Alfonso Chavez-Lujan 5.21.2013 The Limits of Visual Representation and Language as Explanation for Abstract Ideas Abstract This paper deals directly with the theory that visual representation and the written language that accompanies it, supplied either beforehand or after, are separate entities. Art and language may support each other, but they can also be contradictory. Both art and written language work separately from one another, and if they are the same, then it is redundant to have both. Throughout this thesis, I will be exploring a range of abstract ideas; examining and testing the limits of language and visual representation in explaining such ideas. Essentially, the end result will be using visual representation and written language as material in an impossible pursuit of an abstract idea that evades complete comprehension. Can abstract ideas ever be perspicuously shared through visual representation and experience? If not, can language, specifically in its written form, be more pellucid in its attempt to make the most abstract idea understood? Do abstract ideas favor one mode over the other, language before visual representation, or visual representation before language? If both fail, are there other ways in which abstract ideas can be made external? Separate from abstraction, what are ideas in their truest form? Can they take a form? Can they be held? Can they be seen? Can they be owned? If so, who owns ideas? Where do we store them? Is it possible for ideas to exist outside the mind? If so, where do they come from? Where is their origin? I do not believe that language and visual representation in art is adequate enough to make ideas known or understood, mainly because language and visual representation are often employed in hopes of illustrating ideas or explaining them rather than actually existing as the idea itself. To further their inadequacies, visual representation and language do not work autonomously. They often involve one another and are extremely dependent on one another to support each other's point. They exist for the purpose of each other. For instance, it is often that a visual representation is accompanied with a wall
text and an artist statement explaining the artist's intentions. This accompanied language, either produced by the artist or whomever else, can either support or contradict the visual representation it explains, and in its worst manifestation, it can do exactly the same kind of work the visual representation does, which renders the work entirely redundant. This cycle can also happen in reverse. It is often that language pre-determines how a visual representation will work, often explicating thought out conceptual ideas as illustration or becoming the visual representation for poetic prose and emotional states of being. If language had been sufficient in working out the artistic idea or emotional state, the artistic idea would not have required to take any other form apart from language. In this regard, one could say that any idea requires more than one form to make itself realized and that it makes an idea stronger and more universal in that it can be found in more instances than one. It could also be seen in a way that most language and visual representations of such ideas fall short at being the ideas; that the idea itself does not require explication to be rendered in multiple lingual and visual forms. However, it is the constant attempt of artists and philosophers as a whole in making different forms of work that always fail at being the idea. In this regard, most works made, and most endeavors at explanation of said works, are all attempts at an achievement of ideas in their totality, but the ideas themselves consistently evade complete comprehension and objectification. This consciousness is not advocating against communication, nor acting nihilistic in that all these attempts are meaningless. Attempts at communication and the use of language and visual representation only heighten the importance of that which is being insufficiently represented, ideas. Language and visual representation are like planets in a solar system, and 'ideas' are the sun, that which language and visual representations revolve around. The relationship between philosophy and art is a perfect example of language and visual
representation revolving around an idea that has difficulty being fully understood. Can philosophy exist without the need for existence outside oneself? Are philosophical thoughts only made true or more justified when they are exemplified in real life via objects and other experiences? In Dieter Roelstraete's article, What is Not Contemporary Art?: The View from Jena, Roelstraete works out the relation of philosophy and art in hopes of understanding the situation of art at the moment while also understanding the future of art as a whole. Overall, Roelstraete operates under a pessimistic approach to the subject which she justifies with her conclusion stating that the current situation of art is, in fact, not art. She argues that the good years have passed and the good years will come, but as of now, art is not good. Aside from her opinion on contemporary art and its occlusion by a system of culturetechnology-management-sexuality, she makes an apt point in her relation of the history of philosophy and the history of art. In her article, she states that most philosophical arguments and theories are justified through the subject of art. According to Roelstraete, every major branch of philosophy has a theory of aesthetics not solely for the purpose of genuine interest in art or the realm of the aesthetic, but instead out of need to link philosophical discussions to real events.1 She further explicates how many philosophical arguments would fade or become arbitrary, become ghosts as Paul de Man would say, unless they passed through a moment of the aesthetic or had a phenomenal appearance in art.2 In this regard, art is the sensory appearance of the idea, a theory made concrete or a concept embodied. The only difficulty with her article is the fact that she fails to concretely state which one (philosophy or art) has more power in affecting the other. Rather, it is not known whether philosophy creates art, or art creates philosophy. It is only suggested through her rhetorical inquiry as to what our world would look 1 Roelstraete, Dieter. What is Not Contemporary Art?: The View from Jena. e-flux journal #11 december 2009. 2 Roelstraete, Dieter. What is Not Contemporary Art?: The View from Jena. e-flux journal #11 december 2009.
