Beyond describing what we see in front of us, which good ekphrasis attempts, we use words to do justice to the saturation of color and texture and line that we see with words. We can only try to assess what the eye computes. I find that this is nearly impossible to do accurately. 

In her paper titled “Why is Writing about Art so Difficult” Woster claims that outside of art school, the language artists apply to their artwork is primarily tuned to selling their work or otherwise profiting from being relevant to the market. To surmise, “quite honestly, a lot of blah, blah, blah.” (2). From a discussion on ekphrasis, I learned that one of the Perils of engaging in this literary endeavor is that it will undoubtedly be biased in some way. When we look at an image we are faced with the self, confronting an unknown terrain of emotions expressed by the image maker. As we construct our reaction around what these shapes and forms make our bodies do, we undoubtedly imprint some of our idiosyncrasies into our reading. Though not necessarily a reaction we can control, being aware of it is important in writing about the artwork. How can one be aware of one’s own biases, actively, as one reacts to artwork, in writing, made by somebody who has attempted to express the ineffable? This is extremely difficult, so the author confirmed.

The relationship an artwork has to the visible world is relative and therefore varies from person to person. As stated in the reading, trying to describe a cathedral to a blind person will inevitably be a tiresome affair, to say the least. Condensing the emotional effect that a piece of art has into any more than the elements of form that went into it is impossible. The form is at the base of why we react to art the way we do. Thus formalism states that art should be interpreted in this way primarily, rather than by its content. The content of the cathedral, a church, for example, is a rather complicated religious affair that many who are alien to the Western world may not understand by hearing it described in reference from a building.  

Sagrada Família, a church under construction

Separating the content from the form, the austere geometry, the flying buttress, the columns, and the statues, would make for a much easier experience in describing the cathedral. Once the meaning of a statue, for example, becomes a priority in describing the cathedral as a whole, we have lost sight of the cathedral itself. Similarly, we can come up with thousands of geometric combinations that will lead to a pleasing effect when bestowed by a pair of eyes, but we cannot make up thousands of words to describe the variety of effects that we feel after having viewed such artworks. This conundrum is highlighted in the reading as well. “Even if I had a bunch of new words I know that in a book about the painting I could not possibly write in-depth about the act of painting without alienating the reader because the process is so tedious.” (4) Here the author is highlighting the difficulty of writing about the act of painting, specifically doing so in a way to makes it relatable to a painter. If the artist knows most closely what he or she has made, they may still not have access to the words needed to describe that. The act of viewing, as the author describes it, is a tedious process that takes hours of laborious correction and repetition. This is not necessarily material that makes for an engaging story. It’s instead a meditation. If meditations and chants are in line with a spiritual balance, and a religious rite, then prayers may not be so easy to decode through simple language. The author claims this exists in art as well. The barriers are too many for the meaning to emerge correctly, and not be tainted. Therefore the need for new words to describe artwork continues the difficulty of writing about art.

On the other side of the problem, “We need vocabulary for the stories we make up when we look at an artwork” (7). The biographical knowledge we may have of an artist does not approach the level of complexity involved in understanding the artistic mechanic and drive that brings us his or her work. I believe that an artist is his or her person and should not be judged in direct correspondence with their art, but rather separated from it. Their artwork is undoubtedly motivated by factors that the viewer rarely understands deeply enough to make such a judgment. Thus the vocabulary problem continues: How do we talk about how we feel if not by telling our own stories in reaction to the ones that we see being told in an artwork?

We use iconography and we do so both subversively and in an austere literal matter to simplify the viewer’s relationship with the content of a piece of art. Since iconography is about content, we draw certain meanings from it. The crucifix represents a million different things to millions of different people, but most simply it’s an icon representing Jesus hanging from a crucifix. Just as it’s impossible to describe the significance behind each of the architectural choices behind a Gothic Cathedral, we reach for an understanding through iconography. As these icons are shared across cultures, a simplification of the image-viewer relationship occurs. 

In regards to semiotics, our understanding of artwork is complicated. In viewing Immersion (Piss Christ) (1987), a photograph by American artist Andres Serrano, what does urine signify, for example? It is, in Western society, traditionally viewed as repulsive and a personal matter. What about a crucifix submerged in urine, then? Then we may use certain signs, to decode this image and attempt to describe our reaction in writing. The signs mean different things to different people, but it’s no surprise that a controversy emerges from the juxtaposition of something that arouses disgust surrounding a figure that daily supplies a sublime experience for most people through devout religious inclination.

Bibliography

Woster, Sara. Painting Can Save Your Life: How & Why We Paint. New York, NY: 

TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022.