Reply to "Between You and Me"

Fawzan sent this to comment on Neda's last post, and I've decided that it needed to be posted here instead. Yaay, we've got ourselves a new discussion going - care to join in? - Rima

"I regret very much that I have painted a picture

that requires any description" - W. Homer

(This post by Fawzan)

Modern society seems to always be looking for the Cliffs-notes version of everything, with the "You-Name-It For Dummies" series leading the trend. We want our news in 20 minutes or less, our novels translated into 1 1/2 hr movies and someone else to tell us what art “means” to us. DVD versions of movies now come with a running commentary track where the director can tell you what he was thinking and what he was trying to do when he shot every scene.

As a society, we want to be spoon-fed all forms of art. We refuse to expand the effort to understand it and in the process we loose so much.

(Artwork by Fadi Barrage, 1940-1988)

When asked for a few descriptive lines about one of his paintings, Winslow Homer once said: "I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description." Kind of says it all, doesn't it? An artist pours his/her soul into a work. He/She uses the language of colours or notes or texture and form to express/create something. Then someone looks at it and says: “I don't have time to try and understand your language, tell it to me in another language (mine)”.

Aside from the disappointing and almost insulting angle to the question "What does your art mean?", there is also a dangerous path taken as well. When people discuss art, be they renowned critics or average viewers, they are engaging in an interpretive discourse. At the end of the dialogue, they have convinced each other of their view-points or retained their disparate views.

It is this dynamic of the artwork transforming into an object to be “owned” by the viewer that is its true value. If an artist mistakenly weighs in to the dialogue, the dynamic dies. Once the artist tells the viewer what the art piece is about, why he created it, what he was trying to do and what it means, the viewer has no more interpretive engagement with the art. The viewer can either confirm the artist's statement, or disagree with it, but can you really tell someone: "No, that is not what you meant to do, I know better"?

I have often wondered, after the fact of course, what my response should have been to the question of “What does it mean?”. Next time, I’ll just have to say: “ I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine."

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