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The Languages of Art: How Representational and Abstract Painters

Conceptualize Their Work in Terms of Language
Article in Poetics Today · July 2009

DOI: 10.1215/03335372-2009-004
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DRAFT -- Final version appears in Poetics Today 30(3): 517-560.
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The Languages of Art: 5
How Representational and Abstract Painters 6
Conceptualize Their Work in Terms of Language 7

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Karen Sullivan
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El Cervell Social, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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Abstract Representational and nonrepresentational (abstract) artists exhibit differ-
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ent conceptual processes when they describe their work. Data from ekphrastic texts
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written by artists to accompany their artwork show that, although both kinds of
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painters refer metaphorically to their art using terms such as language, vocabulary,
conversation, and narrative,, the two use these words in different ways and with dif- 22
ferent meanings. For example, representational painters refer to “languages” that 23
consist of the systems of represented objects, people, or landscapes that they depict, 24
whereas nonrepresentational painters write about “languages” composed of sets of 25
colors or shapes. Moreover, representational artists claim to engage in a “conversa- 26
tion” with the viewers of their works, whereas nonrepresentational artists prefer to 27
“converse” with their materials or canvases. In general, representational painters 28
use metaphorical terms such as language to describe their subject matter and their 29
artwork’s effect on potential viewers, whereas nonrepresentational painters use the 30
same words to describe colors, shapes, and their own artistic process. Artists that
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combine representation and abstraction in the same artwork (here termed “partly
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representational” artists) use some of the metaphors preferred by the purely rep-
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resentational artists and some of the metaphors of the nonrepresentational artists,
suggesting that the presence/absence of both representation and abstraction affect 34
the metaphors that artists use to describe their work. 35
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Poetics Today 30:3 (Fall 2009) DOI 10.1215/03335372-2009-004 40
© 2009 by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
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Tseng 2009.07.13 09:34 8459 Poetics Today • 30:3 • Sheet 147 of 241
518 Poetics Today 30:3
1 1. The Voices of Image and Form

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Some artists “talk” to their paint. Abstract artist Masako Kamiya says: “I
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engage in a dialogue with paint. My statement is each dot I make with the
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brush, then I respond intuitively to each unexpected play of dots. . . . This
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process is an interchange with the painting activity” (Zevitas 2003b: 65).
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Other painters, such as Joseph Biel, describe their work as “talking” to an
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imagined audience: “The drawings function for me as a language. . . . It is
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my hope that they will communicate with a sense of potency to whatever
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audience receives them” (Zevitas 2003a: 17).
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Why does Kamiya metaphorically “converse” with her materials, while
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Biel metaphorically “addresses” an audience? And is it a coincidence that
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Kamiya and Biel produce different types of artwork (see figures 1 and 2)?
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To understand the correlation between artists’ work and their use of meta-
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phor in verbal representations of their work, I examined a corpus com-
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prised of 160 artists’ statements and 480 paintings from the collection New
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American Paintings,, which represents a broad range of nonrepresentational,
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purely representational, and partly representational painters.
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In the corpus, all types of artists describe their work metaphorically as
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linguistic communication via words such as language,
language conversation, vocabu-
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lary and dozens of other terms and phrases related to language. However,
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different types of artists use these words with different meanings. There
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appear to be especially strong correlations between the metaphoric mean-
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ings that artists assign to terms such as language and the artists’ tendency
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to produce purely representational art (involving the mimesis of subject
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matter), nonrepresentational art (limited to abstract shapes and patterns),
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or partly representational art (combining representation and abstraction).
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Purely and partly representational artists employ many of the same
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metaphors. Both talk about “languages” that consist of images, whereas
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nonrepresentational artists tend to refer to “languages” composed of colors
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and forms. This distinction leads to differences in the artists’ metaphoric
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usage of other words related to language, such as vocabulary, words, and
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translation. For example, for purely and partly representational artists,
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“vocabulary” refers to the set of images that an artist paints (such as the
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objects in a still life), whereas for nonrepresentational artists, “vocabular-
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ies” are made up of the colors or shapes that recur in an artist’s paintings.
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(Distinctions related to terms such as language and vocabulary will be dis-
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cussed in section 2.1.)
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This leads to another difference in the metaphoric language of these
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artists. Many purely and partly representational artists try to represent
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objects, people, or places according to values that these artists often
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describe metaphorically as honesty or truthfulness. But nonrepresentational
Sullivan • Languages of Art 519
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Figure 1Masako Kamiya, Equilibrium. Copyright Masako Kamiya, masakokamiya
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.com, mkamiya10@gmail.com. Represented by Gallery NAGA, gallerynaga.com
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artists do not generally use metaphoric terms related to “telling the truth,” 30
because “truth” involves representation (section 2.2). 31
As a related difference, purely and partly representational artists tend 32
to compare their work to genres of prose that are valued for their “truth- 33
ful” or “honest” representation of real-world events, such as “journalism” 34
and “biography.” Nonrepresentational artists, on the other hand, are more 35
likely to associate their work with genres that do not necessarily represent 36
such events, particularly “poetry” (section 4). 37
Alongside the differences in “languages” and “vocabularies,” the meta- 38
phors of these types of artists differ in their treatment of the viewers of art. 39
Representational artists (such as Biel, who uses a “language” to “commu- 40
nicate” with an “audience”) seem concerned with “speaking” to their view- 41
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20 Figure 2 Joseph Biel, Five Figures.. Copyright Joseph Biel, www.joebiel.com
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22 ers, whereas abstract artists (such as Kamiya, who engages in a “dialogue
23 with paint”) tend to use metaphors that focus on their materials rather
24 than on the viewers of their works. The latter may even prefer to let the
25 elements of their art “converse” among themselves. Some partly repre-
26 sentational artists but almost no purely representational artists follow this
27 pattern (section 3).
28 This difference in “audience” aligns with a difference in the “stories”
29 that artists “tell” about their artwork. Purely and partly representational
30 artists “tell stories” that are implied by their subject matter, whereas non-
31 representational artists are most interested in the “story” of their own pro-
32 cess in making a painting. Both whom/what artists “speak” to and the
33 “story” they tell, then, reflect the purely and partly representational artists’
34 focus on imagery and audience, and the nonrepresentational ones’ focus
35 on shape, color, and the artistic process (section 2.3).
36 These differences in how the three groups metaphorically describe their
37 work (such as their differing uses of terms such as language) only become
38 perceptible when we recognize the similarities among all types of artists’
39 metaphors and the similar purpose and structure of their verbal repre-
40 sentations of the artwork and the artistic process. They all rely on meta-
41 phors that consider visual art in terms of language, and all use many of the
same metaphoric words to describe their art, such as language, story, and so 1
forth. 2
It is against the background of these similarities that the divisions in 3
these artists’ conceptualizations and values become apparent. In recogni- 4
tion of the similar structures and purposes involved, I will consider all art- 5
ists’ descriptions of their work as ekphrasis, the verbal representation of art. 6
I argue that a broad definition of ekphrasis is preferable here to a narrow 7
one, such as “the verbal representation of visual representation” (Heffer- 8
nan 1993: 3), which would exclude the verbal representation of nonrepre- 9
sentational (abstract) art and would therefore impede the comparison of 10
abstract and representational artists’ statements. These ekphrastic state- 11
ments have much in common; for example, all draw on pictorial models to 12
represent a body of works as a whole (Yacobi 1995) in their metaphoric 13
descriptions of their works. Additionally, a broad definition of ekphrasis 14
allows for numerous subdivisions, several of which prove useful in explain- 15
ing the differences between abstract and representational artists’ uses of 16
metaphor. For example, artworks may be categorized according to the 17
presence and type of mimesis in the works (section 1.2). 18
The similarities and the differences in artists’ metaphoric language will 19
be captured here in terms of conceptual blending (Fauconnier and Turner 20
1996; Turner 2002). This formalism will be introduced in section 1.3 and 21
employed in analyses throughout. 22
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1.1. Methodology 24
The data in this article are derived from a corpus of 160 artists’ statements 25
from four successive volumes of New American Paintings from 2002 and 2003. 26
New American Paintings is a quarterly book-length volume that bills itself 27
as a “juried exhibition-in-print.” Each volume covers forty painters, each 28
represented by three paintings and one written statement. I chose to study 29
New American Paintings because (unlike most art magazines and collections) 30
this publication does not focus exclusively on either representational or 31
nonrepresentational work but includes a balanced selection of both. 32
For the purposes of this study, artworks were considered (1) purely rep- 33
resentational, (2) nonrepresentational, or (3) partly representational. The 34
classification into these categories is potentially complicated by the fact 35
that viewers of an artwork may have differing opinions as to whether a 36
given work is representational, nonrepresentational, or somewhere in 37
between. For example, the painting Leaning Dairy Pile consists of a stack of 38
colored circles that may be interpreted as the representation of scoops of 39
ice cream, cheese wheels, some other real or imagined object, or simply as 40
a formation of abstract shapes. Rather than force a standardized notion of 41
1 “representation” on artists’ work, the current study analyzes artists’ con-

