The Mirror Called Art
Further to my last blog, and specifically to one of the comments it prompted, I found myself crafting a response within the responses and then thought, hey!, if I move this to the main page I can avoid coming up with a new blog topic. Anyway, Hame's considered response in the previous's blog's comment section got me thinking along the following lines and this is my response to Hame's points:
Hame, want (sexual) does not equal pornography even if one wants to fuck the brains out of the subject of a painting. Even if Joyce suggested so.
As for fucking, I say when it comes to literature or art, we need to fuck into silence the intellectual deconstructionists. It makes for good academics but for the ruination of reading and personal art appreciation.
Australian artist, Cherry Hood, has some interesting things to say (not her original thesis, of course) about what our reaction to any particular piece of art says, not about the work under scrutiny but about we who are viewing the art. (That process itself is surely the measure of art's existence; that engagement we throw back at the work.)
Given she does oversized water colour portraits of adolescent boys (they are not real people, but composites of photographs and people she knows) that mix innocence and hints of violence and dollops of budding sexuality and loads of sensualness, she understands that reaction. Indeed, her graduate thesis was to take works of the European Masters in which naked young girls appeared and to switch the image of the naked female with that of a naked boy. As she predicted the show of the works brought a firestorm of protest that raged to the highest levels of government and included police attempts to shut down her show. She was called a paedophile and worse. What, she wondered, was different in her works than those of the Masters that critics and art lovers adore and praise? Well, the difference was in the viewers themselves, not the works. Naked girls okay. Naked boys bad.
I have one of her portraits ("Bruder 15") and more than one person has been quite troubled by it -- and all it is is a remarkable water colour of a gorgeous and innocent boy's face. To see such a large painting of a stunningly beautiful boy makes some people squirm -- my point, Hood's point, is the squirm is coming from inside the viewer, not from the work.
A woman I work with viewed "St. Michael" (the painting which was the subject of my last blog) with me and she too, as you are Hame, is incredibly attracted to the subject's beauty. "He's hot!," she repeated countless times.
But please, the imediate jumping from attraction to erotic to pornography is a bit problematic. But before I let that derail me, I want to say that what is fascinating is that the painting so engages you Hame that you are afraid it shows, that others will know you (in this case, your desires and wants) by your hanging the painting in your home! (The only alternative decision making process for living with/buying art is to decide whether it goes with your couch or not.)
In a much more straightforward way a gallery owner has pointed out to me on many occassions that nudes don't sell, male nudes less so, and surprisingly gay men are among the most hesitant to buy cock on canvas. What will people think: "This (naked male fom)is what I want" = "I am gay."
Art with cock or not, I think it takes a courage of sorts (an extension of the courage the artists of true artistic output demonstrate) to lay yourself bare through your artistic tastes, to hang it there on the wall next to the Ikea poster -- it says a lot about a person. It's why I ask people what they think of art. I don't give a damn if their response is counter to mine, I want to hear what the work is doing to them. (So often people who see some of the art I own are silent; as if I've asked them what they think so they'll confirm my own tastes in the works I bought and that if they don't like it it will speak poorly of my buying choicer, or something...).
Anyway, I'd amend your suggestion Hame from art reflecting the buyer's "that's what I want" to read, "that's who I am!" when looking for the answer to the question, "what does a person's art collection or taste in art say about them."
Hame, want (sexual) does not equal pornography even if one wants to fuck the brains out of the subject of a painting. Even if Joyce suggested so.
As for fucking, I say when it comes to literature or art, we need to fuck into silence the intellectual deconstructionists. It makes for good academics but for the ruination of reading and personal art appreciation.
Australian artist, Cherry Hood, has some interesting things to say (not her original thesis, of course) about what our reaction to any particular piece of art says, not about the work under scrutiny but about we who are viewing the art. (That process itself is surely the measure of art's existence; that engagement we throw back at the work.)
Given she does oversized water colour portraits of adolescent boys (they are not real people, but composites of photographs and people she knows) that mix innocence and hints of violence and dollops of budding sexuality and loads of sensualness, she understands that reaction. Indeed, her graduate thesis was to take works of the European Masters in which naked young girls appeared and to switch the image of the naked female with that of a naked boy. As she predicted the show of the works brought a firestorm of protest that raged to the highest levels of government and included police attempts to shut down her show. She was called a paedophile and worse. What, she wondered, was different in her works than those of the Masters that critics and art lovers adore and praise? Well, the difference was in the viewers themselves, not the works. Naked girls okay. Naked boys bad.
