Department of Fine Arts, Okanagan University College
WORDS OF ART: THE T_LIST
WORDS OF ART: THE T_LIST
Compiled by Robert J. Belton
If you would like to see something removed, added or corrected,
please feel free to contact
bbelton@klo1.ouc.bc.ca.
TABLEA: Under construction.
TABLEAU D'HISTOIRE: Under construction.
TABLEAU VIVANT: Under construction.
TABOO: Under construction.
TABULA RASA: Under construction.
TACHISME: See action painting.
TACTICS: Michel de Certeau's Practice of
Everyday Life outlines the basic conditions within which
cultural activity can be produced by those who are considered
non-producers by traditional analysts. One must first distinguish
between strategy -- where subjects can be isolated from the
environment to achieve apparent objectivity, as in scientific
rationality -- and tactics -- where subjects have no "proper,"
objective place, but insinuate themselves into the object's place
in a piecemeal manner, without taking it over entirely. Although de
Certeau is speaking of the specific practices of powerless people
(e.g., perruque), one of the general postmodern repercussions of the idea for art criticism and art theory is that a writer cannot occupy an objective position from which a work's meaning can be seen in full determinacy. A writer, in short, cannot have a strategy, but
only fragmentary tactics which depend on time and the constant
seizing of opportunities. In many respects, the notion provides an
alternative theoretical justification for illustrement.
TACTILE: Under construction.
TAILLE: Under construction.
TALBOTYPE: See photography.
TALISMAN: Under construction.
TAPISTRY: Under construction.
TASTE: Under construction.
TAUTOLOGY: Under construction.
TAXONOMY: Under construction. See also formalism.
TEACH THE CONFLICT: At the heart of the political correctness debate centres is the question of how to
deal with a Eurocentric canon without simply caving in to the demands of pressure
groups (which would merely set a precedent entailing caving in
again in a few years, when new groups succeed them). Gerald Graff's
solution is simply to teach the conflict itself. If nothing else,
it will show that it possible to live with difference and to do so without xenophobia or closed-mindedness.
TECHNE: Under construction.
TECHNIQUE: Under construction.
TECTONIC: Pertaining to building; having an obvious structure; a work in another medium (e.g., a painting) characterized by horizontal and vertical emphases, as in a building. Mondrian's mature works are obviously tectonic.
TELEOLOGY: The doctrine that things develop purposively towards an end (from the Greek telos) determined by the thing under development, as a being might move towards individual self-fulfillment or a species towards its ostensible perfection. This would be in contrast to a mechanistic evolution without purpose. The idea lurks behind the theory of formalism, as if art will emerge at some end point of complete and perfect "artness." This kind of thinking is behind the complaint of the 1960s that Miminalism represented the death of art.
TELETHEORY: Under construction.
TELOS: Under construction.
TEMPERA: Under construction.
TEMPORAL: Under construction.
TEMPORALIZING: Under construction.
TENDENCY: Under construction.
TENOR: 1. The general line of thought, as in
the tenor of an argument or the drift of a conversation. Any generalization of
the character of an artwork -- e.g., its theme or general flavour -- might be so
described. 2. In the literary writings of I. A. Richards, a tenor
is the idea being expressed in a metaphor, as opposed to the vehicle which expresses it.
TENSION: In architecture, the forces tending to stretch certain members, as in the thrust on the centre portion of a wide lintel; in other arts, a precarious balance established between opposing formal features or other elements, usually for some aesthetic effect.
TERTIARY: Under construction.
TESSERAE: Under construction.
TESTABILITY: In "The Testability of an
Interpretation" (in J. Margolis's Philosophy Looks at the
Arts), Monroe C. Beardsley argues that
some interpretations are by nature better than others. The best
intepretation is therefore the "right" one. The criteria for
testing interpretations are analogous to those under the heading validity. See also translation.
TEXT: Originally referring simply to a body
of writing, its
use in postmodernist contexts is closer to its origins in the Latin
texere, to weave. Roland Barthes (see Barthesian) distinguished between a "work," which he
characterized as a finite body with a determinate meaning, and a
"text," which was indeterminate, open-ended, and endlessly subject
to reinterpretation as audiences changed. (Cf reception-theory). As such, "text" can refer to any
expression, consciously artistic or otherwise, which can be read --
i.e., which is "lisible" (see also reader-response, reading), whether it is written or visual. The anthropologist
Clifford Geertz has even described social formations as texts which can be interpeted in ways
analogous to the interpretation of literature. See also scriptible.
TEXTBOOK: The textbook is a troublesome thing
in the postmodern era because it is a single object which purports
to be a body of essential knowledge as well as implicitly the
principal methodology for dealing with its subject. That is, it is
both "what to know" and "how to know it." As a
result, it can serve as a good example of one institution's type of
power. See also art history, critique of institutions, cultural selection, politics of the textbook.
TEXTUALITY: See intertextuality.