2 ceptualizations of their artwork based on their own metaphoric descrip-
3 tions of its representational or nonrepresentational nature, as evidenced in
4 their statements and artwork titles.
5 An artwork is considered here purely representational if it is described by
6 the artist in terms such as “figurative,” “representational” (Zevitas 2003b:
7 45), “hyper-realist” (ibid.: 13), “photographic” (ibid.: 13), or “photojour-
8 nalistic” (2002b: 125).1 Also included in this category is work from artists
9 who made remarks such as “I . . . record what I see as faithfully as I can”
10 (2003b: 49), “it is my intention to be as accurate as possible to the situa-
11 tion I am observing” (2002a: 41), or “I . . . transform what I see into an
12 image that is recognizable” (2003b: 61) and artists who describe themselves
13 as working “strictly from life” (2003a: 129) or “from direct observation”
14 (2002a: 125). Only artists who explicitly mention the representation of
15 objects, people, places, actions, and so forth are here classified as “purely
16 representational.”
17 Artists whose work is labeled nonrepresentational (or abstract) gener-
18 ally describe their work as “abstract” or “abstractions” and make remarks
19 such as “[my] process frees me from intending to construct a recognizable
20 form” (2003b: 65), “I believe that working abstractly best expresses my
21 images and ideas” (2003a: 37), “I am interested in abstraction in and of
22 itself ” (ibid.: 9), or “these paintings . . . resist settling on a precise referent”
23 (2002a: 101). Artists are also deemed nonrepresentational if they do not
24 refer to the representation of subject matter in their statements or titles.
25 Instead, their statements typically consist of descriptions of the abstract
26 forms and colors they use in their paintings, such as “I am working with
27 bold flat shapes in pure color” (2003a: 9), or observations on the use of “cir-
28 cular brush stroke(s)” (ibid.: 69), “form in tandem with color” (2002b: 37),
29 and “patterns of geometric shapes” (2002a: 133). These works are usually
30 untitled but are sometimes given names that avoid reference to representa-
31 tional imagery, such as #10 (ibid.), Counterparts (2003a: 9; see figure 13), or
32 Cluster Field 3 (ibid.: 69).
33 About 40 percent of the artists in the New American Paintings corpus are
34 partly representational in that they claim to combine representational and
35 nonrepresentational elements in the work described in their statements.
36 There are a number of ways these two types of elements can be integrated
37 or composed, to the exclusion of the purely representational or nonrepre-
38 sentational. For example, one partly representational artist combined, in
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40 1. Citations of the New American Paintings volumes will hereafter omit the editor’s name and
41 will include only the year of publication and page number.
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Figure 3 Tommy Fitzpatrick, Secondary Broadway. Copyright Tommy Fitzpatrick 26
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each painting, “the recognizable image of a house,” which is a type of 28
representational image, with “areas of color that create a break in the pic- 29
ture plane,” a kind of nonrepresentational form (ibid.: 25). Another art- 30
ist’s paintings each included a combination of “flat space, flat color and 31
an isolated image” (ibid.: 109). In one painting, for example, this artist 32
represented a necklace yet painted each bead as a set of abstract shapes, 33
thus combining the overall picture of an object with forms that are, in and 34
of themselves, nonrepresentational. Along the same lines, Tommy Fitz- 35
patrick (see figure 3) claims to “locate abstraction” in representational sub- 36
jects (2002b: 57), depicting architecture in a manner that emphasizes the 37
abstract forms that result from a particular cropped view of a building. 38
The artist is able to “locate abstraction” by emphasizing abstract shapes 39
that are not themselves representational and yet jointly contribute to the 40
representation of architecture. All of these artists refer in their statements 41
1 to both representational and nonrepresentational elements and are there-

2 fore grouped into a third category, that of partly representational.
3 Based on their self-descriptions, the 160 artists in the corpus include
4 56 representational artists, 43 nonrepresentational artists, and 61 partly
5 representational artists. Over 60 percent of these artists’ statements
6 involve metaphoric language relevant to the analysis in this article (thirty-
7 five representational, twenty-three nonrepresentational, and forty partly
8 representational artists).2 In addition to the sorted corpus data from the
9 four volumes of New American Paintings, this article also cites evidence and
10 examples from artists’ magazines, art history books, and art-related Web
11 sites.
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13 1.2. Artists’ Statements as Ekphrasis
14 The vast majority of statements, whether from representational or non-
15 representational artists, refer to the visual works of art that they accom-
16 pany.3 These artists’ statements therefore can be regarded as part of a long
17 tradition of textually representing visual art, a phenomenon often referred
18 to as ekphrasis. However, some definitions encompass certain types of ver-
19 bal representation of visual art found in artists’ statements but exclude
20 others. For example, James Heffernan (1991, 1993) defines ekphrasis spe-
21 cifically, and exclusively, as the “verbal representation of visual represen-
22 tation.” According to this definition, purely and partly representational
23 artists’ statements could be considered ekphrasis, but nonrepresentational
24 artists’ statements could not.
25 The comparison undertaken here is made possible by a definition of
26 ekphrasis that encompasses verbal representations of both abstract and
27 representational art. Several broad definitions have been proposed, usually
28 attended by a call for better-defined subcategories within the overarching
29 category of ekphrasis. Tamar Yacobi (1995: 600), for example, describes
30 ekphrasis as “an umbrella term that subsumes various forms of rendering
31 the visual object into words” and suggests that ekphrasis is most meaning-
32 ful when subdivided into more specific categories. This approach certainly
33 seems most advantageous here.
34 Given an understanding of ekphrasis that encompasses all verbal rep-
35 resentation of art, the differences between abstract and representational
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37 2. Fewer nonrepresentational artists’ statements included relevant data, because several of
38 these statements consisted mainly of quoted poetry or lists of cryptic phrases, such as “I
never had enough pennies for the gumball machine. I am a sucker for beautiful eyes. Flying
39 saucers” (2002b: 65). All of the representational artists used their artist statements to discuss
40 their artwork.
41 3. All but 2 of the 160 statements in the corpus referred to the artists’ work at some point.
artists’ descriptions of their work can be captured in several ways. First 1

of all, abstract and representational artists’ statements can be described 2
as “first-degree mimesis” and “second-degree mimesis,” respectively (cf. 3
Yacobi 1995). Statements describing abstract art exemplify first-degree 4
mimesis, because these texts represent an artwork that does not itself rep- 5
resent objects, people, or places. On the other hand, statements describing 6
purely representational art constitute second-degree mimesis, since these 7
statements refer to an artwork that itself represents a real or imagined 8
object, person, or place. Partly representational artists’ statements can 9
be analyzed as combining first- and second-degree mimesis, since they 10
describe both the representational and the nonrepresentational elements 11
in these artists’ works. These distinctions in mimesis will prove useful in 12
the analyses of metaphoric blends that map “truthfulness,” “accuracy,” and 13
similar concepts. 14
In most respects, however, representational and nonrepresentational 15
artists’ statements can be said to involve similar types of ekphrasis. For 16
example, all artists’ statements and accompanying artworks are specifically 17
combinations of visual and textual media, so that “the media are intended 18
to add to and comment on each other” (Lund 1992: 8). The artists’ state- 19
ments involved are written to accompany the (representational or abstract) 20
artwork and are not normally separated from their visual referents. Even 21
more specifically, artists’ statements and artworks are examples of interrefer- 22
ence (Kibédi Varga 1989: 39) in that word and art are separate entities but 23
appear together (in a gallery exhibition or an anthology such as New Ameri- 24
can Paintings)) and refer to each other. Artists’ statements interpret specifi- 25
cally the works that they accompany, which makes it possible to talk about 26
“nonrepresentational artists’ statements” and “purely representational art- 27
ists’ statements,” even for artists who may have produced different types of 28
work in their careers. 29
Finally, it should be noted that artists’ statements usually describe an 30
entire body of work and only rarely mention specific artworks. As such, any 31
generalizations made in them are specifically pictorial models (generalized 32
visual images) of the artists’ bodies of works (Yacobi 1995). For example, 33
when the painters in the corpus describe their visual “languages,” they are 34
metaphorically commenting on a pictorial model rather than on an indi- 35
vidual painting. 36
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1.3. Conceptual Blending and Metaphor 38
Describing art as “language” involves conceptual blending, namely, “the men- 39
tal operation of combining two mental packets of meaning—two sche- 40
matic frames of knowledge . . . selectively and under constraints to create a 41
1 third mental packet of meaning that has new, emergent meaning” (Turner
2 2002: 10). These “mental packets of meaning” are called mental spaces, or
3 simply spaces (Fauconnier and Sweetser 1996). Spaces may contain frames
4 of knowledge about particular times, places, beliefs, or imagined scenarios.
5 The spaces combined by conceptual blending are inputs or input spaces, and
6 their combination is a blend or a blended space.
7 One of the most accessible examples of blending remains Gilles Faucon-
8 nier and Mark Turner’s (1996: 113) “great debate” blend, in which a modern
9 philosophy professor describes himself as debating with Immanuel Kant:
10 “I claim that reason is a self-developing capacity. Kant disagrees with me
11 on this point. He says it’s innate, but I answer that that’s begging the ques-
12 tion, to which he counters, in Critique of Pure Reason, that only innate ideas
13 have power. But I say to that, what about neuronal group selection? And
14 he gives no answer.”4
15 Kant lived and wrote over two hundred years ago and could never speak
16 to the modern philosopher who is “debating” with him. The modern phi-
17 losopher, however, has read Kant’s writing and has had ideas in reaction
18 to this writing. Because Kant and the modern philosopher have never lit-
19 erally met, Kant must be said to inhabit one space (Input 1 in figure 4),
20 whereas the modern philosopher inhabits another (Input 2). In the quota-
21 tion above from the modern philosopher, the space involving Kant and the
22 space inhabited by the modern philosopher—each representing a different
23 time and part of the world—are compressed into a single scenario in which
24 Kant and the modern philosopher can share their ideas. The basic struc-
25 ture of the “great debate” blend is shown below.5
below. In the blended space,
26 Kant and the philosophy professor are having a “debate” in which the two
27 philosophers respond to one another, even though these “debaters” are
28 actually separated in time and space.
29 A similar type of blending occurs when art is conceptualized as language.
30 Here, the artist is usually imagined as “speaking” to the viewer through his
31 or her artwork, even though the artist and viewer may never see each other
32 face-to-face. A given viewer may enjoy an artwork days, years, or centuries
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34 4. This type of conceptual blending, in which people separated in time and/or space are
presented as involved in simultaneous conversation, can also be treated as involving fic-
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tive interaction (Pascual 2002). For example, Pascual (2002, 2007) describes how the prose-
36 cuting and defending attorneys in a trial are conceptualized as speaking to one another even
37 though in the American system the attorneys give alternating presentations for the jury and
38 cannot speak to each other directly.
5. This diagram omits structure (such as the generic space, usually depicted above the
39 input spaces and containing general structures shared by the inputs) and details (such as the
40 debaters’ different languages). Fauconnier and Turner (1996: 114) offer a more comprehen-
41 sive diagram of this blend.
1
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Kant Philosopher 3
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Kant’s writing Kant’s Writing
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Philosopher’s 6
Speech or Writing 7
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Input 1: Immanuel Input 2: The modern 12

