories on photography in his book ‘Camera Lucida’ to be

discussed further). (Reader, 2007:93/94)

In the same way when we really look at Finlay’s work, and invest some time in the reading of the

words, the connections that come flooding in are also involuntary, and would bring the viewer to

tears as they were quite unexpectedly and often involuntarily transported somewhere else that was

at first, a collective generic memory, but the production of such waves of emotion implied a

personal connection.

Long and Language In order to really appreciate the impact of the use of words in art, you not only have to consider

memory and the theories of Bergson and Benjamin, you have to consider the power and function of

words. Ferreira Gullar’s 1959 “Poema Enterrado” (buried poem, Fig. 4) consists of one word and a

graphic diagram and appears to be a visual artwork at first glance, but is instead literature in the

form of a poem.

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Figure 4 Poema Enterrado

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Gullar did not believe in the ‘ready mades’ arguing that Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, titled ’fountain’

(1907) will eventually return to its status as a urinal ‘through use and action and memory’. (Erber,

2012) Gullar views his own work not as words, which possess an intrinsic linguistic meaning, but as

‘non-‐objects’, that is to say that the moment you see it or read it, that moment defines its identity

and no former reference is significant. He did not seek to have long definitions of meaning or

connections to the past but preferred to discover new meanings harnessing direct experience.

Poema Enterrado stands at a long trajectory of materialisation of the written word in (and as) the object of art. According to Gullar, since the actual object of poetry does not pre-‐exist poetic praxis but is, by its very definition, created through poetry, the poem must exist as an object. (Erber, 2012: 73)

Gullar’s exploration of poetry resulted in a demateriality of the act of reading, he was not interested

in the investment of reading or the written word as an object, jumping straight to meaning in the

moment the viewer sees the poem, whereas concrete poetry looked at the intrinsic significance and

meaning within the blue-‐print of language itself, either verbally spoken or written, and pushed the

boundaries between language and the visual arts and more importantly is categorised as a visual

art form. Finlay sees his work as concrete poetry with its roots in the Avant Garde and Dada,

questioning the materiality of language as a visual art form. Gullar’s theories are the opposite of any

former meaning, he is moving towards dematerialization with no acceptance of previous

conceptual meaning, any meaning comes from the viewer in the moment they see the poem.

‘Meaning’ is much more significant to Gullar than the reading or the language of the written word,

which is what he perhaps means by ‘dematerialization of the act of reading’.

Richard Long utilises language in his work arguably with the same ideals as Gullar, in that he

documents his work in words and photographs in a way that transports you into that moment and

place as he strides through the landscape.

“ My photographs and captions are facts which bring the appropriate accessibility to the spirit of these remote or otherwise unrecognisable works” (Long, 2009:145).

Richard Long’s work is a combination of rules and regulations and of decisions that he makes but

never speaks of, he chooses which way to go, and is not interested in indecision, nostalgia or

sentiment. In his documentation are deliberate choices about which way to go, which texts to use in

order to amplify the experience of taking us back into ‘a moment after the event. “His works are

timeless in their classic rhythm and beauty, but also particular to this moment” (Serota in Long,

2009:19).

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In 1964 when Richard Long was a student at the West of England College of Bristol. He rolled a

snowball down a hill. He had no lasting interest in the snowball, the path and indentation it had

made along the way was what captured his interest, which he then documented by photographs.

The artwork was the track itself, and its ephemeral nature, it existed in that moment only, this was

the key meaning of its composition. Considering these early works the critic Rudi Fuchs noted in a

catalogue essay accompanying Long's 1986 show at the New York Guggenheim museum, “what was

remarkable was how close Richard Long, barely 20 years old, already was to what was to become

his language” (Fuch in Solomon, 1986).

The philosopher and theorist Roland Barthes discussed the photograph at great length in his book

Camera Lucida (1980) He devised the terms ‘the studium and the punctum’, and he explains that in

the studium is “enthusiastic commitment” for a photograph (pg.146). By this he means the

photographer is enjoying the act of taking the photo but there is no real personal connection, the

intention is to provide a photo that others can form a connection with. This involves choice and

subjectivity, also an element of chance. The resulting end product of a photograph could by these

terms be generic, in that it could reach a meaningful reception and appeal to the masses or it could

not. (Barthes: 1980)

Richard Long’s walks and recollections of his journeys are important to him so the perfect

photographic subject for him is a documentation of a specific moment in time whilst walking a

planned route. There is a great beauty in the land he crosses and the work he documents, it is this

work that holds a precise interest to him. This detailed interest is personal to the artist and perhaps

does not always reach the viewer who may just give the photo a cursory glance. The basic concept

behind the photo, may be of interest to the viewer, but not a passion, it only functions as studium.

