The British Word continued...

British art underwent a change during the Victorian period by turning to moral narratives, realism and a fear of introspection. According to Graham-Dixon, “the rise to eminence of the art critic” coincides with a time when people wanted “to have [artworks’] narratives explicated and their moral meaning teased out” (Graham-Dixon, 166). Victorian art criticism likewise developed “the argument of ‘ut picture poesis,’” where the art critic approached a picture by translating it into prose (295, Hewison). The image in itself, without poetical explication, was considered less valuable. Furthermore, it was not the actual pictorial detailing or the technique that was explored; rather, several critics “[concentrated] upon an explanation of [the] subject” (Althoz). Thus the word was considered a higher art for its poetical ability and a more direct art in its efficacy in delivering a subject. Though images are no longer disregarded as such, we shall later see that the language in art criticism and in museums is still in large part considered to dictate artworks.

During the same period, there arose an interest in structuralist semiotics, which paid attention to the organization of words. Ferdinand de Saussure, the great figure of this semiotic line of thought, introduced the notion of the “signifier” (the word) and the “signified” (the concept). He claimed that a word could only gain its concept or meaning when related to its context or to the other words that it modifies. Saussure realized that words’ meanings are an automatic, instinctual process, which he justified with the claim that “each [linguistic sign] is recognized over and over again to be the ‘same’ sign because it has the same set of relations to other signs” (Bredin, 68). What Saussure, and other semioticians, aimed to do was to slow down our instincts by breaking down linguistic signs. Words became interpretative forms, and with this came a consciousness of the weaving of words and what they are made to do.

Moving into the twentieth century to this day, modern semiotics further elaborates on the role of the reader in its analyses. It asks why we make the immediate associations that we do with certain words. It tends to answer such questions around the belief that “signs are related to their signifieds by social conventions which we learn” (Chandler). In inspecting these social conventions, semioticians emphasize the fabricated nature of linguistic signs. Their goal is to often “denaturalize signs, texts and codes [to] demonstrate that ‘reality’ can be challenged” (Chandler). Thus modern semiotics interrogates the contexts out of which words’ concepts arise, as opposed to simply acknowledging them.

Several British artists today incorporate language in their work with the same consciousness of a semiotician. In the Victorian period, words were valued for their ability to explicate moral messages. Today, artists similarly take advantage of the word’s directness; however, they explore further by giving importance to the process of the reading of an artwork, of how the words are visually organized. Like a semiotician, artists today have developed a layered reading to their work.

This concern for close reading, however, can be traced back to the very work of Hogarth, where one must delve into the prints to find the copious messages and ironic pairings of images and words before fully comprehending the criticism. Like Hogarth, these artists make it so that their words interact with, and are not necessarily superior to, other visual elements within the overall oeuvre. The artists’ words, the “signifiers,” develop a richer meaning once related to their neighboring visual elements, or their context, the “signified.”

In the contemporary artwork that will be discussed, some artists place words within contexts where they would usually belong so as to enrich and facilitate the viewer’s understanding of the language. Other artists, though, may challenge the way in which we are accustomed to reading by placing words within new or unusual contexts. They explore the social constructs of what is considered ‘allowed’ language and ‘not allowed’ language. The reader is forced to rearrange his/her visual and verbal associations. Several artists, particularly Grayson Perry and Banksy, further respond to a notion implied in the study of semiotics: “If signs do not merely reflect reality but are involved in its construction then those who control the sign systems control the construction of reality” (Chandler). These artists attempt to debunk such associations, attacking those who construct reality, which include the tabloids, media, government and art establishments.

Thus, as in the past, contemporary artists still make social commentary, particularly in regard to authorities and social oppression. Importantly, most of the artists’ criticism, though serious, maintains the satirical and humorous undertones that have been the historical trademarks in British art.

The British Word continued...

