31 August 2025
Great little essay on the use of language in contemporary painting by Jonathan (Tignor) from the latest entry to his Malerblöd Substack (subscribe to it if you're reading this). Especially the bit where he explains: “Language is hardly stable, but against the backdrop of an abstract painting, there is an illusion of stability.”
He addresses Daisy Parris's painting Portrait of a Poem, pointing out how “the third poetic panel is the most successful to [him] because it operates like the Basquiat above [Untitled (Tar Tar Tar, Lead Lead Lead), 1981]. “Haven’t / Wrote” is barely legible through the blast of paint. It is says more by saying less.”
That immediately made me think of Jasper Johns's Flag (1954-55), which I just saw at MoMA in New York. It's nearly impossible to find an image online that is high-quality enough to decipher the tiny words contained in the bits of newspaper articles caked in encaustic, but up close in person there were many great little moments that I could imagine must have been quite satisfying for him to push back and pull forward. Remembering a small section in particular of one of the flag's stripes where most of the newsprint is covered, but the end of a sentence about someone “going into shock” is legible. That to me felt like a nice example of language being used to expand rather than prescribe.