Work in Progress: it`s as well that at the very point of opening this new website a note must be made that this is an ongoing site that will pick up my work in progress very quickly after it has been completed in the "studio" (I use the term "studio" loosely), that the comments made by Dave and Kate are warmly received, as will further notes and remarks to which I will respond when I can. Each page of Finnegans Wake is in line for work of a "visual" nature and the Larger Mother Work (ALP) is the source of these smaller (but still in real terms huge) prints. It would be good to see them printed. One question for the Forum is this: How important do people feel language is for the future of Art and its Technology?

You ask a question about the importance of language to the future of art. The words language, future and art are all problematic. Let me try to narrow the focus. Language, of course, is implicated in every thought we have about anything. Are we talking about a specific relationship between art and language ? Is there is a difference between this specific relationship and that between language and everything else ? Are we asking whether art can stand on its own? A specific art object from another time and place of which we are ignorant can be a mystery. Without the context of its cultural setting we can only guess at its original significance. Yet it could be argued that its significance simply changes when it leaves its original context. An ancient object in a modern context for example can still be appreciated for those qualities that strike our modern sensibilities. Does the question become,"How can language change one`s perception, insight and value judgements of an art object and how important are these changes?" ?

Thanks for the correspondence: of course you are right - language is inextricable from all we do, have been and will become, and though this appears a rather dumb or plainly stupid “observation” as such, we tend to forget that like breathing we are always in language in our life. This has become critical in the visual arts, however, since language in the form of literature, history of art, poetry, philosophy, critical theory and so forth has become virtual – language and “special” language uses as in the disciplines or ‘arts’ noted above plays little or no part in teaching or in the field of the visual arts today as far as I am aware. Our “modern sensibilities” are not better, so to speak, from sensibilities belonging to former eras: they are different – that’s all. Language makes art important or unimportant, not the art itself alone, not the object alone. Visual Art has become a dumb show as even the latest TV production narrated by Robert Hughes on the tragedy that is consumerism and financial gain in the name of art has left the body of art bled dry by amateur millionaires. The turn towards art can only come through attendance to thinking and making students of the visual arts aware of the literary and philosophical field it was until relatively recently when art’s centre, as it were, moved to the USA. I hope this continues the discussion: my answer to your last question is that language must always change our perceptions on works of art so long as there is thought connected with the language used. As in any language-game (Wittgenstein) some things are pertinent and can be shown to be skillful and thoughtful in one game and irrelevant or thin in another, and so forth.

I was talking to a PhD student the other day about assessment in Art education. She couldn`t see that it was possible to have objective standards about something whose significance was entirely subjective; that is the commonly held view of an intelligent non-specialist. We know the object we call a work of art is relatively stable, subject to physical and biological degradation perhaps but something that will persist for a generation or two. Our conception of it as an art object on the other hand seems highly unstable. Without the object itself changing, being told it was a "fake" would devalue it, a hostile piece of art criticism could reduce its impact, an insightful comment might make it "come alive" for someone. It means something different to everyone and what it means changes over time. Is it possible today to identify an informed centre or any kind of centre at which the connections between an art work and for e.g.. literature and philosophy could be explored and used to help locate it and stabilise it, at least for a specialist. If students of the arts aren`t studying the connections between music, literature, history, poetry and philosophy; if the voice of the buyer is drowning out all other forms of judgement; how is it possible for the situation to change? Are we heading to a situation where all art, as soon as it is made, becomes no more than a subject for archaeological speculation. Or are artists themselves finding ways to avoid this ? Many contemporary works make their own connections with social process and environment for example. While others are transient events, bracketing themselves, as fleeting as the language games that define them as art.

