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Ripple Effects: Painting and Language GUEST EDITORS: Susan Bee and Mira Schor 2 Susan Bee and Mira Schor 3 Christian Schumann 4 Amy Sillman 6 David Reed 8 Jane Hammond 10 Rochelle Feinstein 12 Mira Schor 14 Julia Jacquette 16 Pamela Wye 18 Kay Rosen 20 Susan Bee 22 David Humphrey 24 Kenneth Goldsmith 26 Faith Wilding 28 Lucio Pozzi 30 Richard Tuttle 32 Tom Knechtel Susan Bee and Mira Schor Ripple Effects: Painting and Language Christian HIS ISSUE OF NEW OBSERVATIONS: “Ripple depicting language as a sign for female thought and her concerns for Schumann Effects,” examines the relationship of painters with lan- imbricating writing language and painting language. Kenneth guage and other primarily linguistic source materials. Goldsmith tells how the purchase of a used copy of Abbie Hoffman’s TPainting was traditionally an art form privileged for its Steal This Book inspired his subsequent artworks. Rochelle Feinstein purely visual qualities, although for much of its history it found its discusses her use of words in painting and the grammar of painting. themes in linguistic sources such as biblical narrative, mythology, Jane Hammond explores painting itself, including the construction allegory, and history. In fact, painting and language exist in a field of of painting as a language. Tom Knechtel and David Reed note the Y INITIAL use interactive ripple effects that productively enrich rather than disrupt formative, constitutive importance of film, literature, and opera to of language with- the surface of contemporary painting. Today many painters rely on their work. Faith Wilding writes of her interdisciplinary practice, in a visual context linguistically based sources for their work, increasingly bringing where traditional painting language is but one of many languages has to have images of these sources and of language into their paintings; also, used to communicate political and theoretical concerns. David M occurred with some really bad some painters write about art or collaborate with writers, thereby Humphrey zeroes in on the relation of the concept of beauty to his attempts at drawing comics. The engaging in a complex, multilayered practice, where art and language paintings. Susan Bee writes about her relationship to writing and language within comic panels intersect. This is similar to the practices of some of the most promi- editing and about her collaborations with writers and how it has consists mainly of highly dramat- nent members of the New York School of painting. influenced her artwork. Lucio Pozzi discusses the distinction ic exclamations and soap opera- As former co-editors of M/E/A/N/I/N/G as well as practicing between art and words and the development of his Word Works. like dialogue. Being too young to artists, we have been committed to engaging in such a dual practice Pamela Wye narrates a parable about writing and art, while Richard understand the potential of this, CHRISTIAN SCHUMANN Meanwhile Pops Busted His Gears...., 1993. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 60 x 72 inches. ourselves: we have often invited artists to write about issues and art Tuttle contributes a manifesto-like list of sentences and a poem. I dropped the comics thing and Courtesy: Postmasters Gallery of concern and relevance to their work. “Ripple Effects” is in a way a Together, we think that these artists give some idea of the breadth moved on to plain old drawing and stuff, keeping writing as an entity schizophrenics. Also in the midst of all the chicken-scratching and ran- dom imagery I write whatever comes to mind down as well, sometimes ripple effect of that involvement. We have invited some of the artists and depth of the contemporary artist’s preoccupation and possible separate but equal to the visual world. a song lyric or something a friend says to me while I’m working, other who first wrote for to participate in this issue of obsession with language and how it changed and influenced their Later on, I discovered concrete poetry. A typical example of that M/E/A/N/I/N/G times a list of obscurities or whatnot. as well as several other artists whose art practice visual work. would be a page of typed lowercase e’s in neat little symmetrical rows New Observations The use of words and texts for me is an act concurrent with paint- involves language and writing as either subject or image of their art- commanding some sort of annihilation of language and purpose of meaning/existence in general. Not being too interested in this ing images and even scribbling on paper. It is all a form of abstract lan- work or as a parallel practice, or significant source of inspiration. We Susan Bee is an artist living in NYC. From 1986-1996 she was co- although