David Hoppe

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:: Language on display at the IMA

Mono versus Multi

By David Hoppe

The opening weekend for the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s marquee show, “European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century” took place a month ago, but something I observed there has stayed with me like lint on a black jacket.

The IMA hosted a symposium featuring a who’s who of European design stars. They came from such countries as France, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. Over the course of two days, many of these guests were asked to make a 30-minute presentation and then to answer questions as part of a panel.

Here is what knocked me out: Almost all of these people were more or less able to speak English. Many spoke it well enough to be funny (on purpose).
They made it easy for the American audience to feel cosmopolitan. It didn’t matter whether a particular speaker hailed from Stockholm or Milan, we understood her just the same. It was tempting to sit back and reflect, Disney-style, that it’s a small world after all.

But it was practically impossible for me to imagine myself in any of the presenters’ stylish shoes. If a museum in Berlin, say, or Paris invited me to talk for 30 minutes, all I’d be able to say would be “hello” and “good-bye.” Even if someone wrote a speech for me in the appropriate language, I’d probably make “head of state” sound like “knucklehead.”

I found myself thinking that their multilingualism might be a key to why Europeans are different from Americans and, in particular, how it is they seem to be cleaning our clocks now when it comes to cutting edge creativity.

My guess is that most of the presenters at the IMA not only spoke English; they probably had a better than passing ability to make themselves understood in the tongues of one or more of their European neighbors, as well.

Technology may have all but eliminated old-fashioned geographical provincialism. Anyone, no matter where they live, can use Google to see the latest works by artists and designers from anywhere in the world with a few keystrokes.

But creative enterprise is also a highly social form of interaction where the communication of ideas serves as fuel. The ability to communicate across a range of languages is as important a part of the artist’s toolkit as it is the diplomat’s.

The contemporary art scene today is nothing if not global. Creative people who want their work to matter in more than a strictly local sense are obligated to be prepared to address developments wherever they occur.

No one, obviously, can speak every language. But the ability to be a citizen of the world almost certainly involves being able to at least navigate with minimal competence in more than one tongue. A facility with languages seems to increase not just verbal vocabulary, but a larger vocabulary of options when it comes to the kinds of problem-solving that all creative people are confronted with everyday.

Americans have had it easy. We have taken cover and comfort in the notion that the language we speak is omni-national, the language of business, of power. English, for example, is the dominant language on the Web. Or try walking into a three-star restaurant anywhere in the world and ordering a meal in the local lingo; chances are your waiter will reply in English, saving you from getting liver when you thought you were asking for fish.

Nothing betrays our imperial attitude more convincingly than our seemingly abiding conviction that the rest of the world owes it to itself to learn English. Or else.
The problem with this mindset is that it isolates us at exactly the time when we need to be finding ways to connect with other countries and cultures. We can thump our chests all we want about how productive and innovative we are, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Whether it’s our inability to design cars that combine fuel efficiency with genuine style, or the increasing numbers of people who go abroad for medical procedures that are unaffordable at home, we are slipping.

Our carelessness when it comes to learning other peoples’ languages suggests a society more absorbed in talking to itself than to its neighbors. This puts us at a real disadvantage, but it’s not insurmountable. Europe, after all, had to live through one punishing war after another before arriving at today’s productive, albeit still tenuous, union.

“Bad artists copy,” said Picasso. “Great artists steal.” There are any number of ideas worth stealing embedded in the IMA’s “European Design” show (on view through June 21). But if I were to pick just one, it would have to do with how our world is made by the languages we allow ourselves to speak.