On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Cal wrote:
 
> Elaborating on the explication of the ways that film/video/cinema are
> "texts":
>
> Are the works of people like Leonardo da Vinci and Jackson Pollack "texts"?
 
  No. Except to those who choose to "read" them. To others, they are
paintings, drawings, or other visual media. (Dare I say, like film.) To
some, they are the remains of a performance; or material for a
psychoanalytic analysis; or a little piece of socio-historical residue.
Then there are those who still think these artists made works of art and
in so doing redeemed all our lives. Those who hold this last opinion just
want a few hours alone with the originals, because reproductions (like
videos) are incomprehensible to the organ of comprehension -- the eye.
 
Those who prefer to talk about art, rather than look at it, get their
pleasure (yes, pleasure) from reading these works as texts.
 
  P.S. It's Pollock with an o.
 
  Susan Denker
  Art History!!
  Tufts Univ./Museum School
 
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