artists are just people who feel the need to explain everything that they do
Totally agree with toweroflseep. I think the only artists that are required to explain their work are those that want to teach it and those that badly want to sell or publicize it. Imagine saying that someone is a good actor or writer or sculptor if and only if they can clearly explain a “thesis.” Why is it that in those fields, the work is allowed to stand on its own? I just attended a Junot Diaz reading for Oscar Wao this past November. Now this is an articulate guy. He teaches at MIT (fiction, yes, but its still MIT). He can talk about the process. But there were questions about certain recurrent symbols in the book that he just didn’t have the answer to. While it is helpful to the artist to be clear about certain issues regarding their work (and to have the ability to articulate some of them), I find it totally possible and credible for an artist to create something he or she can’t articulate in the verbal, conversational and academic vernacular.
In any case, good luck having an aesthetic experience — or any experience — without thinking about it, too.
Liam Gillick.
I hate to reblog such a long discussion (this is why I wish tumbr had built-in commenting), but…
Luke is completely wrong and apparently has failed the grasp the whole dimension of “aesthetic experience”. You can throw paint at a canvas for very good reasons have nothing to do with politics or even neccesarily other people. Talking and writing about things are (for the most part) discursive and analytical modes that certainly can overlap with a purely aesthetic mode, but they’re different spheres. Most of the best artists I know have difficult explaining their work because they experience things in a more aesthetic than analytic way.
However, getting your work as an artist noticed, promoted, and taken seriously usually requires someone (not neccesarily you) who can make arguments about it and schmooze and talk the talk. Contemporary art (i.e. all art after conceptual art) is especially enamoured of analytical and discursive thinking and thus the most successful artists today are merely the best talkers and the most intimidating thinkers, and often far from the best artists.
I think its safe to say that you can’t sound like too much of a Communications major on Tumblr. Incomplete degree represent!
What I mean is that art (for me) has to have meaning and purpose. Throwing paint at a canvas isn’t art unless there’s a thesis behind why you’re doing it. Maybe I sound like too much of a communications major, but I’ve never really understood or appreciated art that wasn’t… political or social, I guess.
I feel just the opposite - if the artist needs to explain what they’ve already expressed in a symbolic language, then their art is not serving its most basic function.
That’s my take on it. I think we all know the answer to the question “what is art?” is riotous laughter.
Hmm… I agree with the sentiment, but I’ve always felt that if you can’t explain your art, then it’s not art.
(via cameronr)
Naw.
I’m with Saelan.
“if you can’t explain your art, then it’s not art” = no way, jose.
