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Historical April–May 2009 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The picture was simple.
A painting of an apple on a table, a wedge cut and lying aside. No one was in the scene, and the morning sun peeked through the curtains.
The art was well done, clearly produced by someone of considerable skill; every detail was in place.
From a distance, it might have been a photograph.
But there wasn’t anything particularly remarkable or redeeming about it.
Then I turned to the right and glanced at the narrative on the museum wall, offering an explanation for the work I had just viewed: “Man’s isolation and eternal frustration is captured in this work,” it began. “The artist shows us a single piece of fruit in a room made empty by its loneliness.
The apple has been opened with a sharp instrument and its soul is bare for all to see.
The sunlight probes but is stilted by the curtain.” I moved on to the next painting.
It was abstract, vertical streaks of yellow and red, shades of each, with a horizontal gray shape twothirds up the canvas, dividing the verticality of colors into two.
The narrative on the wall showed me just how much I missed: “This work speaks to the potential of mankind.
The red and yellow shades represent passion and optimism, the nuances of color speaking to the vicissitudes of the human condition.
The black tinge illustrates adversity; its position below the center of the painting indicates that man has transcended challenge.” I turned around and walked to the other side of the room in order to see a photo of a young child sitting and looking into the distance. Two small dogs sat at his feet staring at one another with a baseball on the floor between them.
There was nothing noteworthy about the child other than that he was wearing a baseball cap with the New York Yankees insignia on it.
The words on the wall told me what I was missing. “In this photo the artist speaks to hunger and the role of the United States as world leader.” I took a gulp and continued to read. “The two dogs represent continents in which thousands of people suffer from hunger each day. Their location and the bottom of the work indicates that they are below the equator.
The ball is a prototype sphere signifying the Earth with plentiful resources yet distribution of disparity.
The fact that he is wearing a New York cap tells is that the boy is the United States, yet he looks away rather than involving himself in the plight of the dogs or the world.” I looked around the room and saw a dozen or so other people looking intently at the art.
A couple of what appeared to be college students were on the floor, furiously taking notes, looking at the art and then back to their tablets, back and forth.
All I could think was that I wanted to talk to the artists. Did they really intend these meanings? How much of the description of the art work was due to the spatial intelligence or the artists and how much of it was due to the linguistic intelligence of the people who wrote the narratives?
I couldn’t tell if I was in an art museum, as I’d thought when I entered the doors, or a linguistic hall of syllables in a Lewis Carroll story. For example, imagine a painting that consists of a pale yellow background with a score of red and orange circles at the lower left of the canvas; some are larger than others but all are relatively small.
The yellow at the top right of the canvas is even more faint than the rest of the painting, and is almost white.
There are two narratives to accompany this piece, one on the left and one on the right.
On the left: “This picture speaks to the anomie of society. Individually, we are nothing, and that is indicated by the spheres.
While they vary in size and color, they hold no identity and purpose.
The futility of life is shown by the fading of yellow into nothingness.” On the right: “This picture speaks to movement and purpose.
The circles vary in size to show that some are closer than others, their hues affected by the sun which is beginning to set. Once darkness comes they will all return to their origins until the next day when the activity begins anew.” Huh? What’s going on here?
I can live with either explanation but I want to know what the artist thought. Did this docent speak to him or her? Or were these words written as a best guesstimate? Just maybe the narrative will affect how I view the artwork. Possibly the narrative will prod me to think in a way that would not have been elicited by the art. Or is the narrative art too? Just what was on Mona Lisa’s mind anyway? Was she thinking “I can’t believe Leonardo is paying me to sit here and daydream?” or was she thinking “I wish my husband would get a job so that I didn’t have to pose like this!” Or perhaps it was “I can’t believe that the people of America were dumb enough to elect George W. Bush twice!” More relevantly, just what was Leonardo da Vinci thinking? What was in his mind? Was it “I wish I could afford to get two models,” or “Why in the world does she keep smiling like that?” Envision one of my favorite works of art, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” We could spend lots of time guessing about what this figure is screaming: taxes, life, and the closing of highway 40 come to mind for me.
But wouldn’t it be nice to know what Munch was thinking? What happened in his life to conjure this image? Artists do more than speak to the here and now; they touch parts of us that we didn’t know existed; they comfort and they challenge.
Some works speak for themselves; some don’t. Sometimes we need an interpreter to help us understand the artist’s motivation and intent.
But when we rely on the interpreter rather than the artist, we all lose. Our appreciation must be limited and the artist, well, we’ll never know, will we? What’s the moral of this story? Take your favorite artist to lunch while she or he is alive. Talk to the artist and see what is in the mind not only from the hand. Nurture and ask and listen well. Isn’t it time to find out what your artist is thinking?
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, April–May 2009.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2009_04.pdf, printed page(s) 8; PDF page(s) 8.