intrigued by the use of words and letters as a visual object I guage. They are all communications. have encouraged them to extend the basic premise of the discussion editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G. Her artist’s book, Little Orphan began to install words in my painting, sometimes going as far as There is also an issue of texts creating another dimension to a in any direction of particular present relevance to their work. Anagram, with poems by Charles Bernstein will be forthcoming in 1997 putting a little comic book style MEANWHILE...at the top left hand painting, one of the imagination of the viewer/reader being utilized. In the past, dictates of modernism—“Greenbergian” modernism, from Granary Books. corner of a piece. As time progressed, this got a bit more sophisticated, Reading a story on a painting creates a sort of dimensional hole, the at least—have distanced painting from language. Even though the sometimes turning into a parody of field painting (a yellow block of viewer/reader’s mind is forced to act and the text is replaced by their appearance of language through the use of collage was an important Mira Schor is a painter and writer living in New York City. A collec- words on half of a canvas, a plain color field on the other with one tiny memory of what they imagine the story to look like. So when they turning point in the development of modernist painting, as Brian tion of her essays on art, Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art allusive image stuck in the middle of the emptiness). move on with their freshly activated minds to looking at a couple of O’Doherty observed in Inside the White Cube, “Without going into Culture, will be published by Duke University Press in early 1997. She I’ve never been able to write a lengthy story, for some reason my writ- concurrent scribbles, where does that take them? The field of the the attractive complexities of the letter and the word in modernism, is on the faculty of Parsons School of Design. ing skills only last for about a page before things get boring. As a result of painting becomes one of imaginary dimensional depths varying in they are disruptive.” Certainly much avant-garde art, other than this, I condense everything into a block of words; a paragraph-long tale of quality depending on each viewer’s comprehension and personal inter- painting, has benefitted from that “disruption,” and for a while some twisted event or a toxic rant. Nowadays this will end up on a paint- est in the work. In this way a poetic depth becomes a tool to create an painting seemed to lose ground to these openly linguistic forms. ing surface, a clot of words amongst a bunch of scribbles and drawings. actual formal depth within the painting. However, in recent years we have seen the infusion of popular cul- This references the idea of words as abstraction. ture and multiple sources into the once sacred realm of the fine arts. Language in the form of words on the page is abstraction, and to Christian Schumann is a painter whose work is shown at the The artists who are included in this issue have a variety of someone who can’t read whatever it is on the canvas, it really is abstrac- Postmasters Gallery and other fine venues. He is available for weddings approaches to the subject of art and language. Some of these artists tion; nothing more than a bunch of tiny marks. To someone who can and Bar Mitzvahs. represent language directly in their work: Julia Jacquette writes of read it, the words reference something, in my case something highly her first experience of viewing paintings which represented writing evocative (hopefully). When I use a single word, I try to use one which and how that influenced her subsequent work. Kay Rosen empha- retains some sort of poetic depth. For example: ‘octopus’ or ‘Burma,’ sizes the way typography and language structure interpretation and perplexing mysterious words. This holds a slight kinship to the word- discusses her desire to exercise the science of linguistics in what for play of Frank Stella’s earlier painting titles like “Coney Island.” The her is the more suitable field of visual art. Amy Sillman distinguish- texts I create are either complicated rants or dramatic and simplistical- es the importance of language as speech and her paintings as figures ly psycho-sexual stories whose plots are derived from 1950’s science fiction movies. The rants’ construction is stream of consciousness of speech; Christian Schumann describes his sources, from comics to blurbs influenced initially by Burroughs, Bataille and the ramblings of concrete poetry; Mira Schor notes her initial political goals in 2 - RIPPLE EFFECTS NEW OBSERVATIONS - 3 Imagine a use of the word writing which might be thinking or looking.