Painting in Tongues: Faith-Based Languages of Formalist Art

by Kevin Z. Moore

A philosophical problem is created by the incoherence between the
earlier state and the later one.
—Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology

Whatever is happening to evidence-based treatment? When the facts
contravene conventional wisdom, go with the anecdotes?
—New York Times, "Science Times," February 14, 2006

Cephalopods have a visual language that may be considered artful; humans have written and vocalized languages that are sometimes artful; but it is doubtful that there is such a thing as a "language of art," particularly in the sense that twentieth-century formalists and their critics carelessly speak of one or many. Cephalopods flash color-forms on their hides to communicate intents and emotions, maybe even to project plans. They speak in tattooed tongues through neurologically embossed patterns and color field designs displayed on the skin. The large-eyed sea creatures communicate voicelessly in a visual language of pure color-forms, each species perhaps having its own dialect. Though not a full or official language by any means, their color-forms display the ideal that twentieth-century formalist artists sought to graphically realize (referential and conceptual immediacy, emotional coloring, communication via pure, that is, nonpictorial, form). Formalist inspired artists and their critic-expositors describe abstract pattern-painting as though it were a visual language equal to that of the cephalopod. Yet although we can reasonably imagine cephalopods getting the correct message by observation, we cannot reasonably imagine observers getting any message at all, let alone the intended message, from abstractionist painting. This casts suspicion on the formalists' claims about visual language. Observers cannot and famously do not get anything "out" of formalist pattern paintings, though they do project quite a lot "into" them. The telling difference between octopus and artist? Cephalopods communicate visually— their survival depends on it. Formalists do not, though the survival and flourishing of their art depends upon the belief that they do.