• A Way to Look at Things by Not Forgetting Their Names

    Author(s):
    Adrian Kohn (see profile)
    Date:
    2015
    Item Type:
    Essay
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M60F78
    Abstract:
    Actually I am not so sure that to look hard at a thing is to forget its name — Valéry’s hasty quip which says as much seems to duck the troublesome and ever-present tangle of sights and words. For, try as I might, I never quite break free from language when I take in a work of art by Irwin; studying it involves in some basic way either recognizing by name that which already has one, or else discovering that what is there does not yet have a name. Perhaps Valéry got it wrong on purpose, though. He may have wished to disrupt at any cost our habit of glancing at something in front of us only for the sake of identifying and classifying it with a term. To truly see such a thing, so the claim goes, is altogether different. For this we have to pick up on aspects of it that are unforeseeable beforehand, in spite of our familiarity with the category of things like it that its name names. But even if this is so, the word we have for the particular sort of a thing which is under examination proves helpful. As you set about viewing one of Irwin’s works, you can hazard names or descriptions or metaphors, and, having done this, thereupon attempt to figure out all that still remains unsaid. Seeing his art does not entail forgetting names, then, so much as verifying the limits of what they report. And writing about it amounts to settling on the best words you can find in anticipation of knowingly overburdening them. When you want to really focus in on Irwin’s art, it could be that you have got to adjust how you use language such that it plays a more noticeable role than ever before.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Journal:
    Chinati Foundation Newsletter
    Volume:
    20
    Page Range:
    52 - 63
    ISSN:
    1083-5555
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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