Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
JOHN A.WALKER
INSTITUTE OF ARTOLOGY,
16 RANGERS SQUARE,
GREENWICH,
LONDON, SE10 8HR
2002
I am most grateful to Sophie Orman
of SMi Ltd, New Concordia Wharf,
Mill St, London, for sponsoring
this publication.
In Britain, during the early 1970s, several critics became convinced that
the art of painting was suffering from an identity crisis and that certain
nothing to say about events in the world beyond the studio. For instance,
John Hoyland painted abstracts that were nothing but patches and slabs of
different colours, while Bob Law exhibited canvases that were all white
apart from a line forming a rectangle echoing the shape of support. (1)
such as Art & Language,Victor Burgin and John Stezaker. Of course, there
were many figurative painters practicing during the 1970s, but the
1
I had been trained as a painter in Newcastle-upon-Tyne during the late
1950s where, under the influence of van Gogh’s colour theories and
left art school, the prospect of spending the rest of my life adjusting two
abstraction and reduction. By the 1970s, I was living in London and spending
more time as a critic and art historian than as a painter. As an art historian, I
texts to make into slides for teaching purposes. Conceptual art and its use of
2
A small, naturalistic still life painting executed in 1965 entitled
because it seemed that nature (of which the orange was a token)
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perceive (hence nature became ‘nature’). (3) Years later, writers on post-
modernism.
It seemed that many abstract painters thought their art form was
was made of the purity of the medium, then painters would undoubtedly
At that time, I was researching the subject of diagrams in art and design
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art historians seemed to be using them. Diagrams intrigued because
of the figure were coded in some way and providing language was used in
5
used by French writers such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes
SIGN
SIGNIFIER SIGNIFIED
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also be treated as an object of study and subjected to analysis (if need be
diagrammatically!). Since paintings are also signs, and are often subjected
painters.
produced. (Any familiar colour would have served the purpose equally
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manufacturers, which show rectangles of colours with their names
their naming than laypersons because they were familiar with the names
of pigments from the labels on the tubes or cans of paint they used.
horizontal bands (illus 2). In the top band was the word ‘orange’ painted
cadmium orange taken straight from the tube; in the bottom band was
degree of optical flicker resulted from this contrast.) Scanning down, the
bottom, the unity of concept and percept. Finally, the painting was
8
(2) Marriage of the Verbal and the Visual, (1975), painting, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm.
Artist’s collection, London.
9
It then struck me that it would be more effective to use the three
occupied the signified rectangle (illus 3). Above them, in the sign
(3) Sign: Orange, (1975), painting, oil on canvas, 183 x 91.5 cm. Destroyed.
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rectangle, was placed the word ‘orange’ executed in orange pigment against
a grey ground.
referential, that the colour orange denotes itself, that is, exemplifies ‘orange’
Northern Ireland where Protestants identify with the colour orange and
Republicans identity with the colour green to realise that colours have
are often made clear by means of the general stock of cultural knowledge
images could generate. (7) This was also a relation explored in certain works
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(4) Sign: Pride, (1975), painting, oil on canvas, 183 x 91.5 cm. Destroyed.
In a third painting entitled ‘Sign: Pride’ (1975), (illus 4), the rectangle of
orange signified the emotion ‘pride’, a fact that was made explicit by the
words ‘an emotion’ in the signified rectangle (to indicate the more
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concept was achieved by the appearance of the word ‘pride’ (coloured
stepped diagrams in which the basic semiotic diagram was treated as the
this was not the end of the story.What in fact happens when one produces
diagram coincide with the edges of the canvas? (What happened when
Jasper Johns made a painting of the American flag that coincided with the
edges of his canvas? There was a confusion of identities. Critics asked: was
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of context; overall, there was a directive to the viewer to regard the form
paintings constituted new signs over and above their analytical content. In
other words, the two levels of meaning and signification re-appeared: the
overt meaning of the two paintings ‘Sign: Orange’ and ‘Sign: Pride’ were
the concepts ‘orange’ and ‘pride’, while their latent signification was what
every effort to deal only with intentional entities, the paintings also
contained textures and brush marks that were not under full conscious
control or were to some extent arbitrary. For most of the lettering, a plain,
sans serif style was employed but I realized that meanings would alter if
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used instead.Thus the paintings confirmed the truth that all human actions
there was no reason why representational images should not occupy the
eliminate noise distractions, the recording was relayed via headphones and
from semi-transparent orange plastic sheet, which, when worn near a lamp,
vision. It was much more direct and economical than a painting and avoided
those arbitrary pictorial factors cited above.The work was called ‘Seeing
Orange’. Its aim was to bring together the private sensory experience of a
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viewer and the public language in which such experiences have been
lack of it, between the two.Years later, in 1993, the same conception was
evident in Derek Jarman’s Blue, a film that had been inspired by Yves
pure blue light, with a soundtrack of the film-maker reading his text [a
Another issue that concerned left wing visual artists during the 1970s
was the commodification process associated with the art market and
painting itself should address this issue and so, in 1975, I devised a canvas
16
(5) Not for Sale, (1975), painting, oil and acrylic on canvas, 122 x 122 cm.