Kant during his lifetime philosopher 13
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Kant 18
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Kant’s “Speech”
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Philosopher 21
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Philosopher’s 23
“Response”
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Blend: The modern philosopher
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debates Kant
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Figure 4 The “great debate” blend combines elements from two inputs
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after it was painted. In the blended space, however, the artist “speaks” 32
directly to the viewer at a single point in time and space. Likewise, an 33
artist’s work can be sent overseas, allowing the artist to “speak” to viewers 34
half a world away. In the blended space, this distance is irrelevant, and the 35
artist can be conceptualized as “speaking” directly to a viewer. 36
The blend combining the artist’s and the viewer’s spaces is shown in 37
figure 5. A third input will be needed to capture the metaphorical nature 38
of this blend, but for the moment let us concentrate on the first two input 39
spaces and their similarity to the structure in figure 4. 40
Like Kant and the philosopher in the “great debate,” an artist and a 41
1
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3 Artist Viewer
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5 Artwork Artwork
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12 Input 1: Artist’s Input 2: Viewer’s Reception
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Creation of Artwork of Artwork
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18 Artist
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Artwork
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Viewer
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30 Blend
31 Figure 5 An artist and a viewer are often conceptualized as interacting
32 face-to-face
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34 viewer are usually separated in time and space. Two different times and
35 places (Input 1 and Input 2) need to be conflated in order for these agents
36 to meet and respond to one another.
37 Unlike the “great debate” example, however, the blends used to describe
38 art as language are metaphoric blends. A visual artwork does not usually
39 involve literal language, so art can “speak,” “tell a story,” or take part in a
40 “dialogue” only metaphorically. This metaphor can be represented by an
41 input space from the domain of “linguistic communication” in addition
1
2
Artist Viewer Participant 1
3
Artwork Artwork Participant 4
1’s Speech 5
Participant 2 6
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Input 1: Artist’s Input 2: Viewer’s Input 3: Linguistic 9
Creation of Artwork Reception of Artwork Communication 10
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Artist as 13
Participant 1 14
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Artwork as Speech
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Viewer as 17
Participant 2 18
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Blend
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Figure 6 Art is conceptualized as linguistic communication 23
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to the two input spaces from the domain of “art,” as in figure 6. Here and 25
throughout the article, “Participant” refers specifically to a participant in a 26
linguistic exchange, either a speaker/writer or a hearer/reader, and is used 27
to emphasize that a speaker/writer may also be a hearer/reader, and vice 28
versa, in a single conversation or other linguistic exchange. 29
The blending of the first two input spaces (identical to the inputs in 30
figure 5) does not involve metaphor any more than the “great debate” 31
blend involves metaphor. Both blends involve a compression of time and 32
space, but this does not automatically make them metaphoric. Rather, the 33
blend in figure 6 is metaphoric due to the inclusion of the third input, the 34
“linguistic communication” space, which allows an artist to be understood 35
as one conversational participant, the viewer as another participant, and 36
the artist’s work as speech. 37
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1.4. Artworks “Speak” via Art-for-Artist Metonymy 39
Sometimes artworks themselves are given a “voice.” In phrases such as 40
“I want my work to speak to the process of painting” (2002a: 153) or “my 41
1 drawings tell stories” (2003b: 81), the artwork—not the artist—is the sub-
2 ject of “speak” and “tell.” This usage involves the metonymy Art for Artist,
3 which allows an artwork to stand for its creator. The artist is of course the
4 literal source of the design elements that are conceptualized as “speech”
5 or “stories.” However, spatial and temporal distance separates the viewer
6 from the artist, whereas the viewer directly experiences the artist’s art-
7 work. This can be seen in figure 6, where the Artist element is found in
8 the input space labeled “Input 1: Artist’s Creation of Artwork,” but both
9 Viewer and Artwork are present in the space “Input 2: Viewer’s Reception
10 of Artwork.” The function of metonymies such as Art for Artist is to per-
11 mit more salient elements in a domain to stand for less salient elements
12 (cf. Gibbs 1990). In this case, the relative salience of the artwork in this
13 scenario facilitates the Art-for-Artist metonymy.
14 The results of this metonymy can be considered a type of prosopopeia
15 (the conceptualization of inanimate objects as “speaking”). This metonymy
16 may form the basis of more complex personification metaphors, in which
17 multiple human characteristics are mapped onto inanimate objects, includ-
18 ing human emotions, motivations, appearance, and so forth. However, in
19 my corpus prosopopeia was limited to expressions such as “my drawings
20 tell stories,” in which an artwork is invested with the power of speech but
21 not necessarily with the other human characteristics that can be mapped
22 in personification metaphors. Prosopopeia may also refer to the “speech”
23 of depicted figures rather than that of the artwork as a whole (cf. Heffernan
24 1993). This type of prosopopeia occurred three times in the statements of
25 representational artists in my corpus, where represented figures were said
26 to “invite” (2002a: 37) or “solicit” (2002b: 145) the viewer.
27 The more common type of Art-for-Artist metonymy, in which an artist’s
28 work as a whole “speaks” on behalf of the artist, occurred with roughly
29 equal frequency across the different categories of artists, and the presence/
30 absence of this metonymy did not appear to affect artists’ use of the meta-
31 phors that are the focus of my study. For these reasons, the incorporation of
32 this metonymy will not generally be remarked on in the analysis of artists’
33 metaphors in this article and will not be indicated in blending diagrams.
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35
2. Representational and Abstract “Languages”
36
37 Purely representational, partly representational, and nonrepresentational
38 artists all claim, in their written ekphrastic statements, that their art meta-
39 phorically involves “languages.” However, these artists use the metaphor
40 of language in very different ways. The “languages” of the nonrepresenta-
41 tional painters are composed of shapes and colors, while the “languages”
of the purely and partly representational painters consist either of repre- 1

sentational elements or of art media. 2
Eight painters whose work involves representation (three purely repre- 3
sentational and five partly representational) use the metaphoric term lan- 4
guage. They describe two types of “languages,” one consisting of represented 5
images and the other of artistic media. For example, urban representa- 6
tional artist Courtney Jordan refers to the objects her work represents 7
as a “language” of “bridges, buildings and skyscrapers” (2003b: 61), and 8
partly representational artist Fitzpatrick, who depicts architectural forms 9
(see figure 3), claims that “modern architecture is a visual language under- 10
stood around the world” (2002b: 57). The second type of “visual language” 11
involves particular media or methods of art creation, such as the “language 12
of drawing” (2003a: 121) or a “painting language” (2003b: 61). 13
All six purely abstract painters whose statements include the term lan- 14
guage refer to “languages” of shapes, colors, or brushstrokes. For example, 15
Michael Braden writes: “Over time, certain common notations have 16
evolved, becoming . . . a conscious vocabulary that helps me negotiate 17
the language of form” (2003a: 33). For other painters, art creation involves 18
“the language of mark-making” (2003b: 101), “the imprecise language [of 19
color]” (2002a: 101), or an “artistic language with its own structure, colors 20
and narrative” (2003a: 9). 21
As we see in figure 6, conceptual blending can explain the use of words 22
like speak and tell to describe an artist’s visual self-expression. However, 23
figure 6 does not yet account for the metaphoric use of the term language 24
itself. To accommodate it, a further structure must be added to the blend, 25
including a “Language” element in the “Linguistic Communication” space 26
and a “System” in both the “Artist’s Creation of Artwork” and the “Viewer’s 27
Reception of Artwork” spaces. This “System” may be a set of forms and/ 28
or colors, as it is for the abstract painters, or a set of images, as generally 29
with the purely representational and partly representational painters. This 30
“System” is then understood as a “Language,” as shown in the blended 31
space in figure 7: the element “System of Images/Media/Visual Elements 32
as Language” there refers to a “System” composed entirely of “Images” or 33
“Media” or “Visual Elements” (colors, shapes, patterns, etc.) but cannot 34
refer to a mixed system of colors and imagery, for example. 35
Purely abstract painters, who eschew mimesis and never depict recog- 36
nizable images, understandably do not conceptualize systems of images as 37
“languages.” The “Artist’s Creation of Artwork” space (as shown above) 38
then involves no “System of Images,” and consequently no such System is 39
projected to the blend and understood as a “Language.” 40
However, it is noteworthy that partly representational artists are more 41
1
2 Artist Artwork Participant 1
3
Artwork Viewer Participant 1’s
4 Speech
5 System of System of
Participant 2
Images/Media/ Images/Media/
6 Visual Elements Visual Elements Language
7
8
Input 1: Artist’s Input 2: Viewer’s
9
Creation of Artwork Reception of Artwork Input 3: Linguistic
10 Communication
11
12
13
Artist as Participant 1
14
Artwork as Speech
15
Viewer as Participant 2
16
17 System of
Images/Media/Visual
18 Elements as Language
19
20
21
Blend
22
23
Figure 7 Artistic systems are conceptualized as languages
24
25 likely to conceptualize “systems of imagery,” rather than “systems of visual
26 elements,” as “languages.” Outside of this corpus, purely and partly rep-
27 resentational artists have referred to colors and shapes as a “language”;
28 for example, Paul Cezanne spoke of “the language of forms and colors”
29 (Blunden and Blunden 1970: 188). However, in the New American Paintings
30 statements, the “languages” of both partly representational and purely rep-
31 resentational artists are composed of images or art media, and only non-
32 representational artists use language to refer to systems of colors or shapes.
33 Imagery, then, seems to be especially privileged among the elements
34 available for mapping in the “Artist’s Creation of Artwork” space. All
35 artists use media, shapes, and colors, but when they choose to use these
36 mimetically to represent objects, people, or places, the resulting “systems
37 of images” are the systems most likely to be considered as “languages.”
38 This seems to be the case even for the partly representational artists, whose
39 paintings combine mimetic and nonmimetic visual elements.
40 On the other hand, mimesis and imagery are irrelevant for nonrepre-
41
sentational painters, who focus on building unified, coherent systems of 1

shapes, forms, lines, and colors. These systems are their “languages.” 2
3
2.1. Painters’ “Vocabulary,” “Words,” and “Translation” 4
Purely, partly, and nonrepresentational painters’ varying conceptualiza- 5
tions of “language” produce different inferences about the “words” and 6
“vocabulary” of these languages and about whether a “language” can be 7
“translated.” Where different media are conceptualized as “languages,” the 8
possibility arises that subject matter in one medium may be “interpreted” 9
or “translated” into another medium. For example, a drawing in pencil 10
may be “translated” into a painting in oil (Sanders 2002). Interestingly, 11
an artwork’s mimesis of nature—as well as its mimesis of an artwork in a 12
different medium—may also be regarded as “translation”: for example, 13
the human figure may be “translated” from reality onto the canvas (2002b: 14
97). This suggests that mimesis in general is metaphorically understood as 15
“translation” between “languages” and that the artist’s visual experience 16
of reality itself is seen as a “language” that may be “translatable” into a 17
particular artistic medium. 18
When representational painters conceptualize systems of images, rather 19
than art media, as languages, this does not appear to lead to “translation” 20
between the systems of images. No statement in my corpus, and no art- 21
ist’s statement that I am aware of, claims to “translate” from one range 22
of imagery to another. Even though the mimesis of objects, people, and 23
places may itself be a “translation,” the depiction of one type of object, for 24
example, is not generally “translated” into the depiction of another type 25
of object. No artist, for example, claims to “translate” between the “lan- 26
guage” of architectural forms and the “language” of household objects. 27
This lack is probably attributable to artists’ tendency to focus on one type 28
of imagery in a given body of work and to the function of artists’ state- 29
ments, which is to describe one body of work from a given artist. Artists’ 30
autobiographies, for example, might be more likely to include “transla- 31
tion” between systems of imagery, since the artist describes these multiple 32
bodies of work. 33
Occasionally, nonrepresentational artists’ “languages” of shape or color 34
can apparently be “translated.” Michelle Ross describes her process as 35
“translating the history of abstraction into a personal idiom that includes 36
design, gesture, geometry, [and] pattern” (2003a: 133). I interpret this to 37
mean that Ross is inspired by the systems of “design” and “pattern” used 38
by other abstract artists, which she then “translates” into her own system 39
of designs and patterns. However, this type of usage appears to be rare. In 40
41
1 New American Paintings, just as representational painters tend to stick with

