Monday, September 12, 2011

Attempting to "LEARN TO READ ART"


Johanna Drucker's writing was very difficult to follow.  What made the article captivating for me was the inclusion of artwork. The different examples of conceptual art in her article allowed me to follow along with her arguments. Without the artwork it would have been a greater challenge to conceptualize her arguments.  The pictures helped me understand what was being discussed by giving me an idea of what Drucker was relating her argument to.

It was thought-provoking to see the different types of art that is considered conceptual.  Drucker shows readers that there is conceptual art using text but also showed “Kissing Series” by John Baldessari which had no text.   Had she not shown the “Kissing Series,” I would not have fully comprehended what Drucker meant by linguistic parameters and cognitive meaning. It was interesting to see how the text in Lawrence Weiner’s “Many Colored Objects Placed Side by Side” was so much greater than just text.  Without Drucker’s explanation of how significant the text was, I would have viewed it solely as text within art.  Instead it can be used to argue so many different things such “as a literary representation or as a bit of language that stands in an ostensive relation to a real object” (Drucker 255).  The inclusion of examples has helped in the learning process for me.  Without this artwork her talk of “ideas” would not mean much.  I would not be able to comprehend the significance of the portrayal of “ideas” within art through language and how that changes cognitive meaning.



This is why I chose a simple representation of what everyone in my Honors 205 class will be trying to do this quarter.  Even though the text simply states “LEARN TO READ ART” I have no doubt that Lawrence Weiner’s “ideas” are much greater than what I can comprehend after only attending one class. 

3 comments:

  1. I really like the piece you selected to share here. It is conceptualism at its core; it tells us what conceptualism is in itself.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is great knowing I am not the only one who thought the reading was challenging. My reactions were exactly the same and I do not know what I would have done without a dictionary and the pictures. Like Eric, I also really like the image you selected!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm glad that you decided to share your confusion with the article's text. I, too, struggled a bit (more like a lot) with this text. And the pictures illustrating Drucker's points helped out during difficult-to-understand arguments. I wasn't really sure what exactly was considered conceptual art before reading this. At first, I also thought it had to include text, since we are in a class devoted to "Photos and Text", but "The Kissing Series" cleared a lot of my preconceptions up as well.

    ReplyDelete