J.M.W. Turner, The Slave Ship (1840)

J.M.W. Turner, a contemporary of Wordsworth, greatly drew from Romantic poetry in his artwork. Turner particularly appreciated the manner in which words captured atmosphere, such as in Scottish poet James Thomsons’s “The Seasons.” Turner is said to have depicted “the sunrise…such as he imagined was in the poet’s eye” (Timbs, 365). Not only did he use Romantics’ poetry but he also used his own poetry to accompany his paintings. His writing was something personally significant that helped him to refine his vision and emotions on nature and the sublime (Nadaner). Words, however, by no means took precedent over his images; rather, much like the British art today, each complemented and enriched the other. In 1812, Turner addressed the Royal Academy in a lecture: “Painting and poetry flow from the same fount mutually by vision, …[and] reciprocally…heighten each other’s beauties like…mirrors” (Nadaner, 32). Turner’s paintings and poetry work together to grasp and convey that which cannot be seen but that is inexplicably felt in a setting’s atmosphere.

In expressing his subliminal emotions and visions, Turner placed value on individual experience, as Wordsworth and other Romantic poets did. During this period, the emphasis on the individual in turn inspired a concern for political and social causes. Turner extended his work from personal reflections to “sublime or awesome aspects of contemporary life” in general, such as in his work on the terrifying travels of slave ships (Barker). Thus the early nineteenth century saw trends that resemble today’s. Both periods have artists intertwine images with words to express emotion to its fullest, to connect to one’s inner self. Yet these artists also reach out of themselves to address universal concerns, particularly in regard to social oppression.

The British Word from Hogarth to Today: A Desire to Tell, Not Show

William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress, Plate 3, 1735 (taken from the BBC)

It's been a while since I haven't posted any of my art-related essays, and I recently got inspired to rummage through my old essays. During my sophomore year at Barnard I took a great seminar with Simon Schama on Contemporary British Art. In that seminar, I wrote a paper on the relationship of words and images in British art throughout history. Since it's a bit on the longer side, I'll post this one day by day, and hopefully I'll keep you interested! :


The history of British art reveals an affinity for incorporating words in artworks, particularly in the form of narrative. Beginning with the Reformation period, there prevailed what Graham-Dixon terms a sense of “anti-art,” where the image was thought to deceive, while the word had the virtue of introducing a clear narrative or message (218). These beliefs sprung from a Protestant perspective, which feared that “the supernatural can never be made manifest in the likeness of a figure” (42). The essential belief behind this statement – that words can communicate more directly than images – remains relevant to this day in British art.

As Graham-Dixon describes it, in the Post-Reformation period, “words did not replace images, they incorporated them in a different way. Language was to summon up all the pictures that had been destroyed” (53). With this, there developed a trend in British art where images became often verbal, and literature, likewise, pictorial. Over time, words shifted from being solely tools employed by religious and political authorities to a significant mode of artistic expression.

This shift becomes most obvious when moving into the eighteenth century, where words and images are twisted in an ironic and satirical fashion to make social commentary and attack authorities, as in the work of Hogarth. Known as “the guilty conscience of the British eighteenth century,” Hogarth’s work is one of the first to reach out of the aristocratic mindset into the public realm and to express a personal view (Graham-Dixon, 95). By delving into wider social and largely middle class concerns, he “[revised] the aesthetic discourse for art with its rejection of low and inappropriate subject matter” (Paulson). Indeed, he insisted on incorporating the imagery and language – the signage – of his time. He depicts the street, which appears as it would have been then with salesmen and women, pub signs, placards and public spots. This way, Hogarth’s work communicated with the public; it facilitated the important process of drawing associations among the images and the words. Indeed, whereas words had previously been about instruction, now the words were more open to “interpretation” and aimed for “the interplay of artist and spectator” (Paulson, 24). With this in mind, “Hogarth brought works of art into the lives of men and women who had never owned or purchased images before…He was the chief pioneer of…a genuinely popular visual art form” (Graham-Dixon, 99).

Hogarth has been a model for many British artists to this day. Of the contemporary British artists that will be discussed, all of them have taken after Hogarth in that they have incorporated language that is accessible, critical of authority and artistic conventions, and frequently satirical. Graham-Dixon claims that “the history of British art after Hogarth cannot be told in quite the same way …It must take account of a growing sense of duty felt by artists to themselves…The lives and struggles of individual British artists will necessarily form a greater part of the story from now on” (103).

