Page 56 - Studio International - May 1971

phrase 'building a bridge' also, in the final accurately be described as being with the form of writings, pictures, and buildings are
analysis, functions ostensively if no other examination and construction of formal considered. Thus, the recognition depends upon
information is supplied. systems independently of empirical references. the manifestation and the documentation of the
There is, then, a sense in which both abstract The orthodox line of abstract art is to hold all object in question."
art and 'operationally ostensive' post-minimal use of conventional signs to be 'literary'. It need Meaning is not something which resides
art place the percipient in almost identical hardly be pointed out that the function of within an object but is a function of the way in
situations-he is simply presented with an object common signs in academic painting is very which that object fits into a particular context.
upon which he may impose entirely his own different from the use of those (schematized) Any given context may 'activate' differently in
interpretation.4 What is left to subjective signs in Analytic Cubism, which was no more regard to any number of different objects;
interpretation in 'ostensive' art is what is being `about' bottles than Impressionism was 'about' conversely, it is literally as 'meaningful' to
explicitly referred to in the percipient's haystacks. change the context as it is to change the object.
apprehension of the denoted object-the message The concerns of Cubism were essentially the In art, however, changes in the object have been
is ambiguous. The situation may change when phenomenological concerns more recently more immediately effective than shifts in
the work is not the only thing denoted but in turn exhibited in some Minimal sculpture of the mid- commentary.
selectively denotes aspects of an object domain- sixties. Sculpture of that period might appear If we imagine, by way of analogy, an
when it serves as a type of definite description. more 'abstract' 7 than Cubism but it performed a electronic circuit into which a component (X) is
A definite description . . does not similar didactic and demonstrative purpose- plugged-we can change the state of that
indicate all properties of the object, and thus particular geometric solids, after all, are system by a lengthy process of rewiring or we
replace concrete perception; on the contrary, it exemplifications of commonly held structural can simply replace the component by (Y) which
actually appeals to perception. Also, definite concepts, familiar to us in diagrammatic form has a different value. This analogy crudely
descriptions do not even list all essential and signified in language by equally familiar illustrates two points : the advantage of
characteristics, but only as many characterising nouns. Both Minimal and Modernist sculpture component replacement is in the speed of the
properties as are required to recognise are rooted in Cubism-but whereas Modernism operation; also, this operation introduces
unequivocally the object which is meant within was content to elaborate the given sign system, information from outside the system. (Superior
the object domain under discussion.'5 with only the most residual regard for its (once) speed is a characteristic advantage enjoyed by
Obviously, a definite description must be framed referential function, Minimal sculpture intuitive, 'insight', modes of apprehension, over
in a commonly understood system of signs. A represents a continuity of focus on the referent discursive modes-which would infer that art is
look at the types of definite description which with a consequent revision of the sign system in exclamatory rather than declamatory. The
can be transmitted by the sign systems used in the interests of a more explicit denotation of second point is made re 'significant' art.)
art may help determine another issue, that of the what is attended to in the given object domain. If we expand the analogy and consider our
type and degree of abstraction valid in art. The accusation, 'literary', has again been circuit as functioning within a complex of
Carnap established a hierarchy of types of levelled against that recent art in which the discrete but mutually affective circuits, then we
description in the ascending order, property signs employed are those of natural language. It have a picture of the cultural object 'are amongst
description, relation description, structure might help, here, to consider that the way in other cultural objects within the overall
description: which natural language is used in art is more structure of culture-as-a-whole at any given
`A property description indicates the properties similar to the way it is used in science than to the time and place.
which the individual objects of a given way it is used in literature. In the 'scientific Levi-Strauss has distinguished between
domain have, while a relation description method', hypotheses are formed, observations individual and collective creation. The former
indicates the relations which hold between these made, and conclusions reached from which being the attempt in Western societies to form
objects, but does not make any assertions about further hypotheses may be extrapolated. Any `private languages' 9 for the description of objects
the objects as individuals'; (structure descriptions part of this rationalist-empiricist spiral may be in order that describing may become
are a type of relation description but) . . unlike linguistically communicated. Language here is appropriating, and with the result that art
relation descriptions, these not only leave the seen as, ideally, an inert tool. In the case of becomes at best hermetic and at worst academic.
properties of the individual elements of the natural language, what passive qualities it has Collective creation, on the other hand, observed
range unmentioned, they do not even specify the are reinforced by the introduction of in certain 'primitive' societies, involves the
relations themselves which hold between these unambiguous technical terms (metaphor may formation of rule-governed semantic systems,
elements. In a structure description, only the intrude, as in 'wave' in physics, but semantic commonly employed and understood, for the
structure of the relation is indicated . . . They drift is controlled by specific commonly signification of objects accessible to the
form the highest level of formalisation and agreed technical applications, so it is not in community as a whole.
dematerialisation' .6 doubt that there is a difference between what is If we may take the word 'object' here to static
At one level, the difference between meant by 'wave' in 'sound-wave' and in 'light- for anything about which a statement may be
Impressionism and Analytic Cubism may be wave'). Language to science, then, is purely made, so that 'objects' are not only
seen as a difference between a concern with instrumental. This is much closer to current substantial things but may be states-of-mind,
property descriptions in the former case and usage in art than are traditional literary concerns mythical entities, properties and classes of
relation descriptions in the latter. Implicit in the with expressive ambiguities of language. things, then we might in principle debate the
claims which have been made for abstract art is Some confusion has also arisen in regard to extent to which generally accessible objects have
the assumption that its concern is somehow with what has been seen as a blurring of the been, and are being, signified by Western art
structure descriptions. However, art abdicated distinction between 'are and 'criticism'. On one in a more or less accessible manner.
its candidacy for this sort of function when it hand this, rather simple-mindedly, recognises Predominently, though, studies in art tend to be
ceased to use any commonly understood signs; the fact that both work and comment use the conducted along the historical axis rather than
that is to say, when the marks it employed same system of signs, and on the other hand within the plane of simultaneous cultural events
consistently lay outside any language, natural or acknowledges the symbiotic nature of the two contemporary with the study and 'pierced' by
artificial. But if this type and degree of activities. that axis. As a result, explanations of art are
abstraction is really to be considered the highest `We ascertain the religion of a given society almost invariably historical and we therefore
aspiration- of arti then our greatest artists are the through representations, emotions, thoughts; speak of art's evolution, anch of 'revolutions' in
same individuals as our greatest mathematicians volition of a religious sort which occur with the art, when we might equally well describe art's
and logicians, whose concerns may most members of this society; also, documents in the mutations, brought about by extra-disciplinary
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