(Barthes: 1980)

The difference between interest and passion is comparable to the difference between studium and

punctum. Punctum is something that “pierces” and “wounds” the observer (Barthes). There has to

be something that creates an unexpected intrigue and that pulls the viewer in. The photo is then

charged with curiosity and punches out towards the viewer demanding attention. The power of the

photo does not rely on the viewer’s interest of its subject because the image is so powerful that it

can stand on its own. Punctum does not have to have an obvious source; small details, for example

the worn path that Long has walked becomes the focus and punctum in his photographs, it draws

you in to the landscape in which his journey has taken place.

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The addition of text with image or on its own provides yet another layer of meaning and weight,

recording phrases that document moments. An example of these is shown in Fig. 5

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Figure 5 Transference

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Gullar’s graphic ideology around the demateriality of language, memory and anything that went

before or after not really being as significant as the actual moment, are all elements to be found in

Long's work. Long describes it in part as ‘words after the event’ designed to take the viewer back to

the precise moments he encounters on his walks. The moment the viewer is in themselves as they

are transported to this different place, is the key point and arguably the power behind the artwork.

In Fig. 6, ‘A Moved Line in Japan’ (1983) Long also uses the text to mimic the curve in the landscape

he has walked, making the written word a diagram. The viewer can form ‘meaning’ in the moment

he experiences the impact of the artwork, not dissimilar to Gullar’s ‘Peoma Enterrada’ in Fig. 4.

Long takes us on a journey and describes the truths of that journey even referencing boots drying

in the sun (Fig. 5). We are on that walk, we can almost smell the air he breathes but not in relation

to past memory or linguistic theory, but we are in the ephemeral moment that he captures in words

and photographs within his practice. (Long, Heaven and Earth. Exhibition at Tate St Ives, 2002)

In Fig. 7 Flash flood (2004), it may be raining but we can see the break in the clouds ahead and this

leads us forward as we read the text, we are eager for the details this offers us, Long argues that

text as well as documenting his works also differentiates it from other works and makes sense of

place. (Long, 2009)

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Figure 6 A Moved Line In Japan

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Figure 7 ‘Flash Flood’

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Barbara Kruger and Signs Barbara Kruger’s work strives to disrupt ‘stereotypical representations’ by shaking up their hold

and power, for example, the subliminal messages we see in advertising, creating room for the

possibility of a new kind of conscious awareness. She propels the viewer with her loud visual

imagery, via books, billboards and T-‐shirts, towards her social and political commentary. (Linker,

1990).

In characteristically postmodernist manner, she erodes classification, merging images and words, multiplying media, and annexing concepts from other disciplines. It is a practice that characteristically begins elsewhere outside the artistic frame. (Linker, 1990: 27).

Kruger is a political agitator who seeks to initiate a change in her work, immediately or some time

in the future. (Linker: 1990)

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Figure 8 UNTITLED (I shop therefore I Am)

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…A word is a bridge thrown between myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me then the other depends on my addressee. A word is a territory shared by both addresser and addressee, by the speaker and his interlocutor. (Bakhtin in Allen, 2000:20).

In Fig. 8 Barbara Kruger emphatically exploits the meaning behind this quote as she throws out a

lasso into her audience, capturing their gaze and then implying that to shop is to exist, inferring that

if you are not shopping and falling for marketing and advertising, you will cease to exist. Kruger

utilizes established forms of marketing that she actively corrupts by making an irony out of its own

message.

The spectator is never just a simple viewer. The art experience requires interior movement. The trick of the artists’ trade is to convert a passer-‐by into a go between by transmitting clues to the work that engage the imagination. The specific relationship that the spectator/viewer establishes with a work directly addressing notions of memory, documentation, and the archive emerges in the course of encounters with the represented form, the broadcast sound, the projected image. (Zabinyan, 2006:85)

Kruger requires in her work that you have something already in your shopping bag, a political view,

a misconception, a value judgment, that she can manipulate and make you, the viewer, think again.

