I was reading an artists description of some work he was doing where he tried to duplicate some small work some thirteen times....and the words he used seemed so cool, at least at first...
The words being used were like "capillary action, surface tension, evaporation, dispersion" and cool things like that...it all sounds so scientific and careful...not some crappy amateur art project. I feel like I'm floating in the Artforum pool, swimming with David Hockney and Andy Warhol, waving to artists on the side chairs.
He found, discovered is word I think he used, that he couldn't duplicate the picture...not at all.
Those words seem at first to taste so scientific -they seem to have a clarity of vision that is going to take me somewhere clear and healthy, to examine work in a good happy way...Yet, I then almost immediately realized that I already know all that stuff...I've talked about how work cannot be duplicated and in fact it is just that quality I admire so much.
That is the stuff you get to see when you look through an artist's "small pieces" and his studies for larger work. And I often find I like it better than the large stuff. It has that fecundity that Helen Frankenthaler talks about. And more importantly to me me at least, it has that spark that can enter all pieces of sudden creativity.
That must be why I find almost all explication to be useless, to feel like defeat, a defeat in the midst of a victory celebration. So many of the cards in a museum show seem to be trying to beat the artist up, kick him while he's down, drown him, make it all fit "courageously" together in an endless celebration of the Art of Our Time. But nothing fits together, not today...
No comments:
Post a Comment