8/3/2019 Communication in Words and Images

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/communication-in-words-and-images 1/2

Published in The News on Sunday, March, 2009

Every art exhibition, which goes up in the city, leads to an afresh round of skirmishes

between artists and critics. Much of it is fueled by the disagreement over how does art

communicate. Some critics expect art to communicate to us instantly and directly, in a

manner an essay or a newspaper article does. They assume it to be an act of 

communication comparable to an act of speech or writing. These expectation andassumptions reflect a conflation of two communication activities, which are anything

but different. The point of the article is to identify the different nature of 

communication process at work: in words and in images.

Lets take written/verbal communication first. Every non-visual communication act, be it

verbal or non-verbal, involves a mediumthrough which it carries a message and delivers

it to areceiver in time and space. An act of writing or speech contains an argument. An

argument carries a messageand delivers it to a receiver in a certain amount of time,

through the medium of writing or speech. (A dense argument may take more time to

deliver). Two things should happen, if a message is to be delivered effectively. The

message should lose its utility once it has reached the receiver (otherwise it may involve

the risk of non-communication). Second, different receivers should get the same

message, if a proper communication is to occur. The present article, for instance, is an

act of communication. It contains an argument (a message), expressed through writing

(a medium) to be delivered to the readers (receiver) in a certain amount of time. Ideally

speaking, in order for an effective communication to take place, the argument should be

understood by all readers equally well, without leaving any room for conflicting

interpretation. Moreover, once it has reached to the readers, this argument should run

out its utility and may lead to another argument or counter argument. This is how we

communication through words in daily lives.

An essential feature of an effective verbal or written communication is linearity. Ideally,

a speech or writing act is linear and unfold over time in a straight line. It starts from a

point A and moves along a unilinear progression (of ideas and concepts) to conclude at a

point Z in time. It is because of the linear nature of intellectual activity that even an

entire book of 1000 pages can be described in a series of schematic statements. The

structure and character of written or speech communication act can now be contrasted

with art or visual communication.

The prevailing confusion about what the art objects says lies precisely in the fact that it

is not comparable to a speech or written act of communication. If we try to understandor read a work of art as an act of writing containing a specific message, we will end up

in frustration. The reason lies less the fact that aesthetic communication leaves the

sphere of rational discourse and enters into the realm of untheorised experience and

feelings. The fabric of art is the province of subjective feelings, which lends itself to

formulation through images. The art or aesthetic communication is an on-going process.

It does not start or stop at definite points. It neither contains an essentialmessage

intended by the artist, to be communicated to the spectator nor the message will be

finished once the communication act is over. The great works of art never finish to

communicate to the viewer. Theoretically speaking, a masterpiece should let youdiscover new meanings and message, every time you look at it. It is mainly because of 

the open-ended nature of the aesthetic communication that generation after

8/3/2019 Communication in Words and Images

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/communication-in-words-and-images 2/2

generations can live off the aesthetic experiences of great works of arts, without losing

their capacity to generate new messages.

Given these contrasting features of aesthetic communication and non-aesthetic

communication, one can begin to understand the conflicting views held by artists and

critics. The former tends to see their work, as a part of on-going aesthetic experience

and later see it as a product of finished intellectual message. A ’structure of intelligentdialogue’ between critic and artist, can only be established, if the fundamental

differences between the two communication acts are placed in their respective

contexts. Other social explanations, including curbs on critical thinking in our society, of 

course, reinforce and split this divide further.