By using typography that we are used to seeing and reading, in a sensationalist way she is drip-‐

feeding us a little bit of what she strives to disrupt. Not unlike the theory behind homeopathy, that

tiny drip acts as a cure-‐all and creates directed political agitation, which arguably brings about a

manipulated change, but if not, then at the very least, forces the viewer (if they see it) to

acknowledge the trickery at play. Behind her intention to disrupt and unsettle established forms of

advertising in Fig. 8 Kruger is ironically echoing René Descartes’ aphorism ‘cogito ergo sum’ (I think

therefore I am). Descartes, the philosopher and mathematician was concerned that we could be

fooled by ‘the problem of knowing’ and the only way to really know what is true, is by the

processing of our own experiences and thoughts, in our own brains. (Descartes 1596–1650 world

view online philosophy website, accessed 2017)

Barbara Kruger is not that visible as the author of her work, we see a billboard with a coded

message on it and the moment we read it, she the artist is no longer present, we are soaking up her

voice in her work as meanings and deciphered messages that are at the point of impact no longer

about ‘her’ voice, but are more about ‘our’ own thoughts and interpretation. Arguably, the artist

voice being too visible, would ring-‐fence the potential reach of the artwork. In Fig.8 and with

reference to Descartes, the irony is that we maybe do not ‘think’ when we shop, but at the same

time Kruger does not muddy the interpretation of her work by her own presence as author, leaving

the viewer the space to ‘think’, and absorb the impact of her work. Barthes writes,

To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text (Barthes, 1967)

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Kruger understands and makes good use of the power of signs and symbols in her work, possibly

adopting some of the principles of Semiology.

In developing the discipline of Semiotics and Semiology There are two leading theorists responsible

for the initial development of Semiology, Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce. Both

developed their own systems designed to study the production of meaning from signs, symbols and

words. These systems are collectively referred to as Semiotic analysis. The French semiotician,

Saussure developed a structuralist approach to his enquiries, the study of ‘all the sign systems

operative within culture’, looking at literature as well as everyday communication, examining the

meanings produced by them. (Allen, 2002). Peirce, the philosopher, is the founder of the American

tradition of semiotics, and was more interested in ‘how we make sense of the world around us’,

rather than Saussure’s’ primary focus on Language. (Zeman, 1977)

Saussure believed that there were things in the world around us that have their meaning embedded

in signifiers and the signified which have a shared language system along with codes and rules of

‘association, combination, definition and distinction’ (Allen, 2002).

Post structuralists like Barthes and Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian-‐French philosopher and literary

critic argued that both Saussure and Peirce were simplistic in their initial semiotic analysis. Barthes

believed in a different theory and used a different word, signifiance; this word is used instead of

signification and refers to a language that “enables a text to signify what representative and

communicative speech does not say” (Roudiez in Kristeva, 1980:18). Signifiance is all about the

meaning that the reader brings and the production of that meaning by actually reading, the reader

interprets their own meaning, the act of reading is therefore an important element to post

structuralist, semiotic analysis.(Kristeva and Barthes in Allen.2002:218)

Kruger, is not concerned with being unobtrusive or in any quiet purity, she has many voices and she

wants you to hear them all, not as a politician, but as an artist. Like the wizard in the 1939 film ‘The

Wizard of Oz’, Kruger is behind the curtain pulling all the strings about things we see and arguably

know about anyway, we just perhaps don’t always realise we know, and that we are being ‘played’

by Kruger as she promotes change in her artwork, by the use of billboard technology that we are

used to seeing, on media and through marketing. (Linker, 1990)

Barbara Kruger’s mixing of image and text exploits the tension between photography’s apparent unmediated capturing of the real world and its dependence on established codes, genres and conventions. (Allen, 2000:177).

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Conclusion Any blurring of the boundaries (intertextuality) in the arts, requires that there are many voices to

be heard and multi-‐layering to be made, as can be seen in the work of the three artists chosen in

order to examine the impact or words in art. The term intertextuality stemmed at first from earlier

studies around the theories of structuralism. This term challenges the boundaries of established

modes of practice, predominantly in the visual arts, but also in other genres. (Allen, 2000).