2 one repertoire of imagery in a body of work, so abstract artists prefer to
3 keep to one range of shapes and colors. This use of a single “language”
4 then appears to render “translation” unnecessary.
5 Certain terms related to language components, such as “vocabulary” and
6 “syntax,” are used in the corpus only by artists who refer metaphorically to
7 “languages” of colors and shapes. When art media were conceptualized as
8 “languages,” for instance, I did not find any examples in which these sys-
9 tems’ structure was described in terms of “vocabulary” or “syntax.” This
10 may be because it is cognitively more difficult to break down media, such
11 as oil paints, into distinct units that could be conceptualized as “words” or
12 “vocabulary” and whose combination forms a “syntax” (though this break-
13 down has been accomplished by critics and scholars, e.g., O’Toole 1994).
14 Only in one instance is the “System of Images” conceptualized as includ-
15 ing “vocabulary.” Owen Williams, whose work is partly representational,
16 writes that his paintings involve “a personal vocabulary of symbols and
17 images derived from nature, science, and art history” (2002b: 161). The
18 reason for this rarity may be that images in art can only be broken down
19 so far before they become shapes and colors, and no artist in the corpus
20 mixed metaphors by combining a “language” of shapes and colors with a
21 “language” of imagery.
22 Unlike images, shapes and colors can readily be broken down into
23 smaller elements of the same type, including nuances of color and com-
24 ponent shapes, such as brushstrokes and dots. The nonrepresentational
25 artists’ “language of color and form” therefore appears to be more readily
26 described as involving “vocabulary” and “syntax” than the “languages”
27 of the purely and partly representational artists. For example, Martina
28 Nehrling (whose works consist of colored rectangles that she calls “paint
29 marks”) claims that her “visual vocabulary develops as an index of nuances,
30 expressed through color” (2002a: 101). Ross writes that “color, mark and
31 shape are the vocabulary” that interests her in her works (2003a: 133), and
32 Braden refers to “notations [that] have evolved, becoming . . . a conscious
33 vocabulary that helps [him] negotiate the language of form” (ibid.: 33).
34 These statements imply that each color, form, or shape is a “word” in
35 a “vocabulary.” Speakers with large vocabularies have enhanced linguis-
36 tic resources, and visual artists with large “vocabularies” possess superior
37 repertoires of colors and shapes.
38 When colors or shapes are conceptualized as “vocabulary,” the harmo-
39 nious combination of similar forms or colors may be considered as “rhym-
40 ing.” For example, Nehrling calls the repetition of similar colors “visual
41 rhyming” (2002a: 101). The repetition of a series of similar colors or shapes
can be called “poetry” (cf. 2003b: 37; discussed further in section 4). The 1
successful combination of shapes can also be conceptualized as “the syntax 2
of visual language” or “the syntax of visual art” (2002a: 165). The terms 3
“syntax” and “rhyme” seem to be used more or less interchangeably in art- 4
ists’ metaphors; both designate ways of combining “words” (here, shapes 5
or colors). Purely and partly representational artists, whose “languages” 6
generally consist of images or art media, rarely use the terms vocabulary, 7
rhyme, and syntax (no purely representational artists and only two partly 8
representational artists used any of these terms in the corpus). This sug- 9
gests that “languages” of images and art media are less readily conceptu- 10
alized in terms of their component “words” than the “languages” of colors 11
and forms. 12
13
2.2. Artistic “Truth” 14
Historically, “truth” has been associated with representation. For example, 15
Heffernan (1993: 50) contrasts the power of representational weaving 16
to reveal truth with the harmlessness of nonrepresentational weaving: 17
“Because weaving can generate either a plain cloth or a figured one, it can 18
serve either the socially respectable purposes of covering and warmth or 19
the potentially dangerous ends of representation.” Heffernan notes that 20
representational weaving was used by Philomela and Arachne to depict 21
rapes and thereby reveal the truth about these crimes. Representation can 22
be seen as threatening, because of its mimetic power to reveal “truths” 23
about the world. On the other hand, representational art in Western cul- 24
ture has often been valued for the quality of its mimesis and particularly its 25
power to reproduce beauty (Lessing 1963 [1766]). 26
Both proponents and critics of “truth” in art, then, tend to associate 27
representation with truth. In keeping with this persistent association, the 28
purely and partly representational painters in my corpus are apparently 29
more concerned with artistic “accuracy,” “honesty,” and “truthfulness” 30
than the nonrepresentational painters. For example, Chris Feiro, who 31
works from life, claims that “it is [his] intention to be as accurate as pos- 32
sible to the situation [he is] observing” (2002a: 41); others claim to “docu- 33
ment” (2003a: 121) or “describe” (2003b: 29) the world; and one painter 34
claims to “try to be specific with the landscape” (ibid.: 49). Nine repre- 35
sentational artists make claims of this kind, and three partly representa- 36
tional artists join these nine. For example, Terri Roland describes her “use 37
of humor [as] a pointed way of being truthful about our destructive and 38
clumsy human nature” (2002b: 141), and Judie Bamber wants to combine 39
“the factuality of [a] photographic image with the artificiality of painting” 40
(2003b: 13). 41
1 Three purely abstract painters make claims about accuracy and

2 explanatory power, but their claims have nothing to do with accuracy in
3 representation. Barry Kiperman, who paints strings of rounded shapes on
4 wood, aims to make his “use of color factual, rather than lyrical,” appar-
5 ently referring to the flatness of his colors as “factuality,” as opposed to
6 the “lyrical” quality of nuanced colors (ibid.: 69). Another abstract artist,
7 James Siena, wants to make paintings with the ability to “explain” his ideas
8 through abstract shapes alone (ibid.: 137). Compared with purely repre-
9 sentational painters, however, few nonrepresentational artists use terms
10 such as accurate, truthful, descriptive, or specific. Unsurprisingly so, because
11 they are not attempting to represent objects, people, or places.
12
13 2.3. “Narrative” in Abstract and Representational Art
14 Art that is created with the intent of communicating a sequence of events
15 is often conceptualized as “storytelling” or “narrative.” In most cultures,
16 art has been used to represent events or mythology, accompanying—or
17 replacing—spoken or written language. So visual art clearly has charac-
18 teristics that allow it to communicate events in time, despite its spatial
19 medium (Lessing 1963 [1766]).
20 When art is understood as linguistic communication, sequences of
21 actions or events suggested by the artwork are referred to as “narratives”
22 or “stories.” “My drawings tell stories,” says modern representational art-
23 ist Mitchell Marco, whose work Boy with Gun is shown in figure 8 (2003b:
24 81). The “stories” in these works are the sequences of actions suggested
25 by the works. For example, the scene in Boy with Gun allows the viewer to
26 imagine a number of different sequences of events both before and after
27 the depicted scene. “Each picture focuses on a character,” the artist con-
28 tinues, indicating that the figures in works such as Boy with Gun should be
29 understood as the “characters” in the “stories” that the images suggest to
30 the viewer.
31 “Narrative” is a popular topic in artists’ statements, as it is in ekphrasis
32 more generally (Heffernan 1993; Yacobi 1995). In fact, narrative is the most
33 common term describing art as language in my corpus, occurring twenty-
34 two times; stories are mentioned ten times and allegory three times. The
35 purely representational, partly representational, and nonrepresentational
36 painters used these terms with similar frequencies. (For example, narrative
37 is mentioned by them seven, nine, and six times, respectively.)
38 It might appear surprising that nonrepresentational artists are appar-
39 ently as interested in “narrative” as the other classes of artists, given that
40 these artists do not represent objects (such as the child and weapon in Boy
41 with Gun) that can lead the viewer to imagine sequences of actions. In fact,
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
Figure 8 Mitchell Marco, Boy with Gun. Copyright Mitchell Marco, www 38
.mitchellmarco.com, mitchell@mitchellmarco.com 39
40
41
1 they appear to use terms such as narrative with a different meaning than
2 the majority of the purely and partly representational artists. Nonrepre-
3 sentational artists refer by “narrative” to the sequence of actions involved
4 in their own painting process rather than to sequences of events that their
5 figures, places, and objects might conjure up in the mind of the viewer.
6 The latter meaning of “narrative” was overwhelmingly preferred by the
7 purely representational and partly representational painters in the corpus,
8 as evidenced by their use of this and related terms, such as story and alle-
9 gory. For example, still life artist Jill Grimes sets up her paintings “using
10 objects specifically arranged to support a narrative” (2003b: 45), thereby
11 allowing the viewer to envision a scenario involving the arrangement of
12 objects. Portrait artist Jenny Dubnau claims to be “interested in a specific
13 kind of narrative ambiguity of the sitter . . . under some kind of physical
14 and emotional duress” (ibid.: 29); her subject’s emotional, yet enigmatic,
15 expressions could inspire a viewer to visualize several possible narrative
16 explanations for the subject’s depicted state. Partly representational artists
17 tend to use narrative, story, and allegory with the same meanings as purely
18 representational artists. They create “narratives made up of objects we
19 think we know” (2003a: 81) or “allegories of reality” (2002b: 129).
20 Nonrepresentational painters, on the other hand, do not represent objects
21 and so have no access to the type of “narrative” referred to by purely and
22 partly representational artists. Instead, they describe the visible evidence
23 of their artistic process as “narrative” or “story.” The role of evidence of art
24 creation in conveying narrative has not traditionally been given the same
25 weight as the role of the artwork’s subject matter; evidence of the material
26 or crafting of artwork is often seen as “representational friction” between
27 medium and referent—a force potentially impeding the artwork’s repre-
28 sentational role (Heffernan 1993). Nonrepresentational painters, however,
29 are not subject to “representational friction” and have no qualms about
30 leaving evidence of their artistic process or about considering this evidence
31 as “narrative.”
32 In fact, they seem to delight in the power of artworks to “tell the story” of
33 their creation. Augusto Di Stefano says, “By incorporating a performative
34 aspect to the procedure [of painting], I am attempting to leave just enough
35 room for . . . [a] narrative” (2002b: 45). Di Stefano’s paintings consist of
36 monochromatic canvas with a few heavy brushstrokes. Some brushstrokes
37 are on top of others, so it is evident which brushstrokes were completed
38 first; and the asymmetrical shape of the brushstrokes makes it clear that
39 the paintbrush was applied to the canvas using a particular motion from a
40 certain direction. These features allow the viewer’s mind to reconstruct the
41 artist’s painting process. This display of process is what Di Stefano terms
the “performative aspect” of the artwork. Evidence of the painting process 1

