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Dixon Hunt (Introduction. Art Word and Image)

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90 views21 pages

Dixon Hunt (Introduction. Art Word and Image)

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Brandon Avila
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Art, Word and Image Two Thousand Years of Visual/Textual Interaction JONN DIXON HUNT DAVID LOMAS MICHAEL CoRRIS with essays by Jeremy Adler, Stephen Barber, Rex Butler and Laurence Simmons, Joseph Viscomi, Hamza Walker, Barbara Weyandt, Michael White REAKTION BOOKS >» MEGUMI ANDRADE * Published by Reaktion Books Lid 23 Grest Sotton Street, London sav ox, cx seorereaktionbooks.co-tk ished 2010 Firs p Copyright © The Contributor All rights reserved No pat of this publication may be reprachiced, stored in a retrieval system, oF transmitted, in aay form or by any means electronic, ‘mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior ppetmission of the publishers, Designed by Fina Levis Printed and bound in China by C&C Offet Printing Co. L British Library C taloguing in Publication Data Hunt, John Dison. Art, word and image: 2000 years of visual Words in art Title 11, Lomas, David. 11. orris, Michael Isms 978 1 8689 520 Introduction JOHN DIXON HUNT ' ‘The human brain, we now know, has to main capabilites ~ to review and respon to visual ull (images) in the right hernisphere and a parallel ability sn the lef: hemisphere for verbal informa tion (illus. 2)’ Persons who have suffered brain damage to one side or the other reveal thee incae pacity to manege both kinds, privileging only the Side and skill not flected bythe accident. Its also clear~a mater of everyay obserestion, perhaps — that some people havea greater apa for wos over images, while others enjoy the revere situa tion. There ae alo variables in diferent cultures and in diferent eras The Chinese writen charac. tes, for example, combines both “verbal” and ‘visual’ signifier: the form of the charocter for arden’ (ils) suggests an enclosed space with lakes, his and povillons. A thoroughly visual, rmoxiern, Western culture ~ fed on 1¥ and other photographic media ~ can bees agile with verbal Skills ‘There are also situations in which people presented with, sy an aerial view ofa place other ‘wise familiar to them, cannot quickly “ead” it, because they ace unused to the formal language of that kind of imager. Some people, similarly have dliticulty waderstanding architectural plans or Sabor mappings far the same tesson. In their turn artists have opted to perform in ‘one medium or the other, their reasons for the ‘hole’ (if choice t all) being as various as uncon- scious recognition of inherent aptitude, social or educational conditioning, or profesional oppo tunity; but the rest has often been that graphic artists celebrate visual skills and visual achieve ‘ments at the expense of the verbal, while writers ‘who perform well in words denigrate visual per rmances, This seems ta be espacally true of ‘those who comment upon artiste matters ~ erties rather than those engaged in making art, lence there has arisen a kind of puritanical formalism, of which Lessing's separation of the aptitudes’ of painting and poetry in his Laacobi (1766) may be a major expression: Painting, by vie ofits syinbols or means of Imitation, which it can combine in space only, ust renounce the clement of time entitely, progressive actions... cannot be considered to Delong among its subjects. Painting must he content with coexistent aetions or with mere bodies which, by their position, permit us to conjecture an action {ie imply 3 narrative) Poetry. on the other hand Tere have been times, too, when for one re son or another emphasis was placed exclusively on fone medium. The period of feanoclasm in the Fastera church during the eighth and ninth ect turies necessarily sw a privileging of verbal aver visual epresentations of sacred narratives, 36 does 2 continuing Jewish and Islamic prohibition of 5 2 The ay the ran mages; there were other periods, too, when icon phobia banished or severely tediiced the ineklence of religious images? And one effect ofthese bursts. of antagonism was to give greater authority to the efficacy oF words in performing narrative oF explanatory functions, which in ite tarn bolstered their authority asa resource within images when se were allowed or returned to favour. Rane i Any,are the times when the reverse was tues when words were denigrated at the expense of images throughout a whole culture Twentieth- century modemism also ma iselt conspicuous, fora while at last, by a partisan and ii, austere determination to make each art abide by the materials deemed endemic to its thes paint= ings observed the lat surface of the canvas and the deployment of pigments, eschewing any referen (by way of narrative or representation) to items and events outside ital! Likewise, the art film wished to Fee itself from literary models. Writes, though less proseriptvely, applied themselves to narrative ~ words in ime = and even to matters as rious as sound o¢ mise en page. that is to sy ‘manipulations ofthe formal properties and fanc= tions of words and their inscription amd print though here, with the fascination far hove words were presented on the page, ia canerete