Intertextuality does not carry the heavy weight of tradition, unlike art forms that have developed

over many decades, but offers a new journey for discovery. The creative access to challenge

existing modes of practice, means that the artists that do stray between boundaries become

controversial, which can be a bonus. The drawbacks are that as these artists are stepping away

from the establishment, like jumping off the tiger’s back, they are easily bitten by critics,

traditionalists, and often not immediately accepted by the viewer. The transvestite potter Grayson

Perry, who uses words like ‘Penis’ and other subversive text on pots, is living proof that there is a

thirst for diversity and change within the art world. Perry illustrates that by exploiting, existing

tensions and by blurring boundaries artists can capture the attention of the art world

establishments, and even go on to be recognised by the elite and to be judged winner of the Turner

Prize. When Perry went up onto the podium at Tate Britain to collect his award in 2003 he was

dressed as his alter ego Claire in a pink party dress, and stated; “It’s about time a transvestite potter

won the Turner ”. (Tate online, 2003)

Grayson Perry became a national treasure in 2013 when invited to deliver the Reith lectures, his

group of four lectures he titled, ‘Playing to the gallery’. (Reith Lectures, 2013) In these lectures he

talks about ‘democracy having bad taste’, and asks questions like ‘What are the boundaries of

contemporary art’, and, ‘who decides what is good?’

“The role of the artist every day is about making aesthetic judgments about art and the discomfort

around it is that it’s a soft problem, a subjective problem.” (Perry, Reith Lectures, 2013)

There is no empirical way to decide what is good art as Perry suggests, but for the purpose of this

thesis it is possible that art could be judged on its ability to interact and communicate meaning to

the viewer. That is what postmodernist artists are attempting to do, communicate via any means

and throughout any ‘blurring’ of any discipline.

In my practical research as an artist I am concerned with the way we look at the world around us,

and how we convert this looking into seeing. My starting point was to draw fellow passengers on

the train whilst on my commute to university, and to imagine a narrative about them.

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Drawings and what we see, according to the essayist and critic John Berger,

…can be perceived as messages, messages that can never be verbalised and are not particularly addressed to us. Is it possible to read natural appearances as texts? ...The images may be like words but there is no dialogue…perspective centres everything on the eye of the beholder, it's like a beam from a lighthouse, only instead of light travelling outwards, appearances travel in, our tradition of art called those appearances, reality. Perspective makes the eye the centre of the visible world, but the human eye can only be in one place at a time, it takes its visible world with it as it walks looking and linking to one’s own life. (Berger, BBC4, 2016)

My practice has been very much informed by the research into how the use of words in the visual

arts impact on the experience of the viewer. Looking is the easy part, perhaps it is what we as

individuals see and what we convert into meaning, our own experience, that decides what impact

an artwork has.

There is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that word with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled. (Berger, 1977:7).

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Bibliography

Allen, G (2000) Intertextuality: the New Critical Idiom, Oxford, USA and Canada: Routledge.

Barthes, Roland (1980) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, London: Vintage Books,

Random House (2006 edition).

Barthes, Roland (1967) Essay, The Death of the Author (French: La mort de l'auteur), Aspen

magazine Nos 5-‐6, 1967.

Belting, H (2002) An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body, 2nd Edition, Germany, New

Jersey, Oxford: Paderborn/Princeton university Press.

Berger, John (1981) About Looking, New York: Vintage Books, Random House.

Berger, J (1972) Ways Of Seeing, London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books Ltd.

Candida Smith, R (2006) Text and Image: Art and the Performance of Memory, New Jersey:

Routledge.

Daniel-‐McElroy, S (2002) Ian Hamilton Finlay: Maritime Works, St Ives: TATE Publishing

Erber, P (2012) The word as object: Concrete poetry, ideogram, and the materialisation of language.

From: Luso-‐Brazilian Review Volume 49, Number 2, 2012 pp. 72-‐101 [online]

Available: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/501251 [Accessed 7th October 2016]

Fuchs, R. H. (1986) Richard Long. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Thames and Hudson

Gayford, M (2002) Mysterious currents of thought, The Telegraph Art review, 27 March [online]

Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3575160/Mysterious-‐currents-‐of-‐thought.html

[Accessed 1st December 2016].

Kennedy, David (2007) Elegy: the New Critical Idiom, Oxford, USA and Canada: Routledge.

