Donato Mancini
The Bondo Between Word and Image
- Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art
- Simon Morley, Thames and Hudson, 2003
Simon Morley’s Writing on the Wall is styled as a major survey of modern art that “traces the growing bond between word and image.” As such, it is apparently supposed to help fill a visible gap in the general understanding of the role of text in modern art. Morley suggests, as Joseph Kosuth said, that language is the “… most suitable means of interrogating hidden assumptions and ideologies lurking beneath apparently purely visual surfaces of art.” Morley’s own basic assumptions are that as Euro-American art became increasingly self-reflexive, it was natural, if not inevitable, that text would become a key component. He also assumes that as the urban environment became increasingly saturated with text, it was also natural that text should become a basic material for visual art, available as an aspect of image making. If these assumptions are correct, then the extensive use of text in visual art has to be appreciated as one of the most important formal developments in the art in the twentieth century. An extensive critical anthology of text-based, or text-dependent visual artworks, is therefore due. Not surprisingly, the author is an accomplished and respectable text artist himself. He has a particular interest in “…the dynamics of seeing and reading, immediate sensual experience and memory.” Viewable on his personal website (simonmorley.com), Morley’s major series so far are what he calls “book-paintings.” From a distance they look like small rectangular monochromes, but on closer inspection reveal text only a touch darker than the ground. This text is often comprised of title pages or frontispieces of books with particular cultural resonance, either because they are famous or indicative of some abiding cultural theme. Morley seems to have consciously chosen to serve this “tradition” of text-art that Writing on the Wall seeks to elucidate, and the intersections of literature with contemporary art are of particular interest to him, perhaps because they remain under-explored.
As a writer who extends his own practice through text-art, I too have a vested interest in the subject. While Writing on the Wall is in many ways impressively well-researched, and, up to a point, quite original in its cross-disciplinary perspective, it is mired by its uncertain sense of purpose. The book’s thesis, makes a fairly serious claim that demands thorough elucidation. But at some point in the process it seems editorial decisions were made that the book would have to serve as a textbook (first of all) for undergraduate art history courses, and (far worse) that it should be useable as a general-purpose twentieth century art textbook. These decisions compromised Morley’s ability to “[fill]…in a gap in current scholarship on text in art” or to present its claim about the “growing bond of word and image” in an ultimately convincing way.
To start with, Morley has to pitch his argument pretty low, considering the intended audience. So he lapses at the start, and frequently after, into a “Dear Reader…” tone, sounding almost apologetic for any complexities that arise. Trying to be “accessible” is forgivable, but Morley and/or his editors seem to have assumed their readers’ near-total ignorance. He is, therefore, forced to rehash various art history truisms that wither as soon as they leave the classroom. A lot more could be said about the specific role of language in the artist’s work when instead Morley is busy introducing the artist’s work generally, providing context available in innumerable other books. If Writing on the Wall had not been designed also as a general “modern art” textbook, Morley would have had room to either explore more deeply the canonic modern artworks he writes about or to investigate many lesser-known works and artists on the fringes of the major movements. Indeed this would have added up to a much richer account of modern text-art.
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About this Article
The Bondo Between Word and Image was first published in Fillip 2 in Winter 2006. For more articles from this issue, see the Table of Contents.
Notes
The views expressed in Fillip are not necessarily those of the editorial board or the Projectile Publishing Society.
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