like without art and further stating that there would be nothing to talk about without the existence of art.3there are many artists that deal with this problem and work between language and visual representation as a discourse to describe the ideas they are interested in. Joseph Kosuth and Mel Bochner present strong examples of such a method. 36 Photographs and 12 Diagrams, 1966 During the the late 60's and throughout the 70's, Kosuth and Bochner were two prominent artists at the beginning of the conceptual art movement. The conceptual art movement was a reaction to ideas of minimalism and post-minimalism, which were art movements dependent on objectivity in a very literal sense. Conceptual art, at its beginnings, is often defined as a movement away from the 3 Roelstraete, Dieter. What is Not Contemporary Art?: The View from Jena. e-flux journal #11 december 2009.
object and the dematerialization of the art object, becoming an art movement about the ideas of art, process, and language.4 It was art that thought, or, art that made you think. Bochner moved away from traditional minimalism because he became more interested in the ideas that drove his work (i.e. seriality) than the actual objects he was making. 36 Photographs and 12 Diagrams(1966) stemmed out of a compromise to show a minimalist structure that would change its shape every day based off a series of equations. The work was not about the sculpture, but that the seriality of the equations would not be understood without a sequence of different sculptures being made. He could not show the sculptures in the gallery either, because the point of the sculpture was to change everyday, and the audience of his piece would not know what the sculpture would look like from one day to the next unless visits were made on a daily basis. A solution was reached in the form of a compromise because he was able to show a sequence of different sculptures in photographs with the planned diagrams explaining their sequence. As such, one could now come to see the serial nature of the work and understand the idea through a juxtaposition of different photographed sculptures and their diagrams.5 Although a successful work, Bochner did not agree with the illusionism of photography and he never was able to create literalist photography as he had wanted to. Throughout most of his career, Bochner was greatly interested in making works that were literal representations of the ideas he worked with. He often reached for an ultimate transparency in which the work he made was not something it was not supposed to be, but was to be exactly what he intended it to be. But he never found solace in photography, nor in language. Two pieces that best exemplify this frustration are Photography Cannot Record Abstract Ideas (1969/1998) and Language is Not Transparent (1970). Joseph Kosuth's, One and Three Chairs (1965) is another exemplary piece that plays with the complications in 4 Rothkopf, Scott. Mel Bochner Photographs. Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge. 2002. Print. ix. 5 Rothkopf, Scott. Mel Bochner Photographs. Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge. 2002. Print. 12.
representation, language, and the use of reality in reference to an idea. Photography Cannot Record Abstract Ideas (1969/1998) Language is Not Transparent (1970)
One and Three Chairs (1965) One and Three Chairs (1965) is an installation comprised of a wooden chair, a photograph of the wooden chair in the the exhibition space printed at the same size of the physical chair, and a large photostat of a dictionary definition of a chair. In no way is this work actually about the chair, the aesthetics of the chair, or even an idea of a chair. This work is merely referential to a larger idea surrounding the question of knowability. How we come to understand and know this chair is the main question being investigated. With the juxtaposition of the chair, the photograph of the chair, and the dictionary definition, Kosuth puts physical presence, representation, and language at odds with one another. Which of the three takes more precedence? Is it the physical chair, its representation, or the language of the chair that defines Kosuth's piece presented before us? One might think that the physical
chair takes precedence over the others due to the physical chair being framed by two dimensional pieces, possibly making this piece an explication of Plato's theory of the couch, stating, 'this physical chair is the real thing.' If so, the language and visual representations of the chair are only possible because of the physical chair, which would make both language and visual representations two or three times removed from an idea of a chair.' But would this be right? Is the photograph really an imitation of the chair? Does the language in the dictionary definition redundantly describe what is already shown to us in the physical chair before us? Is an idea of a chair really dependent on a physical manifestation? Or would a chair exist without an initial idea of what a chair could be? Kosuth wants the viewer to ask themselves these questions when experiencing this piece, with the first question always being, 'what am I looking at?' To emphasize that this piece has nothing to do with the aesthetics of the chair, Kosuth has continually stated his refusal to make work that references anything near formalism. The specific spatial context in this particular work emphasizes the importance of the idea versus the formal qualities of the work itself. Kosuth states in an interview, I liked that the work itself was something other than simply what you saw. By changing the location, the object, the photograph and still having it remain the same work was interesting. It meant you could have an art work which was that idea of an art work, and its formal components were not important. I felt I had found a way to make art without formal components being confused for an expressionist composition. The expression was in the idea, not the form the forms were only a device in the service of the idea. 6 In this sense, Kosuth is affirming the parallel relationship between philosophy and art, in this case using form as a vehicle for thought where the form can change, but the thought will still be the same. Regardless of their visual practice and use of language, Mel Bochner's and Joseph Kosuth's 6 Kosuth, Joseph. Art after Philosophy and After. MIT Press, Cambridge. 1991. Print. 50.
