Mitchell, W.J.T., Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1986, excerpt from chapter “What is an Image”, pp 7-46
IMAGE IS TEXT AND TEXT IS IMAGE
W.J.T. Mitchell, a professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and editor of Critical Enquiry explored images by comparing with words, and by looking at them from the viewpoint of verbal language. The relationship between word and image is complex and requires mutual translation and interpretation. Mitchell discussed “beneath words, beneath ideas, the ultimate reference in the mind is the image”.1 It is impossible to have words without images and images without words.
Both image and word rely on semiotics to decipher there meaning. Ferdinand de Saussure defined language as a social system of arbitrary signs. The “sign” or word is what bonds a concept to an image and “will always call forth the other”.2 Word calls the image and image calls the word. They go together.
According to Meg Cranston the basic question of conceptual art deals with what constitutes knowledge. How to best represent that knowledge can be pictorial or linguistic. In her own practice when frustrated describing things as a writer, she makes a picture instead.3 She uses the mode of representation that best fits her concept.
Jeff Wall, a photo conceptualist used the text of Ralph Ellison’s The Prologue of Invisible Man (1952)4 to recreate or translate the legendary text as a visualisation in After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (1999-2000). The hidden meaning lying behind the pictorial surface manifests itself in word, giving the work meaning beyond the image by what is undisclosed. Text is more precise and perspicuous, whereas the image can interpreted differently depending on the experience and conventions of the viewer. Image and text are inextricably linked. Once you have read a novel as in the case of Ralph Ellison and seen the work by Jeff Wall, it is impossible to read the text without the visualisation being apparent in it, and visa versa. It has a dual translation and understanding, despite being different modes of representation.
Artists like Jeff Wall test text and image against their opposite representation. Each informs both sides of the conversation in a relationship of “free exchange along open borders”.5 The relationship has a dialogue between representations. As Mitchell discussed beneath the words, the ultimate reference in the mind is the image. Images and words are both signifiers with which meanings are generated. Both images and words result in a visualisation as the signified, or concept produced by the brain. This makes the two inextricably linked.
Mitchell, W.J.T., Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1986, excerpt from chapter “What is an Image”, pp 43
Waterman, J.T., “Ferdinand de Saussure – Forerunner of Modern Structuralism”. The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 40, No. 6 (Oct. 1956) pp 307-309.
Daniel, N., “Running on Light Feet”. Hot Pants in a Cold Cold World, Artspace and Clouds, Auckland, 2008, pp 6-21
Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man, New York, Random House, 1952. pp.5
Mitchell, W.J.T., Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1986, excerpt from chapter “What is an Image”, pp 43
