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Just so you know, below I am saying "literature" to mean written fiction art and "art" to mean visual art. Which raises kind of an interesting question, is there fiction and non-fiction visual art? But nevermind talking about that. Unless someone wants to.
Husb and I have gotten a few days of fruitful discussion from this thread, so I thought I could share.... Right off the bat, I was saying to him that it's always visual art I think of when I think about theories of art & that got a brisk "Of course, because you don't know art the way you know literature. You know your favorite writers as individuals, but you only know artists as types." To which I said, "Oh!"
So I've been trying to resolve what Loomis has said ("theory is written, so it's always going to find the most play in an art that is also written") and what Lentil said about the "the addition of a peripheral discourse to the visual arts." Because they seem to be talking at opposite points: one is that literature is more likely to generate theory than art, because the former shares a common discourse with theory (i.e., written language); the other is that art is more likely to generate theory (my original position), because of the necessity of converting visual to verbal discourse.
What I got to was, it seems to me that there's a critical difference between "theorizing" and "verbalizing." Literature doesn't have to be verbalized, obviously. So literature may have a closer relationship to theory, because they're both in words. But their verbal basis aside, theory and literature are not identical languages... and many are the writers who can't or won't theorize about their work. And as regards art, I think that I'm seeing verbalization as contingent and theorization (?) as necessary --not necessarily by the artist. But I would think that your artist is minimally operating from an internalized, non-verbalized theory; and also I would think that there's a number of artists who know very well what they're about.
I was also thinking about this that Plums said:
I have this feeling the visual languages are just as fundamental, if not more so, but that we don't recognize that we're using them.
Which I am wholly in agreement with. I think it's fairly universal in schools that language and literature is a requisite and art is an elective, and I suppose that's pragmatism for you. But let me get myself into total trouble and make an analogy between verbal/visual... male/female... seen/unseen. (I'm not saying that this is my view of reality, you can think of this as a particular instance of "virtual reality" --you know, a helmet that you put on for a game.) I'm thinking specifically about how your reading of which entity is empowered flip-flops back and forth --e.g., {"men"} obviously run the world, {"women"} rule from the bowels of the earth and so forth (with the extra symbology to indicate how superloaded those terms are here.)
What I'm getting at, I guess, is that the notion that visual art ought to strike at the gut level is an artifact. With all due respect. And where this leaves me is with an extreme interest in art theory --philosophy and technique.
For starters, maybe --I'm still reading Gombrich-- a) is it true and b) doesn't it blow your mind that a person discovered perspective? (Gombrich says that it was Brunelleschi in the 15th century.) Okay, then look at this picture by Uccello:
Look at all the things pointing away from the viewer. Look at the dead knight in the lower left-hand corner! This picture makes me just laugh and laugh, and not condescendingly at all because I just figured out *tonight* how to draw a face in 3/4 profile (looking down!) & by 11PM my notebook is utterly covered in Shy Di's. Uccello, gi's a big hug! |
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