01 December 2006

That's pretty good for a . . .



Consider this:

When asked to provide details about his life to a curator, the painter Balthus sent the following telegram in reply: "No biographical details. Begin: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. Now let us look at the pictures. Regards. B." Balthus was rebelling against the modern fondness for viewing an artist's output through the prism of his public image. He worried that once an artist's personal life was known, his work would be seen only as a means of diagnosing the artist's psychological shortcomings and not as an end in itself. (found here)

So, do Vincent's letters to Theo make Starry Night a better picture? Did Warhol's attention-craving-madness make his silkscreenes art? Would it have mattered if Jackson Pollock had instead been Jackie? What if Picasso hadn't been a womanizer?

Pictures rarely, if ever, stand alone. There is always a context, a background, an origin. All too often, a person's lifestyle choices are seen as an integral part of the images they make. But what if everything we (think we) know is wrong? Do we read art one way for a suicide, and another way for death by natural causes? Do we read the art by men one way and women another? What exactly are our foregon conclusions about a life that are transposed onto the image we see?

6 comments:

Dad said...

I must be a great audience as I know nothing about anyone and if I did I do not remember it. So I can view are through unbiased eyes and just enjoy it. How lucky I am to have my hard drive of memory so full of irrelevant information. Actually my memory is not full of much of anything but I am still lucky, right?

Josh said...

i'm swimming in these kinds of questions every day. i believe the art work must stand alone on its own merits. though, i appreciate a good back story. for many critics, beethoven's 9th symphony stands alone as the pinnacle of not only music, but all of western art. in all the articles i've read on that piece, i haven't seen any references to the composer's deafness. but, it seems like his being deaf gives a sense of awe and wonder. almost a supernatural quality to the work, if you're tainted with knowledge of his deafness.

does contextual information taint the piece? a little. but we're not living in a vacuum. life is rough around the edges, and art should be, too. theoretical or technical perfection in art is a silly objective.

although, there's a point where too much info beyond the work itself is distracting, even demeaning to the work. take another beethoven symphony, the 5th. it's the theme song of the judge judy show. it was a disco hit in the 1970's. who can listen to it without all the extra-musical associations?

an old teacher told me something that most people probably assume--publishers are more likely to take your stuff if you've been published before. he said after he had his first piece published, he resubmitted all the stuff they had previously rejected. same pieces, but now they were accepted and published. what made them better art? it was now art created by a recognized artist.

Mary Ann said...

I think the relevance of context is relative to the reason you are looking/listening. It doesn't matter a hill of beans if you examine something for its formal qualities.

You call it silly and maybe it is when it stands alone, but technical perfection has been and continues to be a significant aim of so many artists. A good idea has never been enough. Instead of dismissing craftsmanship and execution, I think what has happened is that we have looked for these to be fulfilled in new ways. I think we still expect quality, but certainly of we now measure it differently.

Mary Ann said...

Good points about the fifth. It sadly has become such a cliche.

Josh said...

it's true. i used "silly" a little ironically, i think. because that sort of perfection isn't achievable doesn't mean people don't get very close and the art is so much better because they do.

Dad said...

Well, I just got left behind in the discussion. I did not know any of that information and it is inlightening. You guys that know all that stuff are amazing. Keep on discussing, it is fun listening even if I will not remember any of it next week, I will enjoy remembering that I enjoyed listening.