The interaction between artist and society, once markets emerged and art was acknowledged as a product with its own identity, resulted in specific forms of recurrence: recognition of the uniqueness of the work, of the artist, and of interpretive patterns. Once the framework for recognizing artworks as merchandise was established, transactions in artworks became transactions in the artist-society relation, with a lot of give-and-take that was difficult, if not impossible, to encode. The nature of the relations can be partially understood by examining behaviors of artists, who are almost always seen as eccentric, a little off the middle of the road, and behaviors of the public. There is much instinctive interaction, and even more learned behavior, mediated through an experience constituted in and communicated through language.
Looking at a painting-once painting is acknowledged as artifact-is more than acknowledging its physical reality: the optical, and sometimes the textual, appearance, or the context of contemplation. The action of painting, sculpting, dancing, performing, or writing poetry or a novel is simultaneously an action of constituting oneself as artist or writer and projecting this self, as it results from the practical experience characteristic of such an endeavor, into the social space of interactions. This is why art is in the first place expression, and only secondly communication. This is also why looking at a work is to constitute the individual experience of context, in the first place, and only secondly to conjure and assign meaning. In both the action of painting and looking at a painting, biologically inherited characteristics, together with learned elements (skills), participate in the process of constituting the being (the painter and the onlooker, for instance) as both individual and member of the community.
The natural and the acquired, or learned, interact. And in the course of time, the natural is educated, made aware of characteristics connected to culture rather than nature. Two simultaneous processes take place: 1) the recurrent interaction of those making art and those acknowledging it in their practical life; 2) establishment of patterns of interpretation as patterns of interaction mediated by the artwork. Language experiences take place in both processes. Consequently, artistic knowledge is accumulated, and art-related communication becomes a well defined practical experience, leading to self-identification such as art historian, art theoretician, art critic, and the like. The nature and characteristics of the practical experience of art-related language ought to be examined so that we can reach an understanding of the circumstances under which they might change.
Art and language
Language is a multi-dimensional practical experience. In the interaction between individuals who produce something (in this case, works of art) and those who consume them, self-constitution through language makes coordination possible. Production and consumption are other instances of human self-constitution. Frequently, integration takes place in the process of exchanging goods or, at a more general level, values.
Drawing something, real or imaginary, and looking at the drawing, i.e., trying to recognize the drawn object, are structurally different experiences. These two practical experiences can be related in many ways: display the drawing and the object drawn side-by-side; explain the drawing to the onlookers; attach a description. Here is where difficulties start to accumulate. The artifact and the experience leading to it appear as different entities. Descriptions (what is on paper or on canvas) lead to identification, but not to interaction, the only reason behind the artistic experience. Language substitutes its own condition for the entire physical-biogenetic level of interaction. It overplays the cultural, which is consequently made to represent the entire experience.
People speak about works of art, write about art, and read writings about art as though art had no phylogenetic dimension, only a phylocultural reality. Language's coordinative function is relied upon because of the dissimilarity between the practical experiences of making art and of appropriating it in the cultural environment. Through cultural experiences, the coordinating function of language extends to facilitating new forms of practical experiences associated with making art: instruction, use of technology, and cooperation peculiar to artmaking. It also facilitates experiences of appropriation in the art market, the constitution of institutions dedicated to supporting education in art, the politics of art, and forms of public evaluation. Art implicitly expresses awareness, on the part of artists and public, of how persons interacting through artistic expression are changed through the interactions.
Language, especially in forms associated with literacy, makes this awareness of reciprocal influence explicit. In the civilization of illiteracy, all non-literate means of information, communication, and marketing (e.g., songs, film, video, interactive multimedia) take it upon themselves to reposition art as yet another practical experience of the pragmatics of high efficiency peculiar to a humankind that reached yet another critical mass. It was not unusual for an artist in the literacy-dominated past to go through very long cycles in preparing for the work, and for the work itself to unfold after years of effort. It is quite the contrary in the case of the instantaneous gratification of a video work, of an installation, or of gestural art. Within the pragmatics of an underlying structure reflected in literacy, art was as confined as the experience of language, which represented its underpinning. The pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy makes the experience of art part of the global experience.
Many people wonder whether the basic, though changing, relation between art and language, in particular art and literacy, is unavoidable-furthermore, whether coordination can be assumed by a sign system other than literate language. In prelude to answering this question, I would like to point out that the influence of language on the arts, and even on the language arts (poetry, drama, fiction), was hailed by as many as deplored it. To account for attitudes in favor of or against an art connected to, or resulting from, high levels of literacy, i.e., of favoring an art emancipated from the domination of language, means to account for the change of art and its perceived meaning. The entire artistic effort to transcend the figurative and the narrative, to explore the abstract and the gestural, to explore its own reality, and to establish new languages testifies to this striving towards emancipation. Ascertaining that the art- language relation is not inescapable does not purport the invention of a new relation as an alternative to what culture acknowledges as the relatively necessary dependence of the two. As with the case of other forms of practical experiences discussed against the background of literacy, examination of directions of change and the attempt to conjure their meaning is required.
Human beings are agents of change and, at the same time, outside observers of the process of change. An observer can distinguish between the recurrent influence of the human biogenetic structure and the interactions based on this structure. An observer can also account for the role of the phylocultural, in particular the interactions this triggers. Restricted to the literate means of communication that I chose for presenting my arguments, I want to show that art and its interpretation are no longer the exclusive domain of literate language. Alternative domains of creation and interpretation are continuously structured as we project ourselves in new practical experiences. Moreover, the eternal conflict inherent in art experiences, between what is and what unfolds, best expressed in the quest for innovation, integrates aspects of the conflict between literacy-dominated pragmatics and pragmatics dominated by illiteracy. Were I an artist, and were we all visually attuned, this topic could have been explained through one or several artworks, or through the process leading to an artwork. The role of processing current practical experiences of art needs to be properly highlighted. Exacerbated in the self-consciousness of art in the age of illiteracy, artistic processes take precedence over artifacts; the making of art becomes more important than the result. Artists would say that we exist not only in the environment of our language projections, but probably just as much (if not more) in the environment of our art projections.