The Ghost Of Private Language: A Bewitchment Of Modern Art.
Hello hello!
I hope you are having a wonderful day.
Between all the conversations I had about “I Could Have Done That: Why Change The Course Of Art Dialogue,” there was one response that will serve perfectly to give rise to the central theme of this new text. It went like this:
—I am one of those people who would have questioned the art-piece. I believe that you are right about working around the conversation and getting to more profound and critical topics, but still, there are times that something must be said. —
It is this “but” where we stumble upon the other side of the coin, shifting focus from the interpreter to the artist, and ask: Why, most of the time, is it difficult to understand modern art? Why are we not able to connect with the art-piece? Why is it not clear enough?
To talk about these problems, I want to share with you the argument of private language, which was a thought experiment/paradox proposed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, with groundbreaking work on logic, mathematics, and the philosophy of language.
This concept was first mentioned in Wittgenstein’s book “Philosophical Investigations” (1953). It goes a little bit like this: Imagine a private language in which the only person who can understand it is the person using it. No one else in the world can understand this language or can ever understand it. Is it possible for this private language to exist? Wittgenstein denies its possibility. He argues that language is necessarily public in nature, as our ability to communicate will always be tied to language.
Imagine you have a group of people who speak in different idioms, and that maybe some of them have a communicative disability; say not being able to speak, write or see. No matter the circumstances, the group of people will eventually always find common ground to communicate, be through sounds, gestures, or visual representation, to say a few. And this is the same principle we have used to understand the universe that surrounds us, to the length of understanding DNA, binary code, or valency. It would not be possible to engage in a conversation without common meanings through language.
In his book “On The Way to Language” (1956), Martin Heidegger mentions that language does not inhabit us; on the contrary, it is us who inhabit language.
So, now that we have grasped the basics of private language, we can talk about where the problem starts, and this is when we mistake private experiences with private language.
Let’s say we have two people who experience the feeling of pain. In the sense of private experience, we can argue that both emotions are not the same because the way they perceive it is related to the sum of all the experiences of their life so far, which are pretty different from each other. And in the sense of language, they are feeling the same concept of pain. Therefore, they can engage in conversation to understand their pain because of common meanings.
But what happens when we believe that this feeling is entirely private? We think that there is no way for another person to understand the meaning of what we feel, or maybe we could also believe that only specific aspects of that experience constitute the whole. We fall onto an art trope, where meaning is mystified.
“[…]We imagine the meaning of what we say is something queer, mysterious, hidden from view. But nothing is hidden. Everything is open to view.” (Wittgenstein. Film. 1993, Derek Jarman)
Before going any further, I need to remind something that may seem a little obvious but is quite relevant as we never pay too much attention to it. Beliefs shape our thoughts, perception of truth, and actions; beliefs embody everything we create.
Wittgenstein used to say that “philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.”
He means that sometimes our knowledge, the information we acquire, can mislead us, and we need to turn back at language to see things clearly. “Bewitchment” in the sense of acting in the world and not being aware that we are under a spell.
Nowadays, most artists (consciously or subconsciously) deny one of the critical aspects of art:
Art, just as language, is public in nature.
Therefore, if one creates believing in private language, you deprive said creation from connecting and forming a bridge for a proper dialogue to exist: It becomes unidirectional.
To break the spell and the hunting of private language, we need to do two things. The first one is to address the problem by name (the main reason for this text) and deny the possibility of its existence. Then, with this belief out of the way, the second step would be to begin to raise questions revolving around the experience of art and its public nature:
To think about the individual and collective language of the people who will undergo the work of art.
Being open to intervene the exhibition space to create a suitable environment for the art-piece (as well as to work with the curator to achieve a perfect balance, instead of just assigning spaces and empty walls to fill up).
Is there something that we can do, after someone buys a work of art, for it not to become just a decoration? Could it be possible for the work to constantly awake new experiences?
The list goes on.
This doesn’t mean that artists should solely create through public cues but embrace the nature of art and blend it into the artistic process. Although it may not be explicit in the piece, each question and answer adds to the clarity and fluidity of what we create. Through this caring, people will begin to be able to connect and understand art.
Allow art to believe and speak the same language as the interpreter.
