Why Do This Blog?

As I was chatting with an artist friend yesterday, I had one of those “Aha!” moments regarding this blog and its contents. (Even as I post, as often and as broadly as possible, I am constantly asking myself why. Why do this?) Back when I was a young art writer, I used the word “ineffable” a lot to describe thinking about/perceiving/being in the presence of certain works of art. (The best works seemed to elicit this response.) My fall-back position was often to lament the limitations of language to talk about art and adopt a rather melancholic attitude overall, regarding the entire enterprise of writing about art with some degree of hopelessness — even as I was consistently (and professionally) engaged with it.

Yes, it was lazy. But I could not think my way out of it for some time.

I read Julia Kristeva and was drawn to her ideas about the Semiotic, as that which exists “pre-language” — pre-Oedipal state, pre-Mirror Stage, pre-awareness of differentiation prompting the need for communication. I still believe that such a state exists (even moreso since I have had the opportunity to spend time with infants), but it is difficult for one within language to conceive of something that exists without language.

Getting back to my conversation with my friend…I was finally able to articulate for myself how I have somehow been able to reconcile my conviction regarding the Semiotic with my (no longer melancholic) interest in language, especially within the realm of art. It is simply this: nowhere is it more evident to me that language is an adaptive, mutating, and dynamic system than in (some) writing about art. Art regularly confronts us with experiences that leave us struggling to find the words to describe them. Or even questioning what relationship language can hope to have to art. We are acutely aware of being at the threshold of language while deeply engaged with its most primary informing impulses: the need and/or desire to communicate. (“I want to tell you about this thing.”)

Some artists recogize the need to create a discourse, a foundation in language, into which their work can be received. That discourse does not necessarily exist until they make it. And so these artists write. And they make art out of language.

So, through this blog (a word that was itself born only recently), I write, and I present what these artists write. And I learn why I do it through talking with friends.