Indeed, following the French Revolution, British art and literature took on a more self-expressive form. “The restrictive taste of the aristocracy” was regarded “as a kind of tyranny” and artists “would write in the plain language of plain men,” a desire that still persists today (Graham-Dixon, 104, 130).

The early nineteenth century saw an establishment of ‘the self’ as the main subject among writers and artists. William Wordsworth’s writing attests to this self-centered vision in its sentimental and introspective quality. However, as Graham-Dixon puts it, “Wordsworth’s desire…was to armour his own frail subjectivity by making it appear a monument” (137). We shall later see that artists today likewise verbally express highly personal matters while making their work simultaneously stand for universal concerns.

July

Felt Images has been on a much too long hiatus... the problem is my story, Mamãe, has undergone a few changes and is going to be revised here and there. So, I will have to leave you in suspense for a little bit and in the meanwhile I'll post some other things that I am working on.

Today I'm going to post my first poem of a series of monthly poems. A calendar in the form of poems, let's say.

July

Black frames the windows,

The nape of your neck

Still.

The sun heats the floorboards,

The clock clicks stubbornly.

Clogged by a sunless cloud,

The spines of plants blacken

And twist,

Angrily

Shadows entangle our legs.

A droplet of sweat

On the nape of your neck,

Balancing, fattening.

You turn,

Twisting, angrily

The droplet spreads,

Wet and sighing, you whisper

It’s summer.

Mamãe (continued)

V.

Mamãe and I would go for walks together on the weekends. Sometimes we talked and sometimes not so much. No matter how early we tried to get started, it was always hot, and dry. We’d go to the Parque da Cidade and we’d get freshly opened coconuts to drink their water along the way. The Brasília sky felt especially immense. You can always see so much of the sky in Brasília because the land is so flat. But when you are walking under the sun for hours, you carry that opening and brightening sky on your back. It hovers over you, and sometimes it knocks you over.

About two weeks before I left Brasília, we went for our walk. I thought we would maybe talk about how things were going to change and were already changing. I would bring it up myself if I had to, but only once we had parked the car and stepped out unto the open pavement. But I never got the chance to because that morning, unlike any other day in Brasília, was very windy. The red Brasília earth wouldn’t stick to the ground. The wind kept picking it up so that it wore thousands of twirling bloody-looking skirts. I was wearing one of them too, and it scratched up my knees. If I tried to talk I would’ve swallowed a handful of earth. I walked with my eyes closed and mamãe held my hand. Very uncharacteristically, mamãe didn’t make a fuss. No yelling or words of indignation. She patiently walked through the wind with me, not saying a word. She kept trying to slap the dust off me, but to no avail. When we got to the car, I slipped off my sandals and put them in the trunk. As I walked barefoot to the car door the whisking ground scraped and blushed my soles. For a second, I was sinking into earth. When I got in the car mamãe asked me if I was all right and then gently placed her hands around the wheel. She didn’t have any dust on her, only beneath her fingernails.

Mamãe (continued)

IV.

Tia Nastácia walked me to school that Wednesday. It was a gloomy morning but she didn’t seem to think so. Once I was dressed for school, I dragged myself to the kitchen. Tia Nastácia was drinking her tea, leaning against the sink.

“Good morning, tired one!” Her voice was especially warm and energetic. It was the first time she reminded me of mamãe. They were sisters, after all, but they never had been very close or similar. Greeting mamãe in the morning had always been important to me. It gave me a sense of hope, or reassurance, that that day would be a good one. Perhaps it was because of the loud, bouncy scope in her voice. Or maybe it was because it was the one moment in the day when both of us insisted on putting on a merry demeanor, even if that wasn’t quite how we felt.

“Look at those beautiful, big clouds!” There was a pause. “Would it be alright if I walked you to school today?” Tia Nastácia asked. I was already eating my cereal.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Any reason in particular?”

“Well, I don’t know, I thought it would be nice. It’s always been a kind of dream of mine to walk a kid to school. You’re not a kid, but you know what I mean. I’ve never had kids of my own.” Tia Nastácia had this uncanny ability to be at once awkward and entirely at ease with her words.

The sky that day was a sagging gray, full with rain. It was sprinkling and we had forgotten to grab an umbrella. The rain was cold and sharp.