is also the artist’s “narrative” to the viewer, whom it allows to imagine the 2
sequence of actions that led to the creation of the painting. 3
Three nonrepresentational artists claim to avoid narrative in their works, 4
describing their art simply as “non-narrative” (2003a: 133) or “not narrative” 5
(2003b: 105). Margaret Neill (whose paintings feature textured oblongs of 6
color) writes: “I am concerned neither with narrative nor image. My paint- 7
ings are process-oriented” (ibid.). Neill’s pairing of the terms narrative and 8
image suggests that she is referring to a type of “narrative” that is related 9
to imagery and sought by the purely and partly representational artists, 10
namely, the sequences of events and actions suggested by the images in 11
a painting. Neill’s subsequent expression of interest in “process-oriented” 12
work reinforces this interpretation, because it makes it appear unlikely that 13
she is denying an interest in the “narrative” of creation typically cited by 14
nonrepresentational artists. 15
No purely or partly representational artists in the corpus claim that their 16
work currently avoids, or lacks, “narrative” or “story.” However, partly 17
representational (and formerly nonrepresentational) artist Owen Williams 18
writes that “in recent years . . . the work has become increasingly more 19
figurative and narrative” (2002b: 161). Williams’s abstract work, then, was 20
less “narrative” than his work is today. As his work became more represen- 21
tational, it also became more “narrative.” This suggests that Williams— 22
like Neill—associates “narrative” with represented imagery. 23
In conclusion, nonrepresentational artists in the corpus exhibit two 24
approaches to “narrative” and “story.” Some refer to their actions in cre- 25
ating their paintings as “narrative.” Others apparently reject “narrative” 26
entirely, explicitly referring to their work as “not narrative.” In contrast, 27
both the purely and partly representational artists refer to “narrative” as 28
the sequences of actions that can be envisioned based on their represented 29
images, and no one of them avoids “narrative” in this sense. Narrative is 30
apparently an important concept for all types of artists, given the high fre- 31
quency of narrative-related terms in the corpus, but the context and mean- 32
ing of these terms indicate that representational and nonrepresentational 33
artists approach “narrative” in substantially different ways. 34
It should be noted that some of the terms discussed in this article, narra- 35
tive included, may or may not be synchronically metaphoric. That is, the 36
historically metaphoric sense of narrative discussed above may or may not 37
be accessed by present-day speakers via the meaning related to linguistic 38
narrative. For example, in present-day English, narrative refers to sequences 39
of actions implied or depicted in visual art, or even in music, as well as 40
in linguistic communication (Newcomb 1998; Sternberg 2003). Psycho- 41
1 linguistic experimentation would be necessary to determine whether the

2 use of narrative to refer to visual art, or music, actively involves a meta-
3 phoric connection to the sense of narrative referring to written or spoken
4 narrative.
5 However, the corpus considered here shows that artists demonstrate
6 consistency in their use of narrative and metaphoric phrases such as tell a
7 story. (For example, representational artists “tell stories” implied by the
8 imagery in their paintings, and the “narrative” of these stories consists
9 of the sequence of actions implied by this imagery.) This type of corre-
10 spondence between “storytelling” and “narrative” suggests that artists
11 sometimes, if not always, connect visual “narratives” with written or spo-
12 ken narratives, just as they presumably connect visual “storytelling” with
13 language-based storytelling. The issue of whether metaphor is involved
14 in processing individual terms, and the extent to which corpus data can
15 shed light on the conceptual structure of metaphors, will be resumed in
16 section 5.
17
18
3. Art as Dialogue
19
20 In most communicative situations, at least two participants interact and
21 respond to each other. When art is understood as language, the “Linguistic
22 Communication” input space typically provides a Participant 1, a Partici-
23 pant 2, and Participant 1’s Speech, all of them projected to the blended
24 space in which art is understood as linguistic communication, as we see
25 in figure 6. The Artwork (created by the Artist) is metaphorically under-
26 stood as Speech (produced by Participant 1). However, the Viewer of the
27 Artwork, who is metaphorically understood as Participant 2, does not nor-
28 mally produce a new artwork/“speech” in response to the artist’s artwork/
29 “speech.” As a result, it may be unclear what role Participant 2’s Speech
30 can have in the blended space, as shown in figure 9.
31 Many of the disparities between art and language, such as the fact
32 that pictorial art is primarily visual and speech is primarily auditory, are
33 unproblematic in metaphoric blends. When an artwork is understood as
34 speech, viewing art is understood as hearing speech, despite the substantial
35 differences between these two types of activities.6 The elements viewing
36 art and hearing speech have analogous roles in the domains of art and lan-
37 guage, respectively, which allow the former to be understood in terms of
38
39 6. Mappings from “Hearing Speech” to “Viewing Art,” from “Speaking” to “Creating Art,”
40 and numerous other correspondences are omitted from the diagrams here for the sake of
simplicity.
41
1
Artist Viewer 2
Participant 1
3
Artwork Artwork Participant 1’s
Speech 4
5
Participant 2
6
Participant 2’s
Speech 7
8
Input 1: Artist’s Input 2: Viewer’s
Creation of Artwork Reception of Artwork 9
Input 3: Linguistic 10
Communication 11
12
13
Artist as
Participant 1 14
15
Artwork as Speech
? 16
Viewer as 17
Participant 2 18
19
20
21
Blend 22
Figure 9 Participant 2’s Speech may lack a counterpart in art-related inputs 23
24
25
the latter. However, when a crucial component of one domain cannot map 26
onto the other, a structural dissimilarity arises between the two domains and 27
can render a metaphor less apt (see Lakoff and Johnson 1999). The absence 28
of an art element that can be understood as Participant 2’s Speech, as 29
shown in figure 9, is therefore potentially a serious impediment to the con- 30
ceptualization of art as language. 31
Some modern art deliberately seeks to expand the audience’s role, to 32
achieve a more perfect fit with the communicative model. For example, 33
Marco Evaristti’s Eyegoblack exhibition of blenders containing live gold- 34
fish—which museum visitors could either blend or refrain from blending— 35
gave the audience an active role in the artwork. (In Copenhagen, two fish 36
were blended on the exhibit’s first day, prompting an animal rights lawsuit 37
[BBC News 2003].) Likewise, the “artificial cloud” created by two New 38
York architects, in which visitors’ raincoats change color in response to the 39
presence (and programmed information about the wearers’ personalities) 40
of other visitors, eschews the “passive” quality of traditional “paper art,” 41
1 according to the artists, and more completely represents a “conversation”

2 than traditional painting, because the audience is given a chance to affect
3 how the artwork develops (Deere 2001).
4 As painters, the artists represented in New American Paintings lack some
5 of the communicative options that are open to artists such as Evaristti.
6 However, these painters have apparently found two solutions to the prob-
7 lem of Participant 2’s Speech: they may understand the audience’s reaction
8 to a work as “speech,” or they may conceptualize art as a “conversation”
9 between artist and artwork rather than between artist and viewer. The fol-
10 lowing subsections will explore how these two possibilities are instantiated
11 in the corpus.
12
13 3.1. A “Conversation” with Viewers
14 One solution to the problem of Participant 2’s Speech is to conceptualize
15 the audience’s internal reaction to the artwork as “speech.” For example,
16 artist Martha Newfield (2001) suggests that “lost and found” edges—visual
17 boundaries which are soft or blurred—“allow the image and viewer to dia-
18 logue” more than sharp, easily discerned edges, because the viewer will
19 have to search for the edges and will be more of a participant in under-
20 standing the painting. Understanding an audience’s reaction as Partici-
21 pant 2’s speech gives Participant 2 a role in the “conversation,” but the
22 “dialogue” ends there: the artist cannot usually change the painting or
23 “speech.”7 This limitation makes
otherwise respond in turn to the viewer’s “speech.”
24 the audience’s reaction a less-than-ideal solution to the problem of Partici-
25 pant 2’s Speech.
26 Indeed, the viewer’s reaction to artwork appears to be rarely understood
27 in terms of Participant 2’s Speech in the New American Paintings corpus.
28 In these volumes, the viewer is described as a “speaking” participant in
29 a dialogue only once (when representational artist Sarah Nicole Tanner
30 mentions that she is seeking a “response” from the viewer [2002a: 145]).
31 The viewer is described as a (possibly nonspeaking) conversational partici-
32 pant nine times in total, as when Biel expresses the hope that his works will
33 “communicate . . . with whatever audience receives them”: the “audience”
34 is specifically mentioned as a participant in the “communication” process,
35 but it remains unclear whether it has a speaking role in this process (2003a:
36 17; figure 2). Of these nine references, one is made by a nonrepresenta-
37
38 7. Artists’ endeavors may be described as an “answer” or a “response” to other artists’ pre-
39
viously created works. For example, Gardner (1993: 183) writes that Picasso’s Les demoiselles
d’Avignon “has been seen as an answer to Matisse’s Woman with a Hat and Le bonheur de vivre.”
40 (Thanks to Eve Sweetser for this point.) Unfortunately, this kind of “dialogue” was not
41 represented in my corpus.
tional artist, two by purely representational artists, and six by partly rep- 1
resentational artists. 2
3
3.2. Eavesdropping on Art 4
In artists’ metaphorical statements, then, viewers “speak” rarely and are 5
“spoken to” almost as rarely. However, metaphoric “dialogues” in which 6
the viewer does not “speak” are abundant in the corpus: for example, the 7
terms conversation, dialogue, communicate, and exchange occurred thirty-five 8
times. As we have seen, only nine of these thirty-five instances included the 9
viewer as part of the “conversation.” How, then, can an artistic “conversa- 10
tion” occur in the other twenty-six instances? One way this can happen is 11
if artists conceptualize the artwork, not the viewer, as one of the “dialogue” 12
participants. This is shown in figure 10, in which only two input spaces are 13
necessary: one related to the “Artist’s Creation of Artwork” and one rep- 14
resenting “Linguistic Communication.” The artist and the art materials in 15
the former space are conceptualized in terms of the conversational partici- 16
pants in the latter space. 17
Many abstract artists speak of “communicating” with their paint or art 18
materials rather than with a human audience. When Kamiya writes, “I 19
engage in a dialogue with paint. My statement is each dot I make with 20
the brush, then I respond intuitively to each unexpected play of dots. . . . 21
This process is an interchange with the painting activity” (2003b: 65), she 22
is referring to a “dialogue” or “interchange” in which the audience has no 23
part. The only possible role for the audience is as an eavesdropper on the 24
conversation between Kamiya and her paint. 25
Kamiya’s metaphoric “dialogue” with paint involves a more complete 26
set of structural correspondences between input spaces than the version 27
involving communication between artist and viewer, because both Partici- 28
pants in the Linguistic Communication space have the chance to “speak.” 29
When an artist paints (metaphorically “speaking”), the painting immedi- 30
ately shows the results of an artist’s activity (thereby “speaking” back to 31
the artist), and the artist can then take these results into account when con- 32
tinuing work on the painting (“speaking” again to the artwork). Different 33
aspects of the painting may “speak” to the artist, including the paint, the 34
canvas, the composition, forms, dots, brushstrokes, and so forth (2002a: 35
77, 101; 2003a: 33, 45; 2003b: 65). Any of these pictorial components may 36
inspire an artist to continue working on a painting in a particular way, and 37
as a result any of these components may be conceptualized as “speaking” 38
to the artist. 39
Unlike the artwork and its components (paint, composition, etc.), the 40
viewer’s reaction to the artwork occurs in a different input space than the 41
1
2
3 Artist Participant 1
4
Artist’s Paint Participant 1’s Speech
5 Application
6 Participant 2
Paint/Painting
7
Component Participant 2’s Speech
8
9 Results of Paint
Application
10
11
12
Input 1: Artist’s Input 2: Linguistic
13
Creation of Artwork Communication
14
15
16
17
Artist as Participant 1
18
19 Artist’s “Speech”
20
Paint/Painting Compon-
21
ent as Participant 2
22
23 Artwork’s “Speech”
24
25
26
27
28 Blend
29
Figure 10 “Conversation” occurs between an artist and the paint (or another com-
30
ponent of the painting process)
31
32
33 artist’s process of creating the artwork. The artist and viewer may be sepa-
34 rated in space and time, and so the artist cannot easily make changes in
35 response to the viewer’s reception of the painting.8 In this sense, the artist
36 has a better chance to “dialogue” with components of an artwork as it
37 evolves than with the eventual viewers.
38
39
8. Artists painting on commission are an exception to this rule, as the commission process
may involve repeated meetings between artist and customer. (Thanks to Janell Sorensen
40 for this observation.) But the New American Paintings corpus does not include commissioned
41 paintings.
However, the blend in figure 10 (in which components of a painting are 1

