More About Visual Language

 In a previous post and in earlier writings, I've ruminated about the conceptual veracity involved in the use of the term 'language' as it applies to art and aesthetic subjects.

I'm not the first person, artist even, to be confused by and even perplexed by its slippery quality. In a new Lex Fridmen podcast, Edward Gibson a researcher on the this and many other such subjects adds some clarity.

At the heart of Modernism was and is a special interest in color and color theory.  In fact, color may be the most empirical source of truth for the claim that a visual art language exists. Yet as Gibson compares and contrasts Western language usage with that of other cultures, color as a backbone of artistic language becomes dubious. Color concepts are more likely constrained by the culture they are used in - a cultural range of aesthetic identity. This can be as sparse as simply black and white or dark and light to a handful more labeled colors. In the West that number is far greater.

And what's more interesting is the current scientific understanding of the brain that language processing is a dedicated function in the brain.  Gibson asserts that "language is a communication system" and that meaning, the payload of meaning that language form, is both separate and an open, ongoing scientific body of study. 

To me, and this is a first (Kahneman's system 1) draft of thinking about this, is that the use of the word language to describe what a visual artist (for the sake of example) is creating is not a communication system at all. Pardon the pun, but there's no two ways about it. You can look at an object and legitimately claim that the object speaks to you but can you speak it back out to anyone intelligibly?

In the aesthetic sense, what can be communicated are self-referential (art about and from  art) object-oriented relationships. Aspects of mutual - seemingly communicative - recognition of object relationships to the observer can include a shared historical context, image recognition, subject interest, space, place, and time considerations, and so on. Rather than a communication system, all of this is more accurately a mutual comfort zone or maybe even a safe intellectual space that the viewer intuitively recognizes.

The challenge for artists is to map and locate a community meeting place such as galleries, eateries, clubs, and all kinds of local cultural spaces that complements the exhibition of the work.  Unfortunately, galleries are often co-opted by special interest groups who claim the space for social interactions often far removed from art appreciation and understanding. This can create an asymmetric relationship between the artist's intent and its interpretation.

Gallery shows can be the most desirable venue for emerging art. And its fair to ask why galleries promote identity politic and social engineering show themes. There is no visual language dedicated to that purpose.  I recently surveyed a gallery whose theme had to do with climate change and the gallery walls were lined with representational landscape art. Virtually none of it had originally had anything to do with climate change.  But in this show, an activist curator co-opted and appropriated the work for an entirely and, quite honestly, inappropriate exhibition. 

When this happens, when artistic intent is held hostage to activist or ignorant environments - the illusion of artistic language can be inferred where no such thing exists.  This is a byproduct of the intersection of special interest political rhetoric with an art object that may or may not have any direct relationship to that vernacular.

Orwell's newspeak, mistaken a language, is extended to the aesthetic. Color can be equivocated to violence or hate or racism.  Every aspect of a work of art suddenly is assigned a call to action.  Visual newspeak is a language of political or social urgency and despite what its activist followers may claim this has nothing to do with art.

Agitpop is nothing more than an aesthetic rash created by an idiot, full of sound and fury - signifying nothing. And galleries and museums are saturated with it. De-accessioning and rejecting this stuff will go a long way in restoring the integrity and respect of art.