TEXTURE: 1. The surface
characteristics of an object. These can be tactile, in the sense of
a physical texture in actuality, or visual, in the sense of an
illusionistic rendering of a texture in a virtually flat painting
or photograph. 2. More loosely, the identifying character of a work
-- its flavour, mode, mood, tone, or voice. Both senses can have
strong affective properties.
THEME: Under construction.
THEOREM: Under construction.
THEORETICAL CRITICISM: Under construction.
THEORY: Under construction.
THEORY OF PRACTICE: Under construction.
THERMOGRAPH: Under construction.
THESIS: Under construction.
THICK DESCRIPTION: Term used by Clifford
Geertz to describe his method of detailed analysis of an
anthropological context by immersing himself in it, to some extent, instead of
assuming he can achieve a standpoint of objectivity. (See also ideology, text). By extension, any attempt to transcribe in exhaustive
detail all the "webs of significance" -- i.e., potentially
influential circumstances that obtained during, say, an artist's
career, whether or not s/he was conscious of them -- could be so
described. The art history of Albert Boime (essays on Friedrich, Manet, Van
Gogh; books on Couture, the French Academy, a typological study on the representation of African-Americans,
etc.) approaches this level of complexity. Robert Belton's The
Beribboned Bomb: The Image of Woman in Male Surrealist Art
attempts it in a very different way. Because thick description
includes contradictory characteristics which traditional historical
or sociological writing leaves out, it is a fundamental alternative
to metahistory. Geertz, however, maintained that social relations
can be observed objectively without being distorted by the values
of the observer (see mediation), so some postmodern opponents claim the method is just another metanarrative. See also stratigraphic fallacy.
THINKING AS YET NOT THINKABLE:
Hélène Cixous's feminism indicts Eurocentric, patriarchal logocentrism and calls for a rebellious écriture féminine that bypasses Western
rationalism. Since it is not clear what form of thought could
replace it, Cixous simply designates it "thinking as yet not
thinkable." The clearest example of this sort of approach in current artwriting is probably the work of Joanna Frueh.
THIRD MEANING: See signifiance.
THIRD WORLD OTHER: Gayatri Spivak's term to
describe any non-European people with an intact material culture which can be recovered and exploited, either
interpretively or in terms of commodity fetishism by Eurocentric interests. See "The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in
reading the Archives," History and Theory 24 (1985): 247.
THOUGHT-ORIENTED: See personality types.
THOUGHT POLICE: Popular media term of disdain
for those in favour of some variation of political correctness.
THREE-CENTRED ARCH: Under construction.
THREE-DIMENSIONAL: Under construction.
THRENODY: Under construction.
THRUST: The downward pressure of architectural weight.
TIE ROD: Under construction.
TIME: Under construction.
TIMELESSNESS: The notion that certain works of art are so filled with genius that they rise above the specifics of time and place to occupy a transcendental, superhuman plane of existence that does not belong to history. This idea, sometimes also called "transhistorical" (e.g., in Herbert Marcuse's The Aesthetic Dimension) and apparently still fashionable among the general populace, is rejected by postmodernism in general as pseudotranshistorical. Hans-Georg Gadamer (see Gadamerian) argues in Truth and Method that this notion can only be a sort of "sacred time," which requires a theological justification having little to do with genuine, lived human experience. See also cultural selection.
TINT: Under construction.
TITLE: Under construction.
TMESIS: Under construction.
TONE: Under construction.
TOPOI: See topos.
TOPOPHILIA: Under construction.
TOPOS: From the Greek koinos topos, "common place," meaning a standard rhetorical
theme or topic. In current artwriting, the term typically concerns a work's content. Older writings sometimes include parallels to
culturally determined patterns of configuration (i.e., impulses to
use set forms in the expression of stock themes), as in W. Eugene
Kleinbauer's characterization of Aby Warburg's Pathosformel in Modern Perspectives in Art History (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1971), p. 64. The plural is "topoi."
TORSION: Twisting or bending, especially in buildings of great height.
TOTALIZE: To combine into a whole or
aggregate, oversimplifying difference in the process. "Totalize" has been used in
different contexts by different writers: Marx used it with
reference to the over-all process of world history; Lenin re the
reciprocal relations of phenomena; Lukács and Mannheim re the
sense of wholeness of individual consciousness; and Sartre re
individuality as a process of interiorizing experience.
TOTEM: Under construction.
TOUCHSTONE: Under construction.
TOUR DE FORCE: Under construction.
TOXIC: Poisonous. By extension, the principal
characteristic of anything deleterious to the health or well-being.
Although its most frequent use is in "toxic waste," the word is now
tossed about as a basic synonym for dysfunctional in numerous contexts, like "toxic
relationships," "toxic shame," and so on. Toxic art would presumably be art with a negative affect.
TRACE: Discussing différance, Jacques Derrida (see Derridean) states that each element (for example, a signifier) "is related to something other than itself [i.e., a signified] but retains the mark of a past element..." (Speech and Phenomena, [1973]). The various kinds of marks which thus cast doubt on our certainty about the relation between an element and its meaning (see indeterminacy) he calls traces.
