Comments for MW Capacity

Comment on Damon Freed by Chris

Chris — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:45:24 +0000

I think that I’m pretty much in agreement with Dennis that the ideal situation is a collaboration between artist and viewer, both being thoughtful, engaged, alert in their task.

For the sake of discussion maybe I would suggest that an artwork like any other form of expression is subject to express any number of codes outside of the artist’s intent. Just like if Dennis asked me how my classes are going, my body language, tone of voice and phrasing could indicate other sorts of meaning. The way I answer could also point to religious, cultural, gender identity, to something I’d heard someone say on the news that morning, to worries about flu pandemics and the stability of my source of income. So I could lean toward saying the work contains the possibility for multiple interpretation.

Comment on Damon Freed by Dennis

Dennis — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:23:13 +0000

And yet as the work is perceived and expereinced in my eyes something of the artists intent peirces me. Ultimately the work is always a collaboration of creation and perception. Transmitter and Receiver

Comment on Damon Freed by Dennis

Dennis — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:20:37 +0000

With regard to forcing a read, I think that Anselm Kiefer and Francis Bacon exert such a strong visual pull over me (and many others) that I have no choice but to respond to the work. It always forces my mental hand and as Bacon is fond of suggesting, one experiences the sensation of the work so strongly that you are affected at the level of the nervous system… it is a visceral engagement.

A dialogue and relationship opens up between the work and the viewer. I never know for certain if I am properly perceiving a work, but I always want to be in pursuit of understanding or engaged in seeking. As a viewer I want to build my own context around teh art that I view or experience, I like to make it my own in my eyes.

Comment on Damon Freed by jen

jen — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:21:37 +0000

i guess i’m more curious about specificity of experience as an individual viewer. in the example involving Caravaggio, it would seem that the loop was reopened because of some sort of change in cultural climate. the work isn’t really driving that change, but it reenters because it seems relevant for it to exist again or to be visible again.
but, i’m interested in what i think Matt is identifying, i.e. pressure and necessity; and what you seem to be saying with the notion that the loop is opened via expressing words about a work; and what Dennis is saying when he speaks about romanticizing abstraction. all of these things seem a little more insular and contained and even possibly thematically driven. like, when i look at most (or possibly even all work) i am thinking primarily about a couple of big things: time memory etc. so, these are the limitations i bring to the work. and also the limitations that bookend my ability to speak to anything.
is the quality that forces openness of interpretation a quality that you see situated in the work itself, or is it based on the ways in which we come to change our criteria for looking and speaking?

Comment on Keltie Ferris: Man Eaters by Chris

Chris — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:01:23 +0000

I just picked up that catalog today. It is really nice. The essay by Michelle Grabner is great. She draws all these connections to constructivism, Gertrude Stein, Polke, Heilmann. And shows off how she knows her stuff—the descriptions of process, color, surface, structure and scale really make it clear what gives Ferris’s paintings their presence.

Aside from all that, there was one paragraph that struck me, so I thought I’d quote it here:

” Ferris’s practice, like those of Wendy White, Charline von Heyl, Mary Heilmann, Rebecca Morris and Amy Sillman is shaped not only by the trajectory of history but by attention, attitude, and dedication to the individual painting studio. No overt or political frame inscribes their work yet these painters freely pull from the visual lexicon shaping both modernist and postmodernist rhetoric. Yet when these artists close the door to their studio, they are reasserting a modernist belief in invention and discovery. Ferris and her peers are committed to the development of abstraction as a progressive idea, a significant and consequential language that demands unswerving experimentation, ceaseless looking, and relentless scrutiny. While much of today’s culture is dedicated to storytelling and the construction of personal narrative, these abstract painters are turning to the tropes of modernism as a means of delineating a space of attention.”

Comment on Damon Freed by Chris

Chris — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:56:15 +0000

Going back to the example of Caravaggio (and I’m only going to be addressing part of your question here), we have an artist whose work ceased being interpreted for a very long time. Or maybe whose work ceased being considered worthy of interpreting for a very long time. So much so that we end up with better paintings in small-ish midwestern collections (Kansas City, Fort Worth, Cleveland) than in New York or Washington DC. And then at some point, maybe through a combination of historical circumstances, that loop opens up again. Maybe because of the similarity between the handling of form and light in a Caravaggio and that in early photographs, because of how important the individual’s gaze is, because of the culture’s changing attitude toward homosexuality, whatever.

So in my mind, cases like this make the argument that there’s not really a permanent closing, as long as works are able to be reconsidered. And that’s a good thing.

For the second part of your question, you’re meaning what if people just keep saying the same shit about, say Duchamp? On and on over and over again for ever.

Comment on Damon Freed by jen

jen — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:34:12 +0000

is there any clear way then to close the loop for good? other than attempting to locate the point at which engagement in the act of interpreting opened up the loop?
what if because of subjective circumstance, the same (or a similar) interpretative loop is always engaged. does that happen? and how can interpretative reformation be arrived at unless said reformation is allowed for? what would that look like?

Comment on Damon Freed by Chris

Chris — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:29:31 +0000

So the viewer in interpreting closes a loop, but then, as soon as they express that interpretation (say, on an artblog) then it’s opened back up? I think that happens.

Comment on Damon Freed by matt ballou

matt ballou — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:57:06 +0000

i guess i’m aiming to grasp something that operates within those normal modes we’re mentioning above, but has an added dimension of pressure or necessity.

for instance, an artwork carries both the intention of the artist and allows fro the inferential interpretation of viewers. let’s say that if that equation always persists, another layer may also be present, one that operates only when the viewer is in the attempt of inferential interpretation (i.e. forcing a read), is activated by that forced, idiosyncratic, subjective viewing experience, but that puts pressure on that forcing viewer to come to a certain conclusion or specificity of experience.

so the viewer tries to constrain the work and thereby allows the work to force a specific read. the viewer enters into the necessary read of the work by their own attempt to interpret.

does this happen?

Comment on Damon Freed by Chris

Chris — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:21:09 +0000

Yeah. I should have mentioned abstraction. Especially abstraction in the last few years, as the interest in Greenberg’s modernism has waned, or at least become less of an imperative for abstract painters. As look-ers, we benefit from wondering what the artist means to say, but with the understanding that other meanings may be found in how they’re saying it, or in which particular conversation the work is situated in.