Comments on: Karen Schiff: Reading into Things

By: Bob Grumman

Bob Grumman — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:45:43 +0000

“. . . admit to not knowING just what it does.” But I remembered one obvious thing it does, something that visual poets often make use of–it personalizes the art work, makes us aware that it didn’t come out of a camera or other machine, including a purely objective artist. I think Mark is right in believing most people would not see them–but I consider that a value: presented realistically, the texts on the signs would be seen but not read–just skimmed, that is, rather than more actively engaged by the act of reading. Which, as I discuss in the thread I’m moderating which should be beginning today, draws an extra cerebral participant into the fun of looking at the image, the verbal part of the brain, in particular the area where one reads things. This may be trivial, but it can, when effective, give the work valuable tension between expressive modalities, the verbal and the visual.

By: Bob Grumman

Bob Grumman — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:43:05 +0000

Hey, to me that sounds neat! Isn’t an artist’s main function to throw pictures out of whack? But doing so should result in some kind of significant new view of some portion of reality, I think. I tend to suspect this . . . cursive? writing instead of expected printing does that, but I’m a visual poet, so biased–and admit to not know just what it does.

By: Nathan Langston

Nathan Langston — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:12:05 +0000

Elizabeth, I think I agree with Karen a bit in regards to the open-ness of looking at art vs. reading a text. Part of the reason that language is so useful is that there are so many rules as to how to interpret it. For example, I used the word “rules” and I bet, if we were asked, we would all give fairly similar definitions of what that word means. But when I look at the visual elements involved in “Letter to the Mother” or Cy Twombly’s work, I don’t feel as though we’d have the same degree of agreement. In that way, I feel less “limited” looking than I do reading.

What I’m really interested in though, is Karen’s introductory idea that, in some languages, there’s no difference between a word and a thing! I know that this lack of difference exists in Hebrew (at least in scripture) but I have real difficulty conceptualizing that! I can’t really imagine seeing or speaking or hearing the word “BREATH” and not being able to differentiate between that word and an actual BREATH. Does that mean that the word is actually how we define it in our minds, in a neuro-linguistic programming sort of way? Does it mean that there’s no difference between imagining what a word represents and actually experiencing what that word represents? Is this why saying or writing G-D in its entirety is considered blasphemy by some? This lack of difference between word and reality is something I’m very interested in but have real trouble wrapping my mind around.

Also: I used “BREATH” because I heard that the Hebrew word for it is the same for “Wind,” “Breath,” and “Life.” That is, poetically, such a beautiful set of synonyms!

By: Karen L Schiff

Karen L Schiff — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:57:26 +0000

Mark Bradford, I think that lack of attention to font detail in rendering text is really common — writing by hand is so habitual that it’s hard to make letters any other way. When I was young, I entertained myself by copying letters out of a Letraset catalogue, so your dentist’s painting (new readers: to find Mark’s comment, scroll down in the thread that Elizabeth started) would undoubtedly annoy me, too. Fonts have such rich personalities! Though handwriting does, too, whether you believe in graphology (i.e., that you can understand someone’s character through their handwriting) or not. I remember some counselors at my high school art camp collected handwritten alphabets, to have a catalogue of how people formed letters. Writing in their notebook felt momentous and impossible: I knew my letters would look uniquely mine, yet I also knew that there was no way I’d be able to write them in such a way that would represent my “essence” (?). So any sample would be slightly “off” (anomalous), yet it’d also always be spot-on (recognizable).

By: Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:41:06 +0000

My dentist’s office is located near Washington Square and every time I’m sitting there in the big chair, I’m endlessly annoyed by this one print he has on his wall – a reproduction of a painting of the intersection that’s also visible out the window. What annoys me, aside from the dullness of the illustration, is that the words that appear in the scene (like on the posted ads, or company logos on parked vehicles) are simply written out, to scale, as you would read them if you were actually there. But they throw the picture completely out of whack because the words in the picture are not painted or drawn – they’re just written. You can read them, but you can’t really SEE them.

