Michael Taussig - “The Language of Flowers”

Michael Taussig, “The Language of Flowers”, Walter Benjamin’s Grave, Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 2006, pp. 189-218.

In this text Taussig begins to unravel the complex relationship between art and nature.  The discussion is concentrated around flowers then, at one point, begins to investigate the relationship between flowers and disaster. An instance of this can be seen in the response to the 2001 attack on the world trade centre when flowers where laid layers deep at the site of the tragedy - a reaction when one does not know how to react. It is an example of how ‘when disaster strikes the useless becomes useful’ (Taussig 12). Flowers don’t have any inherent function yet they have an important and relevant purpose.

Often the occurrence of such a disaster leads people to search for hope and to make meaning. Flowers are a manifestation of a response which has moved through different states. Flowers have a poignant simplicity and beauty, a ‘contrast to the toughness all around them’ (Stewart 2). A reaction when no words are apt, they symbolise an exchange outside economy. A symbol and an expression of grief, of community, of loss and of hope all rolled into one.

A parallel experience exists in art as it is also inherently useless yet, because of this very quality, it is rendered powerful. Art has the ability to address the important issues; it communicates in a space predominantly outside of language and has the ability to be a gesture that can memorialise a situation.

Michael Taussig, “The Language of Flowers”, Walter Benjamin’s Grave, Chicago: The University of Chicago press, 2006, pp. 189-218.

Stewart, Barbara, “Even the Delicate Survive”, The New York Times 22 Sept. 2001: 1-2. Print.

James Clifford – “On Collecting Art and Culture”

Clifford, James, “On Collecting Art and Culture” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp.215-251. Print.

In this text, Clifford begins to unravel the complex relationship between art and culture. In the discussion, Clifford states that ‘Collecting- at least in the west, where time is generally thought of to be linear and irreversible- implies a rescue of phenomena from inevitable historical decay or loss’ (Clifford 231).  The specific conception of time (unique to the west) can aid in the understanding of why collections are formed.

Collecting is described as ‘an exercise in how to make the world one’s own’, a way to relive moments from the past (Clifford 218). However, when objects are ‘saved out of time’ they take on a new importance (Clifford 231). The original desire to cherish and preserve that past is not achieved. A collection warps time as the objects are just fragments ripped from their original context. A tension exists between an attempt to preserve the original context of an object and the belief that ‘human artistic creation transcends location and time’ - that the objects can exist without their original context (Clifford 242). There is a desire for both but an impossibility of entirely achieving either.

We take objects from a time we do not understand, placing value on them because they are aged, and making meaning in the present. Collecting constructs a ‘dimension of our life that is both real and imaginary’ - objects and fantastical meaning (Clifford 220). History and time are subjective (created) - the ‘past and future exist only in the mind’ (Le Poidevin). Essentially the collections we have take on a new life within a fabricated, distorted value system that makes guesses about history.

Clifford, James, “On Collecting Art and Culture” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp.215-251. Print.

Le Poidevin, Robin, "The Experience and Perception of Time", The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 2009. Web.  3 Mar. 2011.