Artist’s collection, London.
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(illus 5). Its garish colours (black, blue, red, white and yellow), and bold
painting and the pop art of the 1960s. (Many pop paintings had included
title – in tiny lettering placed in one corner – told a different story: ‘Not
for Sale’. (The contradiction between the painting’s message and its title
the back of the canvas was the instruction that it should never be bought
and sold but only given away. Gifts of objects that have been made by
The aim of the ‘semiotic’ paintings was didactic and had a specific
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that even flat expanses of hue were imbricated in language and had social
reality again. Since no gallery was willing to exhibit the paintings or any
during the 1970s meant that in the second half of the decade, figurative
Since diagrammatic formats, images quoted from the mass media and
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Notes
(1) For a critical review of London exhibitions by these two painters, see:
(2) Although conceptualists gave priority to language, they also used some
word ‘chair’ hanging on the wall, and an actual chair placed in front of them,
was one precedent for the ‘semiotic’ paintings. In Kosuth’s installation, the
photo and definition not only had signifieds but also a referent: the real chair.
(3) The curly quote marks had an interesting afterlife. My painting “Orange”
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The quote marks were then parodied in a cartoon that appeared in the
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reproduced them on various kinds of merchandise: T-Shirts, fridge
magnets, bras, sunglasses, etc. available via a mail order catalogue (illus 7).
(7) The Modern Review, Front cover of home-shopping catalogue, circa 1994.
Concept:Toby Young; Photo of model by Phil Knott.
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(4) ‘Art Diagrams: A Slide-Tape Presentation’,The Gallery,
January-February, 1975.
(7) On the relationship between captions and images, see Roland Barthes’
(Eng. trans. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, spring 1971, pp. 36-50).
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(8) Peter Wollen, ‘Blue’, New Left Review, Vol 6, November- December
(9) The paintings were discussed with Victor Burgin and a lecture about
them was given to students and staff of the Slade School of Art in
London where they met with a hostile reception. Most of the paintings
(10) For a history, see my book: Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain,
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Biographical information: John A.Walker (b. 1938, Grimsby, Lincolnshire)
art and mass culture and their relationship to social context and politics.
From 1956 to 1961, he took a fine art degree course in Newcastle upon
visual arts and film, television and pop music. His published books are:
Association, 3rd edn 1992). Art since Pop (London:Thames & Hudson,
1975). Van Gogh Studies: Five Critical Essays, (London: JAW Publications,
1981). Art in the Age of Mass Media (London & Sterling,VA: Pluto Press,
3rd edn 2001). Crossovers: Art into Pop, Pop into Art, (London: Comedia/
Methuen, 1987). Design History and the History of Design, (London: Pluto
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Press, 1989). Art and Artists on Screen, (Manchester: Manchester
(London: Arts Council & John Libbey, 1993). John Latham – the Incidental
Person – his Art and Ideas, (London: Middlesex University Press, 1995).
Impact on British Art since 1945, (London & Sterling VA: Pluto Press,
1998). Art and Outrage: Provocation, Controversy and the Visual Arts,
(London & Sterling VA: Pluto Press, 1999). [With Rita Hatton]
Left Shift: Radical Art in 1970s Britain, (London & New York: I.B.Tauris,
2002). Forthcoming in 2002: Art & Celebrity, (London & Sterling VA:
Pluto Press).
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(8) Back cover: Nicholas Wegner, Back view of John A.Walker in the ‘Drug Abuse in Maine’
exhibition at The Gallery, 65 (A) Lisson St, London, January or February, 1974.