The hermeneutics of museum audio description in the face of historical vanguard movements: reticence towards anti-figurativism and empowering of polysemy

Abstract

The aim of this article is to look for common denominators and, as a result, tendencies in a large sample of audio descriptions of art dating from the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. It therefore analyses a series of techniques and compositional solutions which derive mainly from a loss or partial omission of anti-figurativism. At the same, however, one detects an unrestrained and to some degree puerile use of similes rarely found in more “serious” literature, and which adds a more direct view about polysemy in works of art. Audio descriptions for children take this latter strategy to an extreme, resulting in an even clearer distancing from analytically and rationally critical language.