Assessment in art education is in many ways quite farcical particularly when it is the visual work, painting or sculpture that is being assessed. Of course subjectivity and objectivity can be brought to bear on the work of art, the student’s relationship with the work, their creative and intellectual connection with art, its histories, its critical and philosophical propensities to become more than a sum of its parts, the students attitude to work or the work ethic and their reading including their ability to speak well and bring about a discourse concerning the relationship between what they are creating and how this work can continue and grow. Under tutelage, the lecturer(s) want to know, among other things of course, if the student, in their view, could indeed carry the work on after graduation. This is commonplace and is at least a basis on which to discuss the work and to assess its mark against the marks of other students. A work of art is certainly not something that is “entirely subjective” anymore than a piece of writing or a work of architecture is “entirely subjective”. Creativity always functions inside a language and a context even if it seems at first ‘outrageous” and “outside” of a “canon” or a “way of going on” or what we usually call a tradition: even Finnegans Wake and Duchamp’s Fountain function as objective and also subjective instruments of artistic endeavour but such works as these show themselves as masterful only through the function of thought and reading. By and large Duchamp has not been understood, and it is a pity that this has happened since his “readymades” for instance, have been thought to be the precursors to such works as those made by Hirst and Koons among others, yet clearly (after studying Duchamp) we come to see that this is totally wrong and worse – misleading. Duchamp was fascinated by language and all of his works being brought together through language, notes, titles, scripts, essays, jottings: Duchamp is the answer to your question: “Is it possible today to identify an informed centre or any kind of centre at which the connections between an artwork and for e.g. literature and philosophy could be explored and used to help locate it and stabilize it, at least for a specialist”. Derrida would say were he alive perhaps: “Duchamp is a centre that is in all the Margins of the work of art”. Students of the visual arts are in position of dealing with some of the most difficult concepts of mind and thought in regard to different kinds of writing and langue besides dealing with the Visual, but perhaps one of the greatest hindrances to progress in the visual arts are the tools that are used to create it like paint, brushes, and other traditional means of “expressing oneself”. Traditions need testing. The first thing students think is: where is the paint, where is the canvas! Surely one would rather ask if the student has ideas! Language again.

I`m not sure what you mean by "This is commonplace" after a description of a depth of possibilities for assessment that sound anything but commonplace. But let`s accept that it is possible to make an intelligent assessment of the qualities of students. I`m more interested in the work of art, which you say is "certainly not entirely subjective". Of course you are right. I claimed only that the significance of the work was subjective. What a piece of writing means to me, the qualities of a building beyond its function and the experience of looking at a painting are certainly subjective. While Duchamp`s "Snow shovel" certainly has objective qualities, they don`t identify it as a work of art. There is nothing to distinguish between the one in the museum and the one in the store. It is my inverted commas that distinguish the work as art. Sometimes it seems language is all we have. On the other hand is the same true, to the same degree, about a painting by Cézanne? Language underpins everything we know, before even we look at his painting. But we can note objective qualities that distinguish it from lesser paintings. So when you asked your original question about the importance of language for the future of art, is the answer partly that it depends on the kinds of art produced ? Many visual artists claim to communicate something that words cannot. The question for me is, is there a difference between ; the relationship between experience in general and language on the one hand and the relationship between art and language on the other ? Do you think that art that isn`t cognisant of its relationship with language is just art that doesn`t progress beyond Duchamp. Are we grinding to a halt ?

Hi. What I said about some of the criteria for lecturer assessment being a commonplace is merely that such means of identifying quality or of qualities in the work and the student being meritable or not are more or less standardized: what other means of achieving a grade could be brought to bear on an assessment that is intended to come up with a list of grades for works of art? (or for the performance of a Ballet Dance or musical recital in Schools of Dance or Music?). A certain “technical” gift is expected, a technical know-how, but don’t forget that language games also play an important role in the outcomes of such viewing and assessing: language games among people assessing are essential to the general overall game of pronouncing on merit. As a student you know you are in a position of being assessed all the time otherwise why take a BA(Hons) or any other form of examination outside of the regular school system? This is a language game you enter into right from the start even if nobody actually says: “Now you have entered into a game” and you will be assessed through means that lie somewhere below the lecturers actual debating consciousness as such. If what you mean by “subjective experience” is “these feelings, sensations I have are mine” nobody could deny it, but I think you mean much more than this, and since objectivity or room to think through language are by far the most compelling sources by which means one can build a greater sense of oneself and therefore of “subjectivity” it seems natural to suggest that the more reading and writing one does the greater your own sense of what “subjectivity is yours” can be accommodated in all its building and swelling forms. Subjectivity and objectivity are interchangeable and one creates an architecture or a physical and mental environment through the art of learning that broadens your own capacity to see and to “understand” the work of art from various perspectives rather than from a point of view that states “I know what I like”. By your questions you are showing a great deal of interest in the issue of art and language, and that knowledge you have – how did you get it? There are subtle ideas in your question that reveal your own reading and your own very clear knowledge of the work of art as a “problem” in Modernism that was never quite the same “problem”, as it were, before Modernism. So that engaging critically presupposes reading, gathering information and thinking things through as well as debate, self-assessing abilities, finding oneself with what might seem (and are indeed) endless problems and quandaries concerning art, art history and theory and, yes, philosophical points of view since Art is an ongoing process like all the other key humanities subjects.
When it comes to, say, Duchamp’s “Snow Shovel”, the title Duchamp gave it was “In Advance of the Broken Arm”, which might imply that when digs with such a shovel there are likely to be hard objects beneath the snow that one cannot necessarily see, and that digging too hard with the shovel might bring about a “Broken Arm”. If one thinks of this merely as a tardy pun or attempted joke without getting to grips with the entirety of Duchamp’s oeuvre, which means all of his writings as well as his other “readymades”, his Notes from different periods of his life from 1914 onwards through to the 1960’s, the “Snow Shovel” will remain nothing more, so to speak, nothing transcendental then, and will simply remain a mystery as to it’s being called a work of art. Seen with Duchamp’s texts and his notions about the readymade, photography, the realms of technology and science in which he was deeply fascinated throughout his life, the importance of poetry and the rift between poetry and philosophy – meaning and truth “against” aesthetic delight or interest – and much more: like Derridian Deconstruction, semiotics and “lines of flight” (that Deleuze and Guattari discuss in their various and interesting publications), one begins to find and see the links between the plastic object and what I would probably be inclined now to call “plastic writing”. Duchamp’s notes all point to word-play and object-play: theoretically the objects and works he produced are “hinged” in the metaphorical sense that his words or writings then help the individual to position his works not only in different mental places each time one considers them or ‘looks at them’, but also that if one looks at his oeuvre as a whole we find ourselves arranging (being arrangers and protagonists) in a vast enterprise that is held together by elastic strips in such a way that works “fold” into other works, link with other works, and are thus poetically and philosophically challenging as a mind game. Remember Duchamp was almost a full time chess player and played chess on the international stage for many years. True, he lost more games than he won and drew more games than he lost, but he played many masters and beat them – he was not an amateur so to speak – he was a highly respected player.