I have one of her portraits ("Bruder 15") and more than one person has been quite troubled by it -- and all it is is a remarkable water colour of a gorgeous and innocent boy's face. To see such a large painting of a stunningly beautiful boy makes some people squirm -- my point, Hood's point, is the squirm is coming from inside the viewer, not from the work.
A woman I work with viewed "St. Michael" (the painting which was the subject of my last blog) with me and she too, as you are Hame, is incredibly attracted to the subject's beauty. "He's hot!," she repeated countless times.
But please, the imediate jumping from attraction to erotic to pornography is a bit problematic. But before I let that derail me, I want to say that what is fascinating is that the painting so engages you Hame that you are afraid it shows, that others will know you (in this case, your desires and wants) by your hanging the painting in your home! (The only alternative decision making process for living with/buying art is to decide whether it goes with your couch or not.)
In a much more straightforward way a gallery owner has pointed out to me on many occassions that nudes don't sell, male nudes less so, and surprisingly gay men are among the most hesitant to buy cock on canvas. What will people think: "This (naked male fom)is what I want" = "I am gay."
Art with cock or not, I think it takes a courage of sorts (an extension of the courage the artists of true artistic output demonstrate) to lay yourself bare through your artistic tastes, to hang it there on the wall next to the Ikea poster -- it says a lot about a person. It's why I ask people what they think of art. I don't give a damn if their response is counter to mine, I want to hear what the work is doing to them. (So often people who see some of the art I own are silent; as if I've asked them what they think so they'll confirm my own tastes in the works I bought and that if they don't like it it will speak poorly of my buying choicer, or something...).
Anyway, I'd amend your suggestion Hame from art reflecting the buyer's "that's what I want" to read, "that's who I am!" when looking for the answer to the question, "what does a person's art collection or taste in art say about them."
posted by Heipel at
10:52 PM
9 Comments:
I agree that art is a conversation between the viewer and the subject. It's silly to pretend that the viewing of a piece of art can happen without context.
The Joyce/Campbell notion of "pornography" isn't the same one as the modern conservative one, nor was I suggesting any of what that latter obsession connotes -- that certain ideas are frightening or dangerous and shouldn't be entertained. The discussion I was trying to start, I feel, is deeper and more interesting than that.
The Joyce/Campbell question was whether art that stirs some secondary purpose -- the desire to own or consume, or the desire to destroy or instruct -- is still pure art. I believe Wilde said something similar, that art bent to a purpose is no longer art.
In this sense, I think art "we want to fuck the brains out of" becomes something other than art. It becomes fetish. I'm not saying that fetishes are bad and wrong, I'm saying they're something different. (Which is, I suppose, not the art's fault, but again, art is rarely created without awareness of the context into which it's being released.)
Is wanting to own a painting about wanting to own the beauty it portrays -- like the "pain of never" we've talked about when we see someone stunning in a bar we know we'll never be with/have?
Or is it something else, which you hit on: Is this some narcissism in our nature, the urge to be the subject. Or both: to have them and be them?
None of what I said yesterday was meant as ad hominem commentary, but rather an attempt to open the conversation up in this direction, about the nature of art. Perhaps we shouldn't think or talk about art, that it falls apart like a good joke when we analyse it, but if that's the case, then there's no conversation.
I'm certainly not afraid about anyone knowing my desires. No, but I don't choose to display works that conjure the topic for visitors to my home, mainly because it's not a big topic for me, and it's not something I think friends and family really want to be thinking about (just as I don't particularly want to think about that part of their lives). But if someone wants to, feels comfortable with that, fine. It's daring and kind of fun. (Well, if it's good. Most sexy home-art is just cheap tack.)
Overall, I think it's wonderful and rare that you choose to buy art at all. Not many of us make that a priority. In Italy, I was struck over and over by the commissions -- the architecture, paintings, and sculpture -- by rulers like the Medici. What a different set of priorities they had, to have such a strong desire to make their holdings beautiful, elaborate, and inspiring. Whatever their motivations, it's not something I see happening today.
I was just standing in the queue at the post office, waiting to send my book off to The Scotsman, hoping for review, when I had a post-script thought about all this:
For each of the three novels I've written, I "cast" an imaginary lead whom I fancied in some way. It takes a year and some to write a book, so I figure the subject has to be someone/something I can stay engaged with for that long.
