Jason Moorer - Post 6: Response to Text Reading

The reading was incredibly informative. I already recognized the mixed media and inter medial relationships concerning text usage in artworks. I am most fond of Raymond Pettibon’s usage of text because I feel like joins the two elements rather than treating text and image as two separate entities. I think the integration and coherence requires the reader to analyze the work as a whole rather than piece-by-piece. I mostly agreed with this statement: “ In the mass media and in art there has been a strong impulse to extend notions of the inter-medial by breaking down the boundaries between the various media in radical ways.” (14) The writer continues, “This generally involves the integration of diverse spaces, movements and sounds.” (14) I think the dilemma artist face is not having the forces, text and image in some sort of conflict. I also agreed with Clement Greenberg’s assessment that, “the goal towards painting was the articulation of a purely optical experience.” (16) He continues, “[text] stopped the eye at the literal, physical surface of the canvas the same way that an artist’s signature did.” (16)

In my opinion, I think it is the human’s relationship with text and words that ultimately affects our evaluation of artworks that incorporate this element. Text has always been taught to us as something to be read and comprehended and not an aesthetic experience; thus when we see text in a painting, our immediate knee-jerk reaction is to read the text and not look at the artistic qualities that the text may contain. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it is interesting. Let’s say if I saw a language like Chinese, which is composed of characters and mark making; since I’ve never been required to read and understand Chinese, I do not immediately recognize it and interpret it as text to be comprehended, so I look for other qualities about the text to analyze. It doesn’t become text anymore, it becomes something like an optical experience and this is where I am in conflict with Greenberg’s assessment.