The Cézanne question (which could also relate to other painters) also has a question concerning his writings and his claims or the quandaries he raises about painting as an art in his letters. Beyond these, however, we must also be aware, as we must with every artist who had been used as a model or example of good (or great) practice that he has also been written about a great deal. His works have a particular style or manner that one likes, inherently I suppose, and one somehow comprehends. But again words and language are there when we begin even to think through the images or the image we are looking at. We attend to the work at hand and seek for terms to apply to the “solidity” of his work and the “objects” in them. When we look for reasons why things in his pictures look kind of wonky, rather than suggesting that he can’t paint properly or there must have been something wrong with his eyes, we defer judgement because (1) his work is seen in galleries – big galleries, (2) he has been called “The Father of Modern Art” so a paternal and masterful figure, and (3) there is something in his works that one can’t quite put one’s finger on but when they are seen all together in a book or in a one man retrospective, they seem to hold together as somehow being of a “type”. A learning seems have been going on concerning such seemingly simple things as “shapes”, “colour”, “composition”, “patterns”, “chiaroscuro”, cool colours, warm colours, and other such formal criteria that one used to learn as a student of the visual arts. The picture plane is stressed and again the issue of “truth” and “poetry” come into view as being under pressure since paint and canvas are here being brought into the open as what they are while simultaneously the grip of the “real” (what’s out in front of Cézanne) and what he sees is tauntingly unlike paint and canvas. The history of representation is here found to have a problem that verges clearly on the Platonic model of what is real and what is unreal, placing a stress on our imagination and just what part the imagination plays in such a struggle between the real and the “seeming”. All visual artists if you like, and not merely artists alone by any means, have problems with issues like: “my visual work is uniquely mine, and is indeed unique, (more words you will note of course) and words cannot say what my visual work says”, which is as much as saying I think “painting is not writing poetry or writing a letter or writing a dissertation on art” which is simply tautological. Everybody would only agree. But my question is this then: since your visual work is “saying” something or has meaning that is transcendental and thus as it were “beyond words” as music is, how is it that we can discuss the work, the image, the artwork in your absence? Despite yourself you are living in a community of speakers and language users – and if your work is ignored rather than praised this too is due to language or more likely the lack of it! When someone doesn’t speak to me in the street or in college, particularly when I expect them to because they are my mate, I wonder why there silence has been provoked!. The lack of language in the discourses of art would bring us to an end, to a “grinding halt” as you put it. This is not feasible – or are we all going to stop speaking and having conversations and living our life when we have all of these intriguing issues all around us?

The work is on-going as I write (13th February 2009) and we are looking forward to the University of Buffalo Joyce Conference in June and also the Arts in Society Conference in Venice in July. Work will be shown at both of these venues and papers given. At present the works in progress are Shaun and Shem: Shem is a recent series causing difficulties - largely because of other "living" things happening to me at this time.

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