conceptualized as a conversational participant) comes with its own limi- 2
tation: the blend is appropriate only for artists who do not intend to pre- 3
determine how a painting will progress and so allow the painting or some 4
component to “speak” to them as they work. Many painters apparently 5
want to be surprised during the creative process. For example, partly rep- 6
resentational artist David Langley writes: “When setting out to produce 7
these works, I have no preconceived objective. I apply an initial image 8
or paint stroke, and then react to it. I repeat this process until a satis- 9
factory composition emerges. This method allows the work to dictate its 10
own course” (2002a: 77). Similarly, abstract artist Claire Browne states: 11
“Through an intuitive process of watching the form take its own shape, 12
I follow its progression to the end. Sometimes I rub out part of the form; 13
other times it turns on itself into layers” (2003a: 45). In Browne’s descrip- 14
tion of her painting process, the personified “form” has a more active role 15
than the artist herself, who merely “watches” and sometimes participates 16
by rubbing out part of the form. Although Browne does not specifically 17
refer to her work as “speaking,” her statement indicates that she, like Lang- 18
ley, values unpredictability in the painting process. 19
Purely representational artists must generally plan their works in order 20
to represent real-world objects. But partly representational and nonrepre- 21
sentational artists have more freedom to let the nonrepresentational parts 22
of their works evolve unpredictably. Possibly as a result, such artists are 23
most likely to make use of the blend in figure 10. In my corpus, only one 24
representational artist referred to his process as a conversation between his 25
artwork and himself, but abstract painters did so seven times, and partly 26
representational artists did so three times. Abstract painters made com- 27
ments such as “I listen to my composition as it evolves” (2002a: 101) or 28
“when I paint, it is a dialogue between myself and that first mark on the 29
canvas that establishes a simple point of departure . . . an idea or first rule, 30
with each subsequent act of my brush informing the next” (2003a: 33). 31
Purely representational painters did not generally use this sort of meta- 32
phoric language. The one representational artist who used this blend, 33
Garrison Roots, referred to his “work” rather than to his materials as his 34
conversational partner: “My interest now is to develop a conversation 35
between the work and myself ” (2002b: 145). Here, Roots apparently con- 36
ceptualizes the idea realized on canvas as a second participant in a dia- 37
logue. Roots presumably does not fully plan his paintings beforehand and 38
so can flexibly “respond” to his ideas as they materialize, while maintain- 39
ing the representational nature of his artwork. 40
41
1
2
3 Artwork 1 Participant 1
4 Results of Paint Participant 1’s Speech
5 Application to Artwork 1
6
Artwork 2 Participant 2
7
8 Results of Paint Participant 2’s Speech
Application to Artwork 2
9
10 Artist
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Artwork 1 as Participant 1
18
19 Artwork 1’s “Speech”
20
Artwork 2 as Participant 2
21
22 Artwork 2’s “Response”
23 Artist
24
25
26
27
28
Blend
29
Figure 11 “Conversation” occurs between two artworks
30
31
32 3.3. Art “Talking” to Itself
33 Artists’ conversational metaphors may include neither the artist nor the
34 audience. One version of this metaphoric blend instead presents multiple
35 artworks by the same artist as conversational participants, as in figure 11.
36 The metaphoric blend in figure 11 may be used by artists working on
37 several canvases simultaneously. “I like the way one picture starts a dia-
38 logue with the next,” says Neo Rauch (Galloway 2001). Unfortunately, this
39 particular metaphoric blend was not found in my corpus. This may be
40 because only three works from each painter were included, and the artists
41 did not refer in their statements to works outside the New American Paintings
1
2
Art Element 1 Participant 1 3
4
Effects of Art Participant 1’s Speech
5
Element 1
Participant 2 6
Art Element 2 7
Participant 2’s Speech 8
Effects of Art
Element 2 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Art Element 1 as 18
Participant 1 19
20
Art Element 1’s “Speech”
21
Art Element 2 as 22
Participant 2 23
24
Art Element 2’s “Speech”
25
26
27
28
Blend 29
30
Figure 12 “Conversation” occurs between two art elements
31
32
volumes—and in fact rarely mentioned individual works at all but gener- 33
ally described only “pictorial models.” 34
However, a variation on the metaphor in figure 11 was well represented in 35
the corpus. This blend regards various elements of a single painting, such 36
as brushstrokes or compositional features, as conversational participants. 37
Like the artworks in figure 11, elements of an artwork are conceptualized 38
as “speaking,” or affecting each other, in figure 12. In a typical instantiation 39
of this blend, abstract artist Anne Neely states that her goal is to explore 40
“how color, paint and form meet and respond to one another” (2003b: 41
1 101). One color, for example, might produce an effect (on the artist or on a
2 viewer) that would influence the role of another color in the painting. The
3 second color might in turn influence the interpretation of the first color or
4 of “paint” or “form” and so forth: there arises a series of responses that are
5 conceptualized as conversational turns.
6 A variety of elements in an artwork can be conceptualized as conversa-
7 tional participants. Abstract painter Tony Beauvy thus describes his works
8 (e.g., figure 13) as involving “multiple dialogues between background and
9 foreground, shape and color, and also with the edges of the paintings”
10 (2003a: 9).
11 “Dialogues” between the artist and art elements (figure 10) necessarily
12 occur during the painting process: the art element’s “speech” consists in
13 its effect on the painting (and thereby on the artist), whereas the artist’s
14 “speech” involves physically altering the painting in progress. But it is less
15 clear whether “dialogues” between art elements take place during the pro-
16 cess of painting or when the finished painting is viewed. All the examples
17 in the corpus were underspecified regarding this distinction. When two art
18 elements “converse” (figure 12), either’s “speech” consists in an aesthetic
19 effect on the artist or the viewer, and these effects may therefore also take
20 place after a painting’s completion.
21 Like the metaphoric blend in figure 10, that in figure 12 is typically used
22 by partly representational and nonrepresentational artists. In the New
23 American Paintings corpus, the blend’s fourteen occurrences include nine
24 uses by partly representational artists, five by nonrepresentational artists,
25 and none by purely representational artists. In their use of the blends in
26 figures 10–12, then, the partly representational artists resemble the non-
27 representational rather than the purely representational artists. As we saw
28 in section 2, the partly representational artists tell the same “stories” as
29 the purely representational artists, often “speak” the same “languages,”
30 and share some concerns about “truth” and “accuracy.” However, partly
31 representational painters “converse” with their art elements and allow
32 these elements to “talk” among themselves, more in the manner of the
33 nonrepresentational painters. Reference to these “dialogues” appears to be
34 affected by the presence or absence of nonrepresentational elements, such
35 as abstract shapes (which are often the participants in the “dialogue”), and
36 not by the presence or absence of representation.
37
38
4. Written versus Spoken Language
39
40 For artists who prefer to “speak” with their audiences rather than their
41 materials, one way to avoid the problem of Participant 2’s Speech (as
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Figure 13 Tony Beauvy, Counterparts. Copyright Tony Beauvy. Represented by
Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 2525 Michigan Avenue G2, Santa Monica, CA 90404, 31
310-829-3300, gallery@bachofner.com 32
33
34
shown in figure 9) is to conceptualize their artwork as written language. 35
Many types of written texts do not permit a response in kind from the 36
readers. In this sense, art can be more completely conceptualized as writ- 37
ten than as spoken language. 38
Here, the “Written Linguistic Communication” space necessarily 39
involves a writer and writing and prototypically involves a reader as well. 40
However, the reader (of a novel, for example) does not necessarily, or even 41
1
2 Artist Viewer Writer
3
Artwork Artwork Writing
4
5 Reader
6
7
8 Input 1: Artist’s Input 2: Viewer’s Input 3: Written Linguistic
Creation of Artwork Reception of Artwork Communication
9
10
11
12 Artist/Writer
13
Artwork/Writing
14
15 Viewer/Reader
16
17
18
19
20 Blend
21 Figure 14 Art conceptualized as written linguistic communication
22
23
24 normally, write back to the writer. This is a fundamental difference from
25 the structure of the prototypical spoken conversation, in which both par-
26 ticipants speak.
27 In the New American Paintings corpus, all three types of artists tend to refer
28 to their work as spoken rather than as written communication (in those
29 instances where the reference is clear from context and/or word choice).
30 However, more purely representational than nonrepresentational artists
31 choose to describe their artwork as written communication, and more non-
32 representational than purely representational artists describe their work as
33 spoken communication. The partly representational artists refer to both
34 types of communication with approximately equal frequency.
35 Purely representational artists’ metaphors involve written communica-
36 tion ten times (as in “these paintings [are] a diary” [2002a: 165]), non-
37 representational artists used five of these metaphors, and partly represen-
38 tational artists used twenty-one. On the other hand, sixteen instances of
39 metaphor from nonrepresentational artists involve spoken communication
40 (such as “I listen to my composition” [ibid.: 101] or “I wanted the materials
41 to speak for themselves” [ibid.: 43]), whereas representational artists con-
tributed fourteen metaphors of speech and partly representational artists 1