work are prime examples of 'idea work', work that revolves around 'ideas' but will never be the 'ideas' in and of themselves. The work either shows itself in its shortcomings, or in other words, 'between the lines'. For instance, in Bochner's 36 Photographs and 12 Diagrams(1966), the work is has nothing to do with the visual nor is it about the formal qualities of sculpture. This work was about seriality, a trend of minimalism at the time where artists used mathematical equations and sequences determine the work they made without making their mathematical sequences known. In Bochner's case, he wanted his work to be about the seriality itself and not really about the sculptures that were produced. In this piece, the serial sequence, the idea, is not directly in the work, but it lies in the relation from photograph to photograph, and numerical graph to numerical graph. The meaning of this work does not exist solely within the formal qualities of the work, but rather in the idea that will never be fully present, forever hiding between the relations. In the end, Bochner's idea stemming from seriality is more comprehensible than Joseph Kosuth's work in One and Three Chairs (1965), due to the larger philosophy of questioning knowability. But Kosuth's piece functions similarly to Bochner's. The photograph of the chair, the chair, and the photostat definition of a chair work in the same way that Bochner's photographs of different sculptures paired with the numerical graphs enable the viewer to infer what the work is about. Only in Bochner's case, the intention is not to place the numerical graphs at odds with the photographs, but instead to use both in combination to support each other towards the larger idea, exemplified by the totality of the piece being within one frame. Kosuth on the other hand creates a rupture in the understanding of his work by putting each piece at odds with one another, due to his non hierarchical placement of each theoretical component. What is consistent with both works, is that the idea that inspires them and therefore what they are about, is not exactly present in the work.
Both of these pieces are examples of ideas having a phenomenal appearance in art, rather than the art being the idea. Both are valid attempts at being the ideas that drive them, but never actually being the ideas in and of themselves. Whether all art is about ideas or not, attempts like these become all the more difficult when dealing with ideas that stem from a more abstract starting point. Abstraction, in art, and in theory, eludes complete understanding. It is in its definition to never be fully known or understood, for if abstraction were to be understood in its completeness, it would no longer be abstraction, it would be its opposite, science. For this very reason, abstraction abides by no rules, other than its interpretation as misunderstood, confusing, and because of such, considered to be devoid of any real meaning or thought. But it has more meaning than others can recognize. It was during a recent hallucinogenic trip that abstraction, in its visual sense, acquired a new meaning for me. Our conversations were of the usual hallucinogenic sort, pretty humorous and almost thoughtless; pure synesthesia and all about the sensory perception. It was not until we looked at a friend's abstract detail of a navy blue marble wall that an actual mindful conversation took place. From describing what we were seeing (mainly feline qualities) in the image, we went on to discuss language, me in particular asking about my friend's native language, Korean, and asking if I could see what Korean looked like when it was in its textual form. From there, we continued on with discussions about language and art, specifically in their relation to one another, but to go into any of the details from that large conversation would serve it an injustice. Within this situation, it was the initial misunderstanding of the visual abstraction that pushed our conversation away from meaningless rants about our synesthesia and so on. The point of abstraction is that it isn't necessarily something to fully comprehend. It is the failure of its comprehension that leads to more inquisition, more investigation into other things that are
not fully known or understood. Abstraction is one of the fundamental beginnings of knowledge, inspiring one to make sound out of noise, order out of chaos, sound into language. Further, moments with true abstraction are sublime experiences, enlivening people with the want to communicate about the experience and share what was thought or felt about it. There is not necessarily exact ways in which abstraction can be successfully created, or an ability to know when and where it exists, but it can be a method in which one can question a presumed norm and think of different ways at looking at ideas. In this sense, it is the responsibility of an artist not only to question what art is, but also how one can abstract abstraction from the traditional visual and linguistic forms that commonly define it. Abstraction is not a look, but a way of thinking and seeing in non-normative ways. This project was an exploration into the limits of language and visual representation in explaining abstract ideas, which also questions foundations of knowledge based systems, i.e. the experience with an external world outside ourselves