Page 32 - Studio International - March 1972

Language in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: 'For if we take van Doesburg's intention as one of
my purpose,' explains Stephen to the Dean expelling language from the area about painting
and about of Studies, 'I can work on at present by the -establishing a language vacuum, and
light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and Alloway's intention as one of filling this area
the work of art Aquinas.... I need them only for my own use with language-establishing a language plenum,
and guidance until I have done something for then there exists an inverse relationship
Stephen Bann myself by their light. If the lamp smokes or between the vacant or plenary state of the area
smells I shall try to trim it. If it does not give around the work and that of the work itself. In
other words, I should probably reformulate my
light enough I shall sell it and buy another.' 2
[Stephen Bann has been associated with the preparations I'd like to start by exploring an idea which, original distinction between the work of art as
for the ' Systems' exhibition, organized by the Arts
Council, to be held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery though it must ultimately be discarded in the language vacuum and as language plenum in
8 March-9 April, and subsequently touring Britain. interests of greater precision, does present in a the following terms. If the area around the work
`Systems' is a group of 12 artists whose work investigates striking form the type of problem which I shall of art is a language vacuum, this is because the
such factors as rhythm, order, sequence and structural
relationships.] be discussing. This is the notion of the work of work in itself is a language plenum; if the area
art as, on the one hand, a language vacuum and, around the work of art is a language plenum,
on the other hand, a language plenum. The this is because the work in itself is a language
The issue which I shall be discussing here is one language vacuum is, I would suggest, perfectly vacuum.
which directly concerns the art critic. But it is exemplified by Theo van Doesburg's list of 'A Perhaps I can best explain my meaning at
an issue which cannot be confined to a few words that do not concern painting', in the this point by quoting the splendid remark which
particular branch of criticism, since it involves first and only number of his magazine Art van Doesburg puts at the end of his amusing
problems that are common to the entire area of Concret, dating from 1930. They are as follows : spoof review of an exhibition in Art Concret, a
critical 'metalanguage'. Partly for this reason I `Sensibility, sensuality, emotion, poetry, review which makes liberal use of the glossary
would like to take as my starting point a abstraction, imagination, sorcery, mystery, of words which do not concern painting. 'There
passage which the contemporary French critic fantasy, charm, reverie, subconscious, genius, are some nymphs', writes van Doesburg,
and historian Michel Foucault inserts in his talent, ability, suggestion, nuance, heroism, `who are always beautiful when there comes to
account of the nouveau roman after pompier, modern, brilliant, delicate, grace, see them an amorous gentleman-un monsieur
Robbe-Grillet. `If criticism has a role', instinct, temperament, presentiment, d'amour.'5 In other words, van Doesburg's
suggests Foucault, 'that is to say, if the personality, power, obscurity, force, pleasure, point is not so much that his glossary of words
inevitably second-hand language of criticism vibration, innocence, miracle, light, shade, do not concern painting, but that they concern
can cease to be a language which is derivative, spontaneous, picturesque, decorative, a certain type of painting all too intimately.
aleatory and fatally caught up with the work, atmosphere, intimate, human, dramatic, There is a type of painting-we all know it well
if it is capable of being at the same time hazardous, eccentric, symbolic, tragic, serene, -where the critic can go to town in talking
secondary and fundamental, it is in the extent gentle, sonorous, rich, narcissistic, admirable, about 'heroic temperament' and 'lessons
to which it puts into words for the first time that freshness, adventure, subtlety, desire, inspired by the sub-conscious' : the only
network of works in which each work finds trouvaille, audacity, unfathomable, inspiration, trouble is that he is really describing the
itself to be dumb.'1 passionate, melancholic, violent, heart, divine, condition of being amorous, while the nymph
`That network' (`ce réseau'), in which each subject, object, sketch, tumult, noise, laziness, recedes perpetually clad in transparent veils.
work loses its individual power of speech, or master, artist, masterpiece, instant, touch, To take us one stage further, it is perhaps
communication- which exists both as a etc. etc.... '3 necessary to insist on the very specific and
secondary construction and as a fundamental In direct contrast to that devastating uncompromising view of the work of art held
property-Foucault's notion seems to me catalogue, I should like to introduce another, by van Doesburg.. His theory of 'Elementarism',
particularly interesting because he links the much smaller list from a catalogue text which developed in the mid- 92os, posited a common
need for the establishment of such a network Lawrence Alloway wrote for an exhibition of base in geometric form for pictorial, sculptural
with the idea of the death of rhetoric. Rhetoric, the work of Magda Cordell in 1955 : this time and architectural expression. In terms of his
in Foucault's terms, supplied up to the end of it is a list of words suggested by the paintings, theory, all works m these categories had to be
the eighteenth century a kind of additional and not a list of words which does not concern elaborated from certain basic elements : in
dimension in which literature was reflected and, them. other words, the final works represented the
so to speak, became self-critical. Such a `solar, delta, galactic, amorphous, fused, far articulation of a rudimentary code or language.
dimension demonstrably no longer exists in the out, viscous, skinned, visceral, variable, flux, van Doesburg's desire to exclude such a range
twentieth century. And this is, of course, not nebular, iridescence, hyper-space, free-fall, of critical terms from the area of discussion of,
simply the plight of literature. Art too has random, circulation, capacious, or description of, the work of art, is a direct and
suffered, in the course of the past two centuries, homeomorphism, variegated, reticular, necessary consequence of his view that the work
the gradual collapse of that coded system of entanglement, multiform, swimming pool, of art should be, and should be seen to be, the
terms and values which we call Classicism, that contra terrene.' 4 exemplification of an elementary formal
dimension in which all aspects of the artist's Now I want to make two points about the language. By contrast, the persuasiveness of
practice were reflected and found their objective comparison of these passages which may seem Lawrence Alloway's word list, and his whole
basis. This is the root of the condition of fairly obvious, but represent necessary stages intention in devising it, can be identified with
anomie, or normlessness, which afflicts in my argument. First of all, the respective the total lack of linguistic articulation in
contemporary art and contemporary criticism. attitudes of van Doesburg and Alloway are not Magda Cordell's paintings, which reportedly
So to the sketching of my own network. But simply a matter of critical stance, of how we combined action-painting techniques with
I should first point out the apparently should describe or experience works of art. figurative images. I recently had a very vivid
paradoxical fact that such a network can only, They refer implicitly to two quite different reminder of the implications of this lack of
in my view, be constructed from the debris of conceptions of what the work of art should be articulation when. I was presented with a
the old system, in other words from the terms like, and, at least in van Doesburg's case, the Jackson Pollock jigsaw puzzle. Now a Jackson
of Classicism and the figures of Rhetoric. The implication is that painting no longer has to do Pollock jigsaw puzzle, or at least a late Jackson
model-type of the contemporary critic is with a great number of areas that it has Pollock jigsaw puzzle, is so fiendishly difficult
still, I would say, Stephen Dedalus, in traditionally occupied. My second point is that, as to be virtually intractable. And this is
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