ABSTRACT
Metaphorising painting as writing creates a double thrust for, in pulling painting directly into the thrall of an apparently utterly conventional practice of Language (writing-as-writtenwords), it also unhinges this same convention by pushing it towards and confronting it with painting. Neither painting nor writing can remain the 'same' in such a move, for painting could no longer be the outside of Language and writing could no longer be a mere copy of the spoken word. At stake in re-thinking painting's modernity, as the celebratory exploration of its own life in Language, are the very conventions of language use and theory which support both con ventional understandings of art and also the structures of everyday practices themselves. Shifting the conceptualisation of these con ventions onto the terrain of writing carries in its wake a train of radical consequences for the relation of theory and criticism to their topics, whether painting, art or culture generally. And it is the work of deconstruction that performs this unhinging of writing from its conventional ties.