pocty fi example, the vis dene impact was as eracial as the ive oF connotatve value of the language. And there is also to be noted the phenamenan of words used as graphie shapes and Forms, or the practice of one art via another, as in Robert Mocri’s sequence of Memory Draven (1963), 08 in what is termed figure poetry, where the cont uration of the words also tris to represent the ‘object about which they speak” Bur it iealso necessary to remember thot, just as most people enjoy an adequate skill in both verbal snd visual aptitudes, so there have been artists who found both media equally attractive and eloquent and seized upon both opportanties to advance Uscir own particular concerns. Sometinies they simply worked in both media om different acca sions or ~ lake and Klee suggest themsclves — relied on both simultaneously within the same 3 Chinese carter ru ergy suggesting open pk connie pd cht ike al bad RI, WORD AND IMAGE piece of work. A partial list of this otherwise inf nitely miscellaneous group would include Michelangelo, William Blake, Dante Gabriel Rosset, Theophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Eugene Fromentin, Wyndham Lewis, Henri Michaux, Paul Kleeand Kurt Schwitters, 38 wells most emblems tists graphic designers and advertisers, 1 The theme of this book isthe use of words in visu al aris. It is not, therefore, about its converse: literary descriptions of visual things, or any sich kphrastic endeavours. Fascinating as those are, they confront the duality of verbal/viual from the ‘opposite direction from that pursted here, Hovsever, it must be suid thatthe scholarship and. criticism of ekphrisis and ther literary invoca- tions of the visual scem to be more profuse and ‘more sophisticated than considerationsof the word in visval ats Therefore, in order to provide some- thing of an entry into this rather dasmting and certainly vast territory Gi not exactly tera incogni= fa), and atthe same tine ia an attempt to map its scope it may be worth discriminating fore ways in which viswal artists have used words. Very schemat- ically, these are: 1. Explicily: when words, decipherable and mean ngfil by their own account outside the graphic rmesliom, are included in or on the visual arowork, This iste main focus and stimulus lor enquiry in this book, since without the example of visual art actually employing and inscribing words the other possibilities of association and use of the verbal ‘would be far less compelling and would indeed have little raion dite, Its only when we recog nize that words are daiiberately inscribed within visual artworks that we can become aware of and appreciate their other, Tess diteet presences, However itis aso clear that the explicit presence fof acwal words ie most evident in two distinet petiods of visual art: during very early periods, prior tothe invention of printing, and in the post- modern eta, when (perhaps or ravanche from ocitinaire modernism) vstal artists sought involve verbal elements, Or perhaps they sought 1 subdue words’ habitual role of denotation and ccomnotation in order better to promote their INTRODUCTION ‘mevely physical shape and formal presence Bervecen those two, there i evidence, nonethe- less, for a strong commitment of many artists to the implicit reliance upon words. [ti a8 if the expected and explicit alance af word we has gone undercover, though the physical absence (of words from images did not mean that thei role in the full experience of visual art was negligible Av leat two particulaly rich periods for wis ar = the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance ~ sug gest how this was se. Much medieval art addressed the history and traditions of Christianity, where the word assumed 2 central position: not only was te Word mud flesh and dwelt among us; bat the verbal became the medium of spreading that word, its sacred texts and commentaries upon them, like the gospels. ar Paul's epistles Consequently, when artists chose to image ‘Christian event or idea, the presonce of the word was either explicitly entered upon the surface of the artwork or emphatically assumed as sustaining ity visual performances. Similarly, a wholly new opportunity existed for pointers inthe Renaissance to consult veebal nar: ratives circulating in printed books for the frst times these certainly now included! the writen and oral traditions of the Christian faith, but also, more importantly, all the texts of elasial authors, With their eich repertoire of mythical events and historical narratives. Paintings were inevitably nourished on this new verbal repertoire Tris there- fore undeniable that, at leist in these seo instances, the word did not have to appear within the image wo be an ineluctable part of the experi= cence of that image. Those visual occasions of strong and explicit roliance upon the verbal must be distinguished from those many accasions in which almost any ‘verbal image ca cict some verbal response, often sentimental and redundant to the formal work. Reyond, therefore, explicit appearances of words, there are thre further ways fn which aoe for the verbal can be identified it can be implicit ith food reason or sith less), it can work in a supple ‘mentary Fashion, o, in the richest cense,tsrole

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