I wonder if an artist doesn't have to somehow love his subject in order to do justice to it. And maybe that's true of its audience, too.
My point was that the art does not change, the response from viewers differs. So it's not the art becoming fetish, it is the art prompting that response in an individual. And it need not be quite so strong as fetish, of course, and given we're talking of Gauci's St. Michael, recall you said you were so attracted to the work you couldn't hang it in your home. That says very little at all about the art, and instead is all about you (and your response to the work -- the work of art then is to prompt your exploration of that response; my other point).
As for art being created with an awareness of the context into which it is being released, while that is obviosuly true, artistic intent and actual outcome in terms of response to the art are utterly divorced. What an artist hopes to create and prompt with that creation ends absolutely with every person who consumes the art. Sure some will come to the same themes and conclusions as the artist, but that's coincidence. Next chance you get, stand in front of a work of art with the artist next to you and tell the artist what they've done (that is, what you "see" in the work, and what is is meant to say).
I also didn't mean when I said that art appreciation reflects who the viewer is as meaning we want to be the subject or want to own the beauty in the art, to possess it (in the "pain of never" context). Not at all. I meant "who we are" in a far deeper way than that, in a way much closer to reflecting self itself.
If it is art then there is always a conversation, prompted by the emotional responses to art. What I can live without (beyond accessing it for its intellectual/academic interst; and am glad it exists)is the dissecting of art at the level of acacemic or philosopher. Like a university English class destroys the emotional response one has to literature, so too the debates about art's role as creator or destroyer, or being about beauty or anti-beauty robs the viewer of art of the glorious, emotive,sub-conscious "what is in this work that speaks of who I am."
the only contribution i have to this conversation is that you both risk being misunderstood and misunderstanding each other because you're talking about somehting that doesn't like being talked about much. some wit said once "writing about music is like dancing about architecture". I think the same is true for art.
Yeah, but...
But as someone who is a "culture worker", producing creative work in the face of society that values commerce over art, the issues "What is art?", "What is art's proper function?", "How do we consume/share/sell it without commoditising/fetishising it?" are vitally important, open-ended questions for me.
(I have to keep reminding myself not to get into these things online.)
I'm with Mark pretty much on this, insofar certainly as you, Hame, describe what it is "talking" about art describes. To counter Mark on what is likely definition only, I think art is all about conversation, at least between one's inards and the work.
I do agree, yes, that those questions Hame raises are profoundly important, but as I've said, important at an academic, intellectual level. And while those things are profoundly about our existing as thinking beings, and are wildly interesting in their own right, they tend to, very much so, subjugate the emotional response art produces--so that talking about art becomes about defining and debating and NOT about base viseral, heart-and-gut interaction with the art.
To that end, I think the conversation with St. Michael had by my co-worker ("He's so hot, so hot, so hot") is a remarkably more "legitimate" conversation than is trying to deine art or its place in our society or devine the "real truth" about what it is an artist was trying to say, or other deconstructionist approaches. And in the end that is not about art, at all, but about thinking; art as subject.
We tend to do that in all aspects of our lives, generally -- fall to the intellectual response at the expense of the emotional -- to the detriment of feeling, in the end.
By way of specific example, if I had of been alone, or with intimates, when in the presence of "St. Michael," I would have wept. Instead, I talked about technique and artistic intent and the influence of a trip to Italy on the artist. One response is cold, the other as "hot hot hot" as the painting.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Whomever posted the comment that now appears deleted, please repost. When I entered the comments section to read the new message I got a notice that I'd just deleted the comment ????
ta,
steve
You would be weeping from the psyche, not the gut. As "soul / spirit / mind" (utterly informed, I agree, by the body / gut), I don't think the psyche makes any hard and fast distinction, let alone a hierarchical value judgment, between thought and emotion.
That is a false dichotomy, in either direction, and the world would be a truer and kinder place without it. It is -- as you have felt yourself, when people award "thinking" the upper hand -- an insensitivity, an injustice, a cliche, a rigid bias, a destructively polarizing device.
Hamish says this is "vital" to him. That means it engages his thoughts and emotions. To dismiss it as "intellectualism" is as wrongful to him as to dismiss your engagement as mere "emotionalism" would be to you.
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