July 23, 2005
Denise Green: image and metonymy
Denise Green is showing at the University of Queensland Art Museum
Denis Greene, Modhera
These are richly coloured canvases. Green gave a talk last Saturday on 'Metonymy in contemporary art: a new paradigm'. There is no archive or podcast of this so I have no idea what was said. I understand the talk is based on her book Metonymy in Contemporary Art: A New Paradigm, which has just been published by Macmillan.
One account of metonymy relates to narratives set in linear time. I find Green's canvases richly coloured, and appreciate the sophistication of the formal arrangement of image's elements, but I do not see a linear narrative.
Another account says that metonymy is the use of a single characteristic to identify a more complex entity. For example,'The pen is mightier than the sword' signifies that "pen" denotes publishing and "sword" denotes military force.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at July 23, 2005 10:55 AM | TrackBack