Li, Lucy (2013) The Sea, the Sea: Ian Hamilton Finlay at David Nolan. Art critical [online]

29

Available: http://www.artcritical.com/2013/06/21/ian-‐hamilton-‐finlay/ [Accessed 17th January

2017]

Linker, Kate (1990) Love for sale: The words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger, New York: Harry N.

Abrahams Incorporated

Mack, John (2003) The Museum of The Mind: Art and Memory in World Cultures, London: The British

Museum Press.

Melville, Stephen et al (1995) Vision and Textuality, London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

Morley, Simon (2003) Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art, London: Thames and

Hudson.

Perloff, M (2016) AfterImages [online Essay]

Available: http://marjorieperloff.com/essays/afterimages/ [Accessed December 5th 2016]

Perry, G. (2013) Playing to the gallery. Reith Lectures, BBC Radio Programme.

Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03969vt [Accessed 7th December 2016].

Reference.com,

What is the meaning of the quote, "I think, therefore I am"? :Descartes, R

Available: https://www.reference.com/world-‐view/meaning-‐quote-‐think-‐am-‐

fa5d19658574f84d?qo=categoryPageFeaturedContent [Accessed 23rd January 2017]

Rossington, M et al (2007) Theories of Memory, A Reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

Sleeman, J (2009) Elegiac inscription: a discussion of words in the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay and

Richard Long. Sculpture Journal, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press [online]

Available: http://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/sj.2009.6 [Accessed 5th

October 2016]

TATE online

Available: www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-‐resources/glossary/n/neo-‐concrete [Accessed December 3rd 2016] Available: www.tate.org.uk [Accessed January 9th 2017]

30

The Greek Bucolic Poets. (1912) Translated by Edmonds, J M. Loeb Classical Library Volume 28.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [online]

Available: http://www.theoi.com/Text/PatternPoems.html [Accessed 23rd January 2017]

Wallis, Clarrie (2009) Richard Long: Heaven and Earth, London: Tate Publishing.

Figures

Fig. 1 Ian Hamilton Finlay The divided Meadows of Aphrodite (with Ron Costley) 1975. Courtesy

the artist (no dimensions found).

Available: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/TGA/TGA-‐20012/TGA-‐20012-‐34-‐1_10.jpg

Fig. 2 Ian Hamilton Finlay Ship's Bells: Chrysalis -‐ Crate, with John Andrew, (2002)

Brass, 8 x 7 1/2 x 8 inches

Available:

http://www.tracywilliamsltd.com/Group%20Shows/On%20the%20Blue%20Shore%20of%20Sile

nce/Images/web/FINI001-‐Finlay-‐Ship's%20Bells%20Chrysalis-‐Crate.png

Fig. 3 Ian Hamilton Finlay, Chrysalis, 1996, bronze, 6.3 x 21.65 x 20.08 inches, edition unique.

Image courtesy of David Nolan Gallery.

Available:

http://www.artcritical.com/2013/06/21/ian-‐hamilton-‐finlay/

Fig. 4 Ferreira Gullar’s 1959 “Poema Enterrado”

Available:

http://letrasinversoreverso.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/ver-‐gullar.html?m=0

Fig. 5 Richard Long, Transference

Available:

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http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-‐on/tate-‐britain/exhibition/richard-‐long-‐heaven-‐and-‐

earth/explore-‐exhibition/richard-‐long-‐3

Fig. 6 Richard Long, A moved line in Japan

1983 Media category Print Materials used text work in red and black

Dimensions 154.0 x 103.0 cm sight; 157.3 x 106.3 x 4.3 cm frame

Credit: John Kaldor Family Collection at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

Available:

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/L2010.60/

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/collection_images/Alpha/L2010.60%23%23S.jpg

Fig. 7 Richard Long. Flash Flood 2004. Colour photograph with text, 83 x 114 cm/32.7 x 44.9 in.

Courtesy: Haunch of Venison, London. Copyright: Richard Long, 2005.

Available: https://theartstack.com/artist/richard-‐long/flash-‐flood

Fig. 8 UNTITLED (I shop therefore I Am), Figure five, (Kruger :1997)

1997 photographs silkscreen on vinyl, 120x120 courtesy Thomas Amman Zurich.

Available:

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/images/BarbaraKruger-‐I-‐Shop-‐Therefore-‐

I-‐Am-‐I-‐1987.jpg

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-‐Kruger.html

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