# Art Verbiage



## Guest (Jan 28, 2013)

Here's an article about the pompous use of the English language used in the art world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/users-guide-international-art-english


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Having studied art history, I am well acquainted with this sort of language. But not every writer on art uses it, as the author of that article points out. The writers who I think do a good job do what most people writing stuff like this do - the thought comes before the word. What they write is a means to an end - the end being to express their thoughts - not an end in itself (eg. being like a competition to use the most convuluted, pretentious and unintelligible jargon).

In the last decade or so, there's been a move away from what I see as the distortions/excesses of post-structuralism and semiotics theory back to simple English. Its not about dumbing down, its about writing good English. You can still be creative (or maybe even more so?) without using pompous rhetorical words.

I remember back in the days, I had a teacher who hated what he saw as distortions of the English language, like contractions. Eg. aren't for are not, isn't for is not, would've for would have and so on. I wonder what he would have thought of artspeak and other stuff from various intellectual cliques and enclaves?

I see it partly as a tribal grouping thing, an identifier of these cliques to mark out their exclusive turf. But one does not find it everywhere, the trend in recent decades has been to just say things to people can understand them. Audience is important but you don't want too limited an audience (eg. an intellectual ghetto type thing).

The other thing is you probably need fancy talk to cover some of the stuff they exhibit in modern art museums worldwide. Things like conceptual art which I generally have little time for. I am all for reading about what writers have to say on art but if it ends up being less about the art and more about theoretical things that are extraneous to the artwork at hand, I just turn right off.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

& a thing I'd add is that this kind of language its just language. Doesn't make the actual content of what you are saying any better or more interesting, original, etc. I can use this kind of language, but I try hard not to. Problem is that some people think that people who use simple English are automatically morons as a result. Well, its sad that its got to this kind of extreme stage, but as I said I think things are changing. People have realised this is a case of putting the cart before the donkey, if you get my drift...


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sample: "The artist brings the viewer face to face with their own preconceived hierarchy of cultural values and assumptions of artistic worth." Think I just saw that on another thread here! :lol:


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2013)

Funny, KenOC!! And Sid James (god bless 'im) makes a lot of sense too!! 

When I was teaching English to Advanced students in HSC some years ago I took in a catalogue from a Philips Collection exhibition which I'd had sitting on my bookcase from the 1988 Adelaide Festival of the Arts. There were paintings by Rothko at the exhibition and my eye was attracted to the verbiage and 'marketing' language of the screed accompanying the painting 'Ocre on Grey" or some such formulation - you know, it's the two gigantic squares, one on top of the other that Rothko painted - one grey, one orange/red. Perhaps you know it. Anyway, a tiny part of the script read something like this:

"Rothko denies the existence of a horizon line".

My students laughed at the pomposity when I read them this, and the rest of it (which I've forgotten as it's languishing on my bookcase at home and I'm away at my holiday house at the moment). Let's deconstruct this rubbish for a moment (for it has similarities, pointed out by Ken) with the drivel written about the avant garde. 

How can anybody, let alone Rothko, 'deny' the existence of a horizon line?
Why would a horizon line exist on a painting of a cube?
How many things can you say about a cube without becoming absurd?

Let me see if I can try:

"The cube is the prototypical metaphysical construct...it has no infinity circle and therefore is oblivious of its own limitations".

How did I go?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think architecture jargon is worse, basically because it uses this kind of language to dress up what most people think are eyesores.

A good example is the UTS tower, voted time and time again in polls to be Sydney's ugliest building.










Yet on this archetecture website they describe it like this:

"The UTS Tower has stood at the western entry to Sydney for thirty years. It is a wide, obscure entity; the subject of countless 'solutions' as though it were some inherently damaged object. Its narrow apertures, deep floor plate and abrupt podium have done it no favours, and yet while it has its detractors, it's position as the western set-out point for Sydney's CBD lends it authority in its quarter.

It is the pin in the tail of a comet stretching north."

But most people just say its an eyesore, its pebblecrete facade is the colour of dog poo and its like a modernist nightmare on steroids.

& yeah, it has its "detractors," notably the folks who drive past it everyday to the city, while its occupants have a great view looking down at them from above. Like all these things, the view is great looking out from it, but horrible if you are on the street looking up at it.

Yeah it "lends its authority in its quarter" like a bull in a China shop. Subtle it aint.

& its less like a "tail of a comet" than a (pardon me) turd coming out of the backside of a horse or something. Seriously.

But I guess its a landmark and its in the 'its so bad its good' category. A relic of the Modernist era when rhetoric about 'unadorned clean lines' and 'monumental statements of form' was the jargon used to describe something that begs the question 'how the hell could they build such a thing?' Perhaps its like an equivalent to this type of jargon about much contemporary art, the rhetoric simply does not match the reality.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Let me see if I can try:
> 
> "The cube is the prototypical metaphysical construct...it has no infinity circle and therefore is oblivious of its own limitations".
> 
> How did I go?


That's pretty good! You might follow up with, "Far from being simply a subjective statement on cultural or political perceptions, the cube challenges us at a deeper level -- the nature of the unstructured self when confronted with structure that can be neither denied nor diminished."


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## Guest (Jan 29, 2013)

KenOC said:


> That's pretty good! You might follow up with, "Far from being simply a subjective statement on cultural or political perceptions, the cube challenges us at a deeper level -- the nature of the unstructured self when confronted with structure that can be neither denied nor diminished."


Better and better!!! You've really caught the zeitgeist!!


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Of interest, might be the video I linked in this thread: http://www.talkclassical.com/18712-art-more-fartsy-than.html


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

How about modern popular music views - they can be so full of c*** too

eg stretched comparisons, metaphors that really always fail to describe anything that is actually heard

Check out *Taking Popular Music Seriously *by Simon Frith, University of Edinburgh

"As a sociologist Simon Frith takes the starting point that music is the result of the play of social forces, whether as an idea, an experience or an activity. The essays in this important collection address these forces, recognising that music is an effect of a continuous process of negotiation, dispute and agreement between the individual actors who make up a music world. The emphasis is always on discourse, on the way in which people talk and write about music, and the part this plays in the social construction of musical meaning and value. The collection includes nineteen essays, some of which have had a major impact on the field, along with an autobiographical introduction"

Jesus hate to hear his classical music reviews......


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## Guest (Jan 30, 2013)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> How about modern popular music views - they can be so full of c*** too
> 
> eg stretched comparisons, metaphors that really always fail to describe anything that is actually heard
> 
> ...


This is all predictable, but written in such a way as to be deliberately arcane. Not a clever use of English, IMO.


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