Critical Comment

“A work conceived, perceived and received in its integrally symbolic nature is a text.”
Roland Barthes(1915-1980) ‘ From Work to Text’

This is an attempt to come to an understanding of the term ‘work’ in this definition of it.
Is a work a product assumed to be finished , having gone through a process? Since… perhaps it may not have been released from it. It symbolizes a time period by its nature of being and having been. Apart from the time and space it represents, it symbolizes the process it was ( and is) subject to , not excluding future allegations. Since it represents more than a history of associations attached to it by continuing to exist in an environment that uses it , ‘Use’ in the sense of giving it a reason to still exist, can this ‘work’ be ‘conceived, perceived and received in its integrally symbolic nature’? If this nature lies only in the fact that it undergoes these three processes, be it in any context … probably then it becomes a text.
If its integral symbolism lies in the material that constitutes it, then every material understood and experienced as what it is is a work turned into text.


Neha Jiandani
3rd yr BVA
Art History Dept.
Chirtra Kala Parishath
26/4/07