Pictorial textuality: The imaginative reading of pictures

The notion ofmultiple, concurrent readings is used to explore the status ofpictorial textuality as a model for the art ofpainting. Being encapsulations ofmateriality, visuality, artefactuality and narra-tivity, paintings require distinct modes and levels of reading. The value of the model is tested with reference to an extreme case ofreading- Antonin Artaud's gnostic interpretation ofa sixteenth-century painting of Lot and his daughters. Die idee van meerdere gelyklopende lesings wordgebruik om die status van pikturale tekstualiteit as 'n model vir die skilderkuns te ontleed Synde enkapsulerings van materialiteit visualiteit artefaktualiteit en narrativiteit verlang skilderye verskillende vlakke en wyses van lesing. Die bruikbaarheid van die model word getoets aan die hand van 'n buitengewone lesing- van Antonin Artaud se gnostiese 42 interpretasie van 'n sestiende-eeuse skildering van Lot en sy dogters. For Cal Seerveld graduandus, A.D. 1995 In every exchange of meaning the discourse is channeled through a mode of textuality, verbal as well as non-'verbal.1 Pictorial webs of mean-ing constitute one of many kinds of legible hu-man utterance. Paintings too need to be read if the fictional worlds projected in the pictorial mode of textuality are to be realised in the im-agination ofprospective readers. Commentators seem ever ready, however, in the name of one or other critical shibboleth (aesthetic autonomy, visuality or figurality, for example), to buttress the legibility peculiar to the art of painting against any encroachment by discursive regimes or to exclude painting from the precincts oftheory (d. Batschmann 1977). Thesefamiliar stances ought to be reconsidered in the light of modified cat