specifically in visual phenomena, and that which is communicated through some form of human created language. By using the sun as the subject of this project, I have shown how something that has never eluded some sort of comprehension, can be unknown through the abstraction of a question. In turn, I have abstracted a concrete subject/object into a larger question of what it means to truly know that subject/object, inspiring the mind to question the possibility of something thought of as impossible. The subject/object of interest is the Sun, its centrality in this project is due to its existence being common knowledge and virtually unquestioned, making it the perfect concrete foundation from which to base my investigation. The abstract idea I created from this concrete foundation is in the form of a question. Where is the Sun? Specifically, is it possible to always know where it is, and if there could be
direct line of sight of it at all times, what direction would we look? By asking these questions on a daily basis, I would go throughout my days taking pictures in the direction I thought the sun to be at any moment, followed by its descriptive equivalent in written form. As if the Sun and my eyes could cut through everything between us like x-ray vision, my photographs are seemingly banal or badly composed, as are the written descriptions that accompany them, because the medium of photography and the medium of written language can only go so far as to actually explain the abstraction for which I aim. Specifically using the medium of photography, the photograph is shown as neither a mirror nor a window into the truth, for at times the images that are produced from this project can have the sun positioned directly in the center of each frame, but at other times it will be picture of a table detail or corner of the room. It is only within the context of the entire project that each image gains its individual meaning and purpose. The written descriptions also lack the depth of the overall project, but in a different way than the photographs. The photographs are straightforward, images of what is within in the frame at that moment in time. But the written language gets into details that are otherwise unknown to the viewer, those which exist outside the constraints of the photographic frame. The descriptions could be endless, but in the practice of the snapshot moment, it is difficult to poignantly describe the contextual direction of the sun without using basic repetitious language such as, towards the sun, looking at the sun, etc. The language within this project proves to be as insufficient as the images they parallel, dislodging the assumption that language can be more straightforward and literal to counter the shortcomings of visual representation. To emphasize this parallel, the final product and installation of this project is presented in the
form of postcards displayed on a rotating postcard rack. Each postcard documents a moment of representation in an answer to my abstraction; a black and white image on one side, and a scan of the handwritten equivalent on the other side. By placing the image and its written counterpart on the same postcard, it further shows how both are attempts at the same work. The postcard rack is referential to the rotation of our own planet and our orbit around the sun, positioning every postcard and every moment of this project as revolving planets. In addition, the shadow created by the postcard rack also holds significance within the presentation. The 'Shadow-Tip Technique' is an approach which uses a stick in a ground and the shadow it casts on the ground from the sun to determine the direction of true North and to also document the change in Earth's axis in relation to the sun. Alongside the theme of dislodging knowledge based systems and their tools, I also want to dislodge a realm of science that proves to be more sufficient than the mediums I pose as parallels in this project. This postcard rack will be lit using multiple lights causing multiple shadows from the postcard rack on the ground, which in turn makes the idea of using one shadow to determine direction an impossibility, therefore disorienting the viewer. In its visual manifestation, this exhibition is not intended as a literal guide of the constant position of the sun, nor as a pursuit of beauty; its intention is purely based on the idea itself. In interpreting the work in a simply aesthetic and design based manner, the viewer falls into the widely held notion that art is an absolute truth, whereas the reality remains the opposite. Both literally and conceptually, art is an impossible challenge, a perpetual struggle to make something out of nothing. Art, as a medium, as a mediator, exists in the space between the artist and the audience, infinitely situated between the experience of creation and the creation of experience.
Image side of Postcards Written side of Postcards
Bibliography Zelevansky, Lynn. Objects, Systems, Concepts. Beyond Geometry. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 2004. Rothkopf, Scott. Mel Bochner Photographs. Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge. 2002. Roelstraete, Dieter. What is Not Contemporary Art?: The View from Jena. e-flux journal #11 december 2009. Kosuth, Joseph. Art after Philosophy and After. MIT Press, Cambridge. 1991. Print. 50.