By: Karen L Schiff

Karen L Schiff — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 01:26:26 +0000

Interesting you say that art seems more limited to you than reading, N. Elizabeth Schlatter, because I have often thought of it in just the opposite way! I totally see what you mean about open hours & time constraints — I hadn’t thought of that! — but aside from those logistical issues, I often think that with art your eyes can go anywhere without restriction, & you can be far away from a piece or up close to it as you choose. WIth reading, you have to be within “reading distance” & the usual layout of words on a page will force your eyes to move left to right, top to bottom. Not always, of course. But it’s a different kind of limitation. And then you close the covers and it’s just a thing (to tie this into our week’s theme), whereas an artwork on a wall is always available (unless it’s behind doors, or electronic or something) to passersby.

By: N. Elizabeth Schlatter

N. Elizabeth Schlatter — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 14:11:13 +0000

I love the names of the groups! FAT and Thing Thing. Hmmmm… I’m thinking about the experience of reading and the experience of engaging with art and wondering about similarities and differences. I haven’t really thought to compare them before. It’s tricky b/c of issues of time and space, which are so limited with art versus boundless with text (e.g. visiting a museum during open hours and only having say 20 minutes of time to devote to a work of art, versus reading a book on my couch on an early Sunday morning and several evenings after that). Thinking of the concept of “pleasure” is a good way to find commonalities and using the eyes as a vehicle in both processes but very differently. Am going to try to use the word “thingitude” in casual conversation today.

By: Karen L Schiff

Karen L Schiff — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:27:52 +0000

Hi Elizabeth, & thanks so much for writing! I actually love what you’re saying. Thingness in all its multifarious intractability. Back in high school, I belonged to a group that called itself the Friday Afternoon Thing (or FAT, for short), because we couldn’t think of any more specific words to describe what the group was really doing. And then in college, some friends developed a format for a meeting where they would tell each other…I don’t really know…I think their life stories, really, & they called it the “Thing Thing.” (Just one “Thing” wasn’t good enough; when someone asked what Thing they were doing, they felt compelled to find an adjective to describe it, but even that was hard to find, so they’d say, “You know…the THING Thing!” Ah, words…sigh. But I think this has a lot to do with the “thing” that is a work of art, or the “thing” that our reading might turn into. In other words (ha! what a funny phrase to use in this context!), there’s an experience I have while looking or reading that is something I strive for, but it’s something I can’t quite put into words. And I fear that putting too many words on it is like closing it in a tight box. So I’ll stop writing any more words into this light blue reply box… (Hey, did you know that Facebook design features are blue because Mark Zuckerberg is colorblind? I don’t know if that relates to Reading Into Things, but I think it’s a pretty interesting Thing…or thingy, thingy-wingy, thingamajig. And sure, btw: I think (or I thing?) Jill O’Bryan’s “Breaths #1″ is a very cool mix of reading & thingness, thingitude.

By: N. Elizabeth Schlatter

N. Elizabeth Schlatter — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:11:07 +0000

Hi Karen, I love this idea–of reading becoming something. Of an action becoming an object. It actually made me think of Jill O’Bryan’s “Breaths #1″ which is an action (breathing) turned into a thing (marks/holes in a book) turned into an action (reading the book), although that’s not quite what you’re getting at, I don’t think. For me, with this discussion topic, I get hung up on the idea of creating a thing, meaning a physical thing. I’m not an artist (or at least, not right now) and so that idea of creating something visual or physical is a barrier I’m unable to cross. But I will admit that for the past year or so, I have had a conscious desire to read more, like, a lot more. More art books, art mags, novels, biographies, popular magazines, chick lit, mysteries, you name it. I mean, I’m not picking up “Car and Driver,” but I am trying to squirrel away more and more of my time to read. And I feel like I’m searching for something, or some “thing” whether it’s a feeling, a state of mind, a divination, I’m not sure. It’s probably a number of things I can’t seem to put into words, and whatever it is or could be will probably, very messily, overflow into the various nooks and crannies of life. This is perhaps very tangential to your discussion idea. But since it came out of the “reading into things” phrase, I thought I’d post it.