TRACING: The copying of any form of illustration, drawing, diagram, etc., by covering it with a sheet of transparent or translucent paper or other material and registering its principle (and usually linear) elements thereon.
TRACT: Under construction.
TRADITION: Under construction.
TRADITIONAL MEDIA: Under construction.
TRADITIONARY: See illustrement.
TRAGEDY: Under construction.
TRAGIC FLAW: Under construction.
TRAGIC IRONY: Under construction.
TRANCHE-DE-VIE: French for slice-of-life.
TRANSCENCENCE: Under construction.
TRANSCENDENTAL: Characteristic of things
which go beyond material existence. The term has two distinct
senses in postmodernism, both of which are taken to be fundamental
errors. The first is a near synonym for timelessness, and it is treated with skepticism (see also universal human interest, pseudotranshistorical). The second describes the traditional
logocentric attitude in which the meaning of an utterance is guaranteed in some magical way by a kind of
transcendental presence hovering behind the words themselves (see also metaphysics of presence).
TRANSCENDENTALISM: Under construction.
TRANSCRIPTION: The representation of speech
sounds by means of phonetic symbols. There have been several
attempts to devise related practices for visual images. A recent
example is included in Fernande Saint-Martin's Semiotics of Visual Language. Cf translation.
TRANSCULTURAL: Under construction.
TRANSFER DRAWING: Under construction.
TRANSFERENCE: Under construction.
TRANSFERRED EPITHET: Under construction.
TRANSGRESSION: Under construction.
TRANSHISTORICAL: See timelessness.
TRANSLATION: It is a perennial matter of
undergraduate debate whether or not any act of criticism can adequately "translate" visual images into verbal
ones. One of the hidden premises of most arguments opposing the possibility is that translation is
simply a matter of converting an utterance in one language into its exact equivalent in
another. Professional translators know that such situations are
exceedingly rare, so much of the substance of the argument
evaporates. Idiomatic translations are universally preferred to
literal ones, in any case. (Cf metalanguage, object language). The etymology of the word itself is "to
carry across," which explains why most dictionaries give as the
first definition something along the lines of "to remove or change
from one appearance, form, place, or state to another." Even with
this slight but significant change of emphasis, one should still
adopt a critical attitude towards translation and be aware that
standard tests for the reliability of a translation might be of
some use. The most common is "back translation:" here a document is translated from language X to language Y, given to
another translator and retranslated back to language X. The two X's
are then compared, but less for literal accuracy than for
preservation of sense. Imagining such a test for artwriting would require an extremely adroit argument from analogy. At the very least, it would demand an
exceptionally precise type of description. Tests defined for more
specific kinds of document include "knowledge testing," where
recipients of document X would be able to answer the same questions
of fact as recipients of translated document Y; and "performance
testing," where imperative statement X and its translation as
statement Y are given to two people to see if they behave the same
way. Given that one sense of interpretation is "performance," this option may offer more
possibilities for artwriting than any other. See also transcription, transliteration.
TRANSLITERATION: The representation of a word
in the characters of another alphabet, as in transliterations from
Cyrillic to English. For food for thought, see translation.
TRANSLUCENCY: Under construction.
TRANSPARENCY: Under construction.
TRANSUMPTION: Under construction.
TRANSVERSAL: Under construction.
TRAVESTY: Under construction.
TRIBUTARY: Under construction.
TRIODETIC: Under construction.
TRIPTYCH: See altarpiece.
TROMPE L'OEIL: Illusionism, most commonly in painting, but also in some sculpture, etc., intended to "fool the eye." See gaze and glance.
TROPE: Any of several types of diversion from
the literal to the figurative. The so-called "four master tropes" are irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche (see Kenneth Burke's Grammar of Motives), but one would have to add parody to this list. A few new ones have recently been
invented: see aegis, catachresis, kenosis, perruque. Cf figures of speech.
TRIVIUM: See liberal arts.
TRUSS: Extremely strong, usually triangular arrangements of struts.
TRUTH: Under construction.
TRUTH TO MATERIALS: Under construction.
TUDOR: Under construction.
TUSCHE: Under construction.
TYPE: Under construction.
TYPOLOGICAL STUDY: Any of various types of study which approach a given category of content as a thematic block. The practice has its roots in studies of medieval art for the simple reason that analogies between Old and New Testament characters and stories had for centuries been treated as typological parallels. For example, the story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale for three days was interesting to medieval and Renaissance artists principally because it was a prophecy of Christ's entombment and resurrection. A recent example is Adrian and Joyce Wilson's A Medieval Mirror : Speculum Humanae Salvationis, 1324-1500 (1984). The term has spread to include all sorts of monographs on a single subject, as in Robert Rosenblum's The Dog in Art from Rococo to Postmodernism (1988), Jean Vercoutter's The Image of the Black in Western Art, and Leo Steinberg's The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (1983).
TYPOLOGY: Under construction.
© Copyright 1996 Robert J. Belton
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