Phantoms of the Studio

Abstract

No matter how much theory is disguised or repressed, there is no practice without theory. The theory that practice has nothing to do with theory is a theory, a disingenuous and naive one, but none the less a theory. Reading works of art is dependent-at some quickly reached level of observation-upon reading in general. This may seem obvious in a wider intellectual context, but it is noted here in respect of the resistance to such ideas in the art school ambience. But even in a wider context reading is taken so much for granted that its operations and effects are often presumed to be natural. Reading, however, presupposes a critical and complex theoretical discourse, even if it is a buried one. It is a discourse about language and meaning, about the relationship between language and the world, about meaning and people, their social organisation and relations in the world. It is tran,parent that language is not transparent, and since reading art works is so languagedependent, then this business of reading is not transparent either. Once again, to constituencies other than those of the art schools and general art milieu this may seem an obvious point to make, but the notion of an unmediated 'visual language' is still a widely canvassed one in the art world. There more than anywhere the shift to the world of the instincts which has gathered momentum from the time of Romanticism has become dogmatically entrenched. The notion of a distinctive 'visual language' is founded upon the realm of the instincts. This is a 'language', it is alleged, of unmediated instinctual access, which in turn assumes language itself to be transparent in the sense of it being merely a medium in which individuals transmit messages to each other about an independently constituted world of things. The notion of a 'visual language' is a kind of common sense still central to the dominant discourse in art schools. By a common sense discourse I mean any discourse which demands to be easily read and is therefore compelled to reproduce its most familiar assumptions and values. To challenge familiar assumptions and values by staying within them is impossible. The conception of the artist is at the centre of the Western humanist-empiricist-idealist interpretation of the world. Humanism proposes that 'man' is the origin and source of meaning, action and history. This is a weak position because it locates meaning in a single place. The notion of an unmediated 'visual language' is a typical piece of this common sense meaning fixing. Linked strongly to and interdependent with this notion of a 'visual language' is the notion of the artist as an ideologically unyoked, centred subject. The yearning for this state of freedom from ideology is itself a symptom of ideological alignment. The centred subject, like language itself, is also taken to be natural not linguistic, its ideological construction being thoroughly suppressed. In art school discourse, the notion of the centred subject is also a typical example of meaning fixing. But any attempt to fix meanings comes up against the act of reading itself. In the process of reading, meanings are not only fixed but are also released. Amongst the more general points being discussed here is the largely unrecognised coercion of meaning fixing in and behind teaching in art schools. This coercion is, ideologically, to be expected. It holds to a theory of much wider impact than its application in the domain of art teaching which is widely subscribed to in Europe and America in what in old academic terms is called the Humanities. This is the theory of expressive realism. Essentially, the theory is an amalgam of two concepts, one old, one new. The older one is the Aristotelian concept of art as mimesis which was one of the important engines of Renaissance art theory and practice. The newer one is the Romantic concept that the source from which art springs is 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings', and thus that art expresses the ethos, feelings and perceptions of a person 'possessed of more than usual organic sensibility'.1 This amalgam remains the staple ideology of art school discourse and teaching. The practice of reading, as conceived in the context of the theory of expressive realism, despite the inherent instability of its more sophisticated versions, is still dominated by the propositions which constitute the concept of the centred subject. These are: