2. Index

 

 Though Bryson divided sign for discursive and figural, an American semiologist Charles Sanders Peirce categorized sign in 3 types: “symbol”, “icon” and “index”. The painterly trace is a figural sign by Bryson, but this is an “index” by Rosalind Krauss. This is a trace of artist’s body.

 

She used the notion of “index” in her essay, “Notes on Index: part 1”……10; it is a sign which relation between its signifier and signified are guaranteed by physical contact. She describes it relating to Roland Barthes that “studium” and “punctum” in “Camera Lucida” is the difference between “icon” and “index”. The first one is a simulation of the real constructed consciously and later one is over detail by mechanical reproduction. She says index is like a punctum, as Barthes says, and adds that its practice can complete not being influenced by the characteristic of its material. That is to say, its meaning does not depend on its material. In her words what it signifies is “logic” instead of “medium”.

 

So that I can say the “painterly trace” that Bryson dealt with many times was an index that implies artist’s action and time he spent to paint his painting, and also his feeling (passion, desire). He called this “body”.

 

However Krauss uses index in wide range. Michio Hayashi explained in his essay, “Cross Over Modernism – Rosalind Krauss ……14; “She found index not only in the physical phenomena, but also in language. Language, for its characteristic, seemed to be thought as a “symbol”, but there are some kind of words it cannot be explained as a symbol. Linguist, Roman Jakobson named these “shifter”. They are for instance, “I”, “You”, “this”, “there”, “here”,etc.”₂₇ Krauss explains, “It is a sign which is inherently “empty”, its signification a function of only this one instance, guaranteed by existential presence of just this object. It is the meaningless meaning that is instituted through the term of the index.”₂₈

 

Michio adds, “The shift of meaning happens not by the difference in the context of its language system inside, but by the situation of communication that places outside of the language system. It can be an index because the real world and abstract structure of language can touch each other through the existence of speaker. So that the meaning of each shifter is thought as a trace of this touch.”₂₉

 

He pointed out the argument against Saussure by Lyotard₃₀ understanding this fundamentally a similar notion. “Lyotard says that there are unclear depth in signification by the visuality which recognise the distance between human body and the world which surround us.”₃₁

 

I would like to bring this notion of index into Holzer’s work and try to read them again. I tried to find index in her presentations, but there were no painterly traces. (Carved stones, LED signs, posters, etc. were mechanically produced.)

 

However, I could found two indexes that imply Holter in two levels. The first index tells us only her existence: the fact that someone left the statements on the street, in telephone boxes and on parking meters, etc. and her past action that she wrote these texts. But there were not any more information of her body. These were the perfect crimes. So that, we must interpret the second index: the fact that she did not leave any index of her body.

 

She did not express her body not because of her gaze. She could do if she wanted. She hid her body by her intention as well as Warhol. This is very opposite of Jackson Pollock. To express his body was his desire. So what is her desire? I guess that her desire is making viewers get into her by their active intentions. On the contrary, Pollock was always active and viewers must accept him only passively.

  

 

Notes

₂₇ Masayuki Tanaka, Michio Hayashi / Cross Over Modernism – Rosalind Krauss: Art    History Now: BT Feb. 1996 / Bijutsu syuppan, p132# ₂₈ Rosalind E.Krauss / The Originality of Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths / Cambridge, Massaxhusetts 1985, p206 ₂₉ op. cit BT Feb. 1996, p132# ₃₀ Jean Francois Lyotard / Discourse and Figure / Paris 1971 ₃₁ op cit BT Feb. 1996, p134#