Do We Need to Explain Art?
Love, Faith and Art are
enigmas that have occupied philosophers, psychologists and ordinary people from the earliest civilizations, and continue
to fill pages with inconclusive speculation. Those who are in love, who have
strong faith or who create art know what they feel , but words seem to sidestep
the essence of their emotions.
The artist Georges Braque said “There is only one valuable
thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.” Yet humans are restless for
certainty, always looking for the meaning of everything experienced or encountered.
Any explanation, simple or complex, keeps
a sense of chaos at bay.
Picasso wrote in some frustration: “Everyone wants to
understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love
the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them?
But in the case of a painting people have to understand.”
The Modern movement in art generated an ever-confusing
abundance of art works that challenge our notions of art that are based on
classical art. There are more and more pressures today on artists to explain
themselves.
Art Critics and art historians were the intermediary between
the artist and the audience, sometimes powerful in making or breaking artists.
However, as they grappled with the waywardness of modern art, and artists
themselves were in the throes of challenging norms and experimenting, both
artists and critics turned to art theorists and philosophers - Derrida,
Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, Baudrillard or Lyotard, creating new terminologies, known
by sceptics as “art jargon”, that
requires the viewer to also familiarize themselves with these theories.
The ordinary viewer deprived of the intermediary “explainer”
of art, is left to wander in art galleries asking the question “what is the
artist trying to say?” forced to make their own conclusions.
Artist and Art writer Jakob Zaaiman suggests artworks could
be better understood if seen through the storytelling associated with Art
Cinema, rather than comparisons with classical
art. We should walk out of a gallery having felt something rather than
understood something. The viewer is given the power, as Roland
Barthes acknowledges, to make final sense of the work.
This is true also of classical art which we greatly value,
often unaware of the original intentions of the artist. Renaissance art is
filled with symbols that would have been known to people of that time, but are
lost on us. Colours, flowers, animals, fruit and objects each had a symbolism
that the viewer of the time would have understood. Vanitas, a genre of Dutch painting, appear to
be exquisite still life paintings, but are filled with symbols warning the
viewer of the transience of life and the corruption of worldly possessions -
flowers whose petals are falling, a violin with broken strings, a dead fish.
Most artists are not concerned with the viewer knowing their
personal reasons for making an artwork, preferring to let the viewer find their
own emotional connection. Francis Bacon
said “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery”. That most enigmatic of artists Marcel Duchamp
said “As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences
everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I
have to, but I don’t put any trust in it.”
The mathematician George Boole tried to explain the nature
of God using algebraic formulae. Scientists try to explain love as the release
of endorphins and dopamine, but as Rumi says about love, which applies equally
to Faith and Art
“Love cannot be explained.
Love can only be experienced.
Love cannot be explained,
Yet love explains everything.”
Durriya Kazi
March 1, 2021
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