Interart Studies and the "Imperialism" of Language

Abstract

Speaking Pictures? At a recent professional forum on possibility of an art(s) discourse for 1980s, one prominent art historian suggested criticism of visual arts had, if anything, already too much to do with discourse. Why is it, he asked, that art history has resisted, more than study of other, non-visual arts, most evident in literary criticism? (Kuspit 1986: 1). The virtue of resistance is implied in question, for behind peaceful overtures of new interdisciplinarianism lurk the colonizing, consumerist tendencies of English Studies, eagerly reducing art to text, visual art into linguistic art, vision into sign, in effect arguing case for Derrida's [1973] assertion 'the collusion between painting ... and is constant' -if not for an even more insidious Derridean attempt to bury painting in writing, or to suggest painting is bad writing (Kuspit 1986: 3). The new interdisciplinarianism turns out to be a imperialism in disguise, and-as was to a large extent also true of old imperialism-its weapon for colonizing, reducing, and ultimately burying natives of visual realm is language. Insofar as speaker's views represent a current position among art historians, those of us in English studies may find in them a curious replay of battle over theory in our own camp, now staged as a contest for dominion between two disciplines. In fact, paragone between arts, here reflected in turf disputes of their academic exponents, is a venerable topos. As W. J. T. Mitchell (1986: 43)