twenty-five.9 2
Two possible explanations suggest themselves for the purely representa- 3
tional artists’ preference for written communication metaphors relative to 4
the nonrepresentational artists. First, the latter often escape the dilemma 5
of Participant 2’s Speech by personifying their art materials/elements (see 6
figures 10–12). If the use of written language metaphors, as in figure 14, 7
is itself partly motivated by the desire to circumvent the problem of Par- 8
ticipant 2’s Speech, this motivation may be stronger for purely represen- 9
tational artists, who apparently avoid “speaking” to their art materials/ 10
elements. However, this hypothesis does not explain why the partly repre- 11
sentational artists—who do “speak” with their art materials/elements—so 12
often describe their work as written communication. 13
A second explanation relates to the specific genres of written language 14
referred to by the three classes of artists. Artists whose work involves repre- 15
sentation appear to be distinctively concerned with “accuracy” and “truth” 16
(section 2.2), and they also ascribe different metaphoric meanings to terms 17
such as narrative and story (section 2.3). These differences may encourage 18
both purely and partly representational artists to describe their work in 19
terms of written genres which are compatible with the artists’ versions of 20
“truth” and “narrative.” The corpus suggests that purely and partly repre- 21
sentational artists describe their work in terms of a wider range of written 22
genres than the nonrepresentational artists, based on the compatibility of 23
these written genres with the artists’ interpretations of “truth,” “narrative,” 24
and so on. This presumably contributes to these artists’ overall high usage 25
of written language terms. 26
All three types of artists employ written genres, such as journalism and 27
poetry, in order to conceptualize genres of visual art, such as landscapes, 28
still life paintings, and so forth. For example, Daniel Greene conceptual- 29
izes his still lifes as fiction, because a still life artist compares with a fiction 30
writer in freely choosing and arranging the objects that are represented in 31
the painting: “Still lifes . . . offer a degree of creative freedom unlike any 32
other genre—a dichotomy which Greene likens to the difference between 33
fiction and nonfiction writing” (Sullivan 2001: 30). A landscape painter, 34
for example, cannot rearrange at will objects such as trees and churches, 35
36
37
9. The remaining examples (nine from nonrepresentational artists, three from partly rep-
resentational artists, and sixteen from purely representational artists) are ambiguous, as in 38
“a visual language” or a “vocabulary of symbols.” Both spoken and written communication 39
involve “language” and “vocabulary.” In the absence of additional context, examples such 40
as these cannot be categorized.
41
1 and this constraint renders landscape painting, for Greene, more akin to
2 nonfiction than to fiction.
3 Along similar lines, Frank Webb, speaking as a judge in an art contest,
4 says he wants “to see a painting that’s more in the manner of the poetic
5 than the journalistic” (Carpenter 2002: 8): he is not interested in an exact
6 visual representation of reality (comparable to the account given of real-
7 world events in journalism) but in aesthetics and visual impact (which he
8 compares to poetry). Likewise, partly representational artist Patricia Her-
9 nandez classifies her work as “more fiction than biography,” meaning that
10 her depictions of figures are not exact representations of real-world people
11 (2002b: 77). Realist painter Sally Cleveland says her work is “journalis-
12 tic in nature,” referring to the exactitude of its representation of reality
13 (2003a: 61), and other artists indicate the precision of their representation
14 by claiming to “record” or “document” places and events (ibid.: 121, 129).
15 Calvin Seibert calls his pictorial work “a diary, a visual text,” meaning that
16 it represents his personal life, much as a diary records the writer’s experi-
17 ences and feelings (2003b: 129). Partly representational artist Patrick Welch
18 uses the term “autobiography” with a similar meaning (2002a: 165). A sur-
19 real piece, such as Nic Hess’s partly representational masking tape art, can
20 even be imagined as a “fairy tale,” referring to the fantastic, otherworldy
21 character of the art (Spiegler 2002).
22 In general, then, paintings that exactly represent reality tend to be con-
23 ceptualized as genres of writing that represent real-world people and events,
24 such as “journalism,” “biography,” “autobiography,” or “diary.” Paintings
25 in which the artist represents imaginary objects, places, or people may be
26 called “fiction” or, if the depictions are particularly strange, “mythology”
27 or “fairy tales,” and artists who strive for aesthetic or affective impact may
28 call their work “poetry.”
29 As might be expected from the concern of purely and partly representa-
30 tional artists with “truthfulness” and “accuracy” (section 2.2), these artists
31 are more likely than nonrepresentational painters to call their work “jour-
32 nalistic,” a “record” of time and place, a “biography,” or an “autobiogra-
33 phy.” These terms are used only by artists who depict real-world people,
34 objects, and so forth, because such depiction can be understood in terms
35 of the representation of real-world facts, events, and situations, as found in
36 written genres such as journalism or biography. A biography, for example,
37 tells a person’s story, so the term biography can metaphorically apply to a
38 portrait, which depicts a person visually (and which may allude to “nar-
39 rative” or “story”; see section 2.3). The term autobiography, which refers to
40 a work telling the writer’s own story, can metaphorically designate a self-
41 portrait, which represents the artist’s own image.
Artworks that lack representation cannot easily be understood as rep- 1

resentational written genres, and indeed no abstract painters in my cor- 2
pus used the terms journalistic, record, biography, autobiography, or even fiction. 3
However, all three types of artists metaphorically described their work as 4
poetry, using words like poetry, poetic, and lyrical. Andrew Lang, who com- 5
bines representational and abstract elements, says that creating his paint- 6
ing is “like writing certain kinds of poems [that] are worked and reworked 7
over a long period of time” (2002b: 101). Here, the painting process is 8
described in terms of the process of writing a poem, which may or may 9
not involve the factor of representation. Nonrepresentational artist Phil 10
Frost refers to his works as a “poetry of faith,” indicating that they have 11
a spiritual, emotional value for him, which is independent of representa- 12
tion (2003b: 37). Overall, nonrepresentational artists used terms like poetry, 13
poetic, and lyrical three times, while each of the other classes of painters 14
used these twice. Apparently, artworks may be termed “poetry” regardless 15
of representation. 16
Since nonrepresentational artists may describe their work as “poetry,” it 17
is clearly possible for them to conceptualize their work in terms of written 18
language. The fact that these artists do so rarely (five times in the corpus, 19
as compared with thirty-one times by partly and purely representational 20
artists) may be ascribed to the smaller variety of written genres open to 21
nonrepresentational artists for conceptualizing their work. The purely and 22
partly representational artists, on the other hand, can also describe their 23
painting in terms of representational forms of writing, such as journalism or 24
biography. This wider range of options helps explain the higher frequency 25
with which these artists appeal to the domain of written language. 26
27
28
5. “Quotations” as Evidence That Artwork Is Conceptualized as Speech
29
It is an open question whether certain words and phrases activate con- 30
ceptual metaphors. For instance, when Biel expresses the hope that his 31
drawings will “communicate” to an audience, is the meaning of communi- 32
cate metaphorically understood in terms of linguistic communication (as 33
in figure 6, etc.)? If communicate here activates a conceptual metaphor, its 34
metaphoric meaning in this context is accessed online via its language- 35
related meaning (i.e., the meaning “linguistic communication”). However, 36
the word communicate may alternatively be hypothesized to possess mul- 37
tiple senses, one of which refers to linguistic communication and another 38
to visual effects, such as the impact of Biel’s drawings on a viewer. These 39
senses could theoretically be lexicalized, as part of the mental lexicon of 40
English speakers, in which case the “metaphoric” meaning of communicate 41
1 could potentially be accessed without activating a conceptual metaphor.

2 The corpus findings reported here would need to be supplemented by
3 psycholinguistic experimentation in order to determine whether the verb
4 communicate in this context involves active, online metaphoric reasoning
5 (see Gibbs et al. 1997). The same can be said for several other items dis-
6 cussed here, most prominently narrative (section 2.3).
7 Whereas corpus data cannot always reveal whether understanding a
8 given word or phrase involves online conceptual metaphor, this type of
9 data can demonstrate the existence of individual conceptual metaphors
10 (see Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Novel or unusual instances of metaphor
11 are of particular relevance in proving that metaphors are conceptual and
12 are not simply lexicalized senses of words and phrases. Novel metaphoric
13 words and phrases are necessarily created (and understood) on the spot and
14 therefore cannot be attributed to lexicalized senses. The lexicon of speakers
15 cannot contain meanings that they have never before encountered.
16 For example, when representational artist Daniel Blagg calls his paint-
17 ings “the raw signature of emotional observation,” the metaphoric use of
18 signature is novel (2002b: 29). The usage fits the pattern shown in figure 14
19 (in which art is conceptualized as written language) but refers specifically
20 to the signing of a name—an intuitive, rapid form of writing which records
21 the identity of the signer. Metaphorically, signature refers to intuitive paint-
22 ing that results directly from the artist’s “emotional observation.” This
23 novel metaphoric sense of signature will be unfamiliar to most or all readers
24 and cannot therefore be said to be part of the English lexicon. The sense
25 can only be attributed to an underlying conceptual structure, which allows
26 us to reason online about art in terms of written language (as in figure 14)
27 and thereby understand the metaphoric meaning of Blagg’s statement.
28 Many of the instances of metaphor discussed in this article are novel.
29 For example, artists’ metaphoric reference to visual structures as rhyme
30 or syntax (section 2.1) will be novel for most readers; few linguists would
31 therefore claim that special art-related senses of rhyme or syntax exist in the
32 lexicon. In the absence of lexicalized senses for these words, their meta-
33 phoric meanings are accessed online, via a conceptual structure such as the
34 blend in figure 7. Likewise, artists’ reference of their work to certain written
35 genres, including autobiography, fairy tale, and journalism (section 4) is novel
36 and so unlexicalized. These usages are better explained as instantiations of
37 a conceptual blend that allows types of visual artwork to be conceptualized
38 as genres of writing (figure 14).
39 A strikingly novel type of metaphoric phrase consists of “quotations”
40 from artwork. Occasionally, phrases or sentences are “spoken” by an art-
41 work and “quoted” in various manners by artists, critics, or viewers. For
example, art reviewer Bob Hicks (2008) writes of Arvie Smith’s paintings 1
that depict slavery: 2
3
(1) “Look at this,” Smith’s paintings say. “This is important.”
4
Here, Hicks is attributing “speech” to Smith’s paintings via the metaphor 5
shown in figure 6. Hicks’s “quotation” from Smith’s paintings ascribes a 6
particular intent to the artist (via Art-for-Artist metonymy), that is, the 7
intention to draw attention to the importance of the issues he depicts. This 8
intent is figuratively described, via a novel instance of metaphor, as a par- 9
ticular utterance that Smith’s paintings “say.” 10
Like other novel instances of metaphor, examples such as (1) demon- 11
strate that metaphor is not just a matter of multiple lexicalized senses of 12
words or phrases. However, as Esther Pascual (2006) observes, such quoted 13
utterances provide a special type of evidence supporting the conceptual 14
nature of metaphoric blends. Utterances with the complexity of the two 15
sentences attributed to Smith’s paintings in (1) are not generally part of 16
the lexicon (with the exception of certain lexicalized idioms, on which see 17
Gibbs 1990). Sentences such as this is important, for example, are formed 18
important, and gram-
online via the combination of lexical items, such as important 19
matical constructions, such as the copula construction (or “equation”) used 20
here. The sentence this is important is not a single item in the lexicon; there- 21
fore it does not have even one sense listed in the lexicon, let alone the mul- 22
tiple senses that could be attributed to items such as communication. 23
It should be noted that most unambiguously metaphoric quoted utter- 24
ances from the artwork involve the Art-for-Artist metonymy, because an 25
artist can literally speak and be quoted (a fact that often renders a passage 26
ambiguous between literal and metaphorical “speech”), whereas an art- 27
work cannot. This metonymy is especially clear in examples such as (2): 28
29
(2) Instead of offering a counter-example to our shallow mass culture, [a typical
30
contemporary artist] caves into it and produces art that says, in effect, “See
31
what you made me do?” (Plagens 1999: 110)
32
In this example, the pronoun me in the question See what you made me do? 33
refers to the artist, who wants the world to see what it made him or her do. 34
Since the “art . . . says” this statement, yet the item me refers to the artist, 35
the art is clearly standing for the artist via metonymy. 36
But neither the artist nor the artwork is literally speaking. And since 37
the meaning of the sentence “spoken” by the artwork, See what you made me 38
do? cannot be attributed to anything in the lexicon, it offers evidence that 39
a conceptual process, such as a metaphoric blend, is at work in the utter- 40
ance’s production and interpretation. 41
PQ: Set as extracts, OK? etc.

