I desire for my paintings to be without message, I am actively trying to remove content so that the meaning is entirely up to the viewer. I feel that in my previous figurative art is was sometimes too easy to dismiss something if it was recognizable. That’s a portrait of Milla Jovovich or even if someone didn’t know that my portrait was of Robert Rauschenberg they could simply recognize it as being of an older man. And having labeled it, having glanced at it and understood its subject, this viewer could move on, could dismiss it too easily. Could disregard the effort of its making, the craft and style of how it was made and portrayed and move on.
Even the concept of titling my work is frustrating to me, should I apply an evocative but meaningless title that will inspire further connotations for the viewer or title them in a more mundane cataloging manner.
My point is that my assumption in not determining the meaning for the viewer is that the viewer will want to determine their own meaning. Or meaning might be too specific a word, the viewer will interact with the piece in their own intimate way whether that be to attempt to label it with meaning or emotion or to accept it as it is. This is not to say that I assume that everyone will like my paintings, I know otherwise. But by not having explicit content I assume that the painting creates a sort of question or problem which the viewer will want to consider.
Somehow I’d forgotten the flipside to not giving an explicit meaning is that it requires slightly more effort. Yes, it’s true that a viewer can recognize ‘Hey, that’s a painting of a cat’ and then having recognized the subject move on, but it is equally true that approaching an abstract painting and not recognizing a subject they could choose to dismiss it without any further effort on their part. My assumption is that if I remove the subject the viewer might pay attention to the craft, quality, style, color, etc of a painting, but the same viewer who wouldn’t notice these qualities in the cat paintings because they understand the ‘Oh, cute kitty’ will also not notice these qualities in the abstract painting, except they won’t say cute, they’ll say ‘I don’t get it’ or ‘Just a bunch of blobs of paint’ or ‘I could do that’ and on and on. Which is to say assuming anything is a pointless endeavor.
I mention all of this because I recently donated a painting to an auction. I then received a phone call from the woman organizing the auction, who after having identified me as a donator asked “What is this thing?”.
She was perplexed with my painting and I was perplexed with her reaction. I said something to the extent of “It’s a painting. Oil on wood.”
Afterwards I went through the scenario that could lead to someone calling an artist who has donated a painting to your auction and not only saying What is it, but calling the painting a Thing. A “Thing”, as in This is not a landscape, therefore it is not a painting, what exactly is this Thing. So I thought, okay this isn’t strictly an art auction, it’s a general auction, with gardening tools and quilts. I know that the auction has ceramics, but in other contexts this could be defined as a craft or as functional art. And it could be appropriate to call abstract art non-functional, as in it doesn’t do the work for you, it doesn’t provide a service, you have to meet it halfway, you have to interact with it.
I’m so embroiled in art history, galleries, and my own little world that I’ve momentarily forgotten that just as much as some people don’t get paintings of cats and velvet clown paintings, but love paintings by Clyfford Still, there are other people who not only don’t get abstract painting. And some might not even put in the effort to dislike abstract painting because they don’t want to understand.
So complaining that people don’t appreciate the Mona Lisa or Starry Night for the right reasons is pointless. Aside from the fact that saying right reasons implies that my opinion and perspective have primacy over someone’s else; something which my beloved Spinoza would chide me for.
So I need to reframe some of my thinking. The backstory spin I’ve put on my abstract work as a reaction against obvious subject matter is fine in some contexts, but it’s pointless to think that anything I do wouldn’t be dismissed by half or more of its potential viewers. The relevant thing is that at one point I was replicating reality with technical skill and now, though I’m not exactly expressing myself in terms of a world view, I am expressing myself by merit of being a conduit, the paintings emerge from my taste, my tendencies, my awareness. So I have shifted from simply replicating, to not having a specific goal in mind, simply interacting with and taking a journey with every painting. And this is considerably more fulfilling for me and hopefully more enjoyable for some.
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