“Autumn rain doesn’t smell like summer rain,” I told my tia as we walked. I hadn’t known autumn rain, really, since Brasília doesn’t have seasons other than a wet and dry one. In Brasília, when it rained, it smelled tart. It slit one’s surroundings open or melted them a little so that everything smelled stronger and riper. The rain was hot and sometimes Sara, my best friend, and I would go to the quadra playground and sit on the swings.

“The summer here is pretty fantastic. You’ll see, next year. It doesn’t stay cold forever.” Tia Nastácia said softly. She never spoke loudly and she moved slowly, carrying her body calmly, in long audible breaths.

The leaves had already started to fall off the trees and they had left imprints on the sidewalks from the dirt mixed in with the rainwater.

“Smell that?” She asked me excitedly.

“What?”

“The chocolate! Take a good inhale like this,” She breathed in deeply. “There’s a chocolate factory and if you get close enough to the lake you can smell it. Do you smell it?”

I stuck my nose up and took a breath. “Yeah, yeah I can. Faintly. That’s neat.”

As we walked, tia Nastácia continued to point things out about Chicago that I wouldn’t have otherwise known or cared to notice. There was one building in particular that I remember her telling me about. The Monadnock, a Burnham building. We stopped in front of it for a bit with our necks strained backwards.

“It’s the tallest all brick structure in the world, you know.” From the outside I didn’t particularly like it. It was bulky and tall and thick like lots of other big buildings. But the way tia Nastácia described things made me like them more.

“Just look at those windows and how they curve beautifully. And the light bouncing off them, it’s breathtaking really. It’s such a contrast to the delicious brick.” Most things to my tia were either delicious or beautiful. “One day we’ll go inside together. There’s this staircase that I imagine myself descending sometimes in a long, glowy dress.” We never did go there together but I still think about my tia descending that staircase sometimes.

When we got to the school gates tia Nastácia stood to the side of them, I think because she thought I’d be embarrassed. But I wasn’t.

“See you later?” I kissed her cheek. A real kiss that touched and sounded off the skin.

“Yes, yes! Of course. Have a good day.” She walked backwards, airily moving her arms about as I walked in past the gates.

Mamãe (continued)

That night, when I got up from the floor, I felt loaded with my own blood and breath. I was slowed down from the heat. I walked over to the bathroom floor-length mirror and stared at myself, naked. My cheeks bore the weight of water, leaving a slimy sheen. I could see more of myself without my long hair, and I didn’t like it. My body had been developing without me quite realizing it. My boobs looked heavier. Streams of fat felt along my thighs and I was beginning to pale. I pressed my face close to the glass and stared at myself for so long that my features lost their meaning and I thought I didn’t really exist. My lips were purple and papery. It made me think of my father’s lips, always a little worn on the edges. I was cold again.

“Roberta? Are you alright in there?” Tia Nastácia called from outside of the door. I had been in there for a while, I realized.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I said this in a loud voice, trying to break away from what my voice would have naturally sounded like, wet and broken.

“Okay.”

I could feel that she was still there, pressed against the door, leaning on her big hands.

“Listen, I probably shouldn’t have told you to come today. I just wanted to do something for you. But it was the wrong thing, you see.”

“I know that.” I wanted my tia to stop pitying me. I didn’t want any more questions or forgiving words. I wanted to pretend that nothing had happened. But just when I thought that maybe we had already made up and that she had left, she said:

“Roberta I saw you today. I saw that you were looking through that window.”

It was quiet for a while until I turned towards the door, as if she could see my guilty naked self, and I told her I was sorry.

When I had gotten out of the bathroom, tia Nastácia was already sleeping. She had left my bedside lamp on for me, and a glass of cold water on the table. I got the sudden urge to wake her but I didn’t. When I was very young, I would wake mamãe by softly blowing on her face, so as not to wake her too inconveniently. She would open her eyes slowly, catching my last breaths between blinks. My neck felt soft against the pillow. I had the habit of going to sleep with my hair wet, and when my hair was long I’d suck the ends of my hair until I’d fall asleep. I lay on my back like my tia that night, allowing my spine to flatten and unroll like a racing roll of ribbon. It felt good to just lie there and not think too much.