1 Even more complex utterances can be attributed to art, as in

2
(3) But I think my tendency, and most artists’ tendency [is to] make sublime
3
art—art that says, “I’m the sensitive person, I’m your guide and you could never
4
have seen this without me, the sensitive artist showing it to you.” (Durham
5 2009)
6
7 The complex string of clauses “quoted” in (3) is even less likely than the
8 example in (2) either to exist in the lexicon or to possess a special lexical-
9 ized sense related to artistic expression.
10 Further, various aspects of the conceptual structure of metaphors reveal
11 themselves in utterances quoted from art. For example, artistic style is con-
12 ceptualized as speech style in (4)–(5), where art “whispers” and “screams”:
13 (4) That painting whispers its insolent message: “This is the way I like it, if you
14 don’t, tough shit!” (Steinhauer 2009)
15
(5) Don’t create art that screams—“here I am.” (City of San Diego 2007)
16
17 Like (1)–(3), these examples describe the visual message in terms of a
18 speech message, but they additionally relate visual style to the manner and
19 volume of speech. Example (4) describes the work of abstract artist Joan
20 Duran, whose subtle use of color (often black and white or earth tones) and
21 simplicity of form is conceptualized as a quiet “whisper.” This contrasts
22 with his bold, confident manner of painting, which is visible in the shape
23 of his spontaneous splotches of paint and can be conceptualized as his
24 “insolent message.”
25 Example (5) is an excerpt from the minutes of a city council meeting,
26 offering guidelines for a public art project. Here, the council is warning
27 against art that will draw too much attention to itself (through disturbing
28 imagery, overly bright colors, etc.) and so would metaphorically “scream.”
29 This instance of metaphor, like the one in (4), thus focuses on a different
30 part of the relevant conceptual metaphor than examples (1)–(3). Examples
31 such as (4) and (5) show that even show that even in novel, quoted “utter-
32 ances” from artwork, speakers may conceptualize various aspects of picto-
33 rial artwork in terms of language.
34 Unfortunately, the New American Paintings volumes that I studied did
35 not contain any such novel metaphors of “quoted speech.” However, the
36 existence of examples such as (1)–(5) provides additional evidence that the
37 metaphoric blends discussed throughout this article exist on a concep-
38 tual level and that the distinctions between various usages or structures
39 of metaphor (such as those preferred by the three categories of artists in
40 New American Paintings) reflect differences in conceptualization as well as in
41 language.
6. Conclusion 1
2
There are significant consequences to the claim that metaphoric language
3
in artists’ statements varies according to the type of art it describes. Per-
4
haps most crucially, the choice of metaphor sheds light on the conceptual
5
structure of the blends artists use when they think and talk about their
6
work, which in turn provides insights into their values and artistic philoso-
7
phies. The data and analyses in this article suggest two especially strong
8
tendencies in artists’ values, as revealed by their metaphoric language. The
9
first of these relates to the metaphoric conceptualization of representation
10
and the second to the conversational participants involved in “dialogues”
11
found in artists’ statements.
12
The importance of representation becomes apparent in the widespread
13
structural differences between the metaphors of the purely or partly repre-
14
sentational artists and those of the nonrepresentational painters. We have
15
seen repeatedly how the metaphoric language of the former artists tends
16
to focus on the objects, people, and places represented in their works. For
17
example, these painters conceptualize systems of represented objects as
18
“languages” and representational faithfulness to these objects’ imagery as
19
“truthfulness” (section 2). Similarly, when purely and partly representa-
20
tional artists “tell stories,” their “narratives” generally consist of action
21
sequences suggested by their represented objects (section 2.3). And when
22
these artists describe their work in terms of written language, they refer
23
to written genres associated with real-world people and events, such as
24
“biography” or “journalism,” or with imagined events, such as “fiction”
25
(section 4). All these instances of metaphor describe aspects of visual rep-
26
resentation in terms of language, and this focus on representation demon-
27
strates its value to both types of artists concerned.
28
Nonrepresentational artists in the corpus, on the other hand, do not use
29
words such as language, stories, and so forth with these metaphoric mean-
30
ings—for the simple reason that their work includes no representational
31
elements to be conceptualized in terms of language. Instead, their meta-
32
phors focus on their materials, colors, and forms. These painters’ “lan-
33
guages” are systems of colors and forms, not of imagery or represented
34
objects (section 2). Nor are abstract artists concerned with “accuracy” or
35
“description,” and when they refer to “narrative,” they “tell the story” of
36
their painting process and their use of materials (2.2–2.3). They rarely
37
describe their work as written language, but when they do, it figures as
38
“poetry” rather than as “journalism” or any other type of writing neces-
39
sarily concerned with representation (4).
40
Purely and partly representational artists do occasionally refer to “lan-
41
1 guages” of color or to “narratives” of the painting process in the manner

2 of the nonrepresentational group. However, no nonrepresentational art-
3 ists claim to speak the “language” of the represented world, for example,
4 because their paintings lack representation entirely. The presence/absence
5 of representation therefore predicts, to a large extent, the ways visual art-
6 ists will conceptualize their work as “language.”
7 But the artists’ metaphors in the corpus also vary substantially accord-
8 ing to whether or not their work includes nonrepresentational, abstract
9 forms. When it does, the painters appear to be more likely to conceptualize
10 their art materials, colors, and forms as “speaking” through the interaction
11 of random elements (splashes of paint, unpremeditated compositional fea-
12 tures, etc.) that can be described as “conversational participants” in a “dia-
13 logue” with the artist or with each other (section 3, figure 10). It can be
14 seen that the presence of nonrepresentational elements is the key factor in
15 allowing these “dialogues,” because the partly representational artists in
16 the corpus refer to these “dialogues” more often than do the purely rep-
17 resentational painters (though less often than the nonrepresentational; see
18 section 3).
19 Unlike the other groups, few purely representational artists (only one
20 in the corpus) “speak” with elements of their artwork. The vast majority
21 of these artists instead “speaks” to the viewers of their works or provides a
22 “message” for the viewers to “read.” Some representational artists invent
23 new ways to include the audience in a “conversation,” such as devising
24 complexities in their art that the viewer explores slowly. In more recent
25 years, some artists have moved beyond this illusion of responsiveness and
26 have developed works that literally react to the audience (section 3).
27 The (mostly nonrepresentational) artists who “speak” to their materials,
28 or describe their materials as talking among themselves, have moved in
29 the opposite direction. Their audience is a mute witness to a conversa-
30 tion in which it plays no part. No doubt some audiences enjoy playing
31 the “eavesdropper” on this artistic process. However, it may help viewers’
32 comprehension of artworks to recognize when they are included in artists’
33 “conversations” and when they should instead stand back and appreciate
34 the “dialogue” between artist and artwork. Recognition of the conceptual
35 metaphors used by different types of artists offers insights into such differ-
36 ent conceptualizations of visual art, and the study of these metaphors may
37 therefore provide a deeper appreciation of artists and their works.
38 The New American Paintings corpus, with its balanced selection of picto-
39 rial art, provides clear evidence of pervasive differences in purely, partly,
40 and nonrepresentational painters’ descriptions and conceptualizations of
41 their work. The structure of these metaphoric blends is conceptual and
not merely linguistic, as attested by the existence of novel metaphors made 1

possible by these conceptual structures (section 5). Nonrepresentational, 2
purely representational, and partly representational artists think about 3
their work in different ways. As the art world becomes more diverse, an 4
awareness of the different metaphors for art becomes increasingly essential 5
to its comprehension. Modeling the metaphoric blends in artists’ state- 6
ments can help us understand what different genres of art are “saying,” 7
whom they are “addressing,” and why they are “speaking” at all. 8
9
10
References
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7 1992 Text as Picture: Studies in the Literary Transformation of Pictures (Lewiston, PA: Mellen).
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The Languages of Art: How Representational and Abstract Painters

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Conceptualize Their Work in Terms of Language 7

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1 1. The Voices of Image and Form

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1 “representation” on artists’ work, the current study analyzes artists’ con-

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1 to both representational and nonrepresentational elements and are there-

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artists’ descriptions of their work can be captured in several ways. First 1

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Input 1: Immanuel Input 2: The modern 12

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of the purely and partly representational painters consist either of repre- 1

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sentational painters, who focus on building unified, coherent systems of 1

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1 New American Paintings, just as representational painters tend to stick with

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1 Three purely abstract painters make claims about accuracy and

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the “performative aspect” of the artwork. Evidence of the painting process 1

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1 linguistic experimentation would be necessary to determine whether the

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1 according to the artists, and more completely represents a “conversation”

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However, the blend in figure 10 (in which components of a painting are 1

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tributed fourteen metaphors of speech and partly representational artists 1

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Artworks that lack representation cannot easily be understood as rep- 1

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1 could potentially be accessed without activating a conceptual metaphor.