Then when responding to a comment on my last post I was reading an interview on Julie Speed's website (scroll down the page past the videos to arrive at the interviews on the link) I came across an elegant way of putting it:
An Interview with Julie Speed: Part II
December 12, 2012 Ross Smeltzer
The Search For Meaning in
Julie Speed’s Works
Q.
What are you trying to communicate in your paintings? What do you want people
looking at your work to think about and feel?
Julie
Speed.
I’m not trying to communicate. I’m trying to solve a puzzle that is visual
first and narrative second. The elements are color, form, line, texture,
bits from the news, light from the windows, what I just saw in the street or in
a tree when I walked to town to get the mail, a book, a phrase, a shadow and a
thousand other small observations, so many that I could never count them or
quantify them but they all occur and combine in the present. It’s a
puzzle for me now while I’m working on it and it
takes every bit of concentration to get the work right. As a practical
matter it wouldn’t be useful to me to try to factor in my guess about how
someone else would think or feel about it at some future time. It’s hard
enough to tune out my own inner bullshit.
Q.
In the past, you have said there are no objective meanings in your works: you
expect different viewers to produce different – equally legitimate – meanings.
But, given your use of repeated symbols and images, do you think you are
attempting to communicate certain meanings, thoughts and perspectives to those
viewing your works? In other words, are all interpretations of your work
equally legitimate and, if not, why not?
Julie
Speed.
I do use certain images over and over but I’m not deliberately embedding
symbols in some kind of code. I repeat certain images because
they’re useful compositionally or simply because I like to paint them.
However,
while I don’t know exactly how or why, I do know that if I get the composition
and content balanced just right then the work will sometimes strike a chord in
another person – not in most people of course, just a few….but when that
happens I like to hear what it is that they thought or felt.
It’s certainly just as valid and often way
more interesting to me than my own thoughts because I’ve already thought my own
thoughts – they’re no longer new to me.
Julie Speed: Jawbone (image from here)
Critics and the art market do not help observers of art to enjoy the act of observation for themselves. I am still fuming about the obscenity of the same painting being deemed worth over $400 million if it is by one artist, but only worth less than $100 if thought to be by another.
Olga, I was reading this article
ReplyDeletehttps://news.artnet.com/market/1153085-1153085?utm_content=from_&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Europe%20Afternoon%20November%2017&utm_term=New%20Euro%20Newsletter%20List%20%2830%20Day%20Engaged%20Only%29
(don't understand why this link is so long, but hopefully you will get it)
just before going to your blog. I think it provides the answer to your point about the $400 million paid for the da Vinci - nothing to do with art and all to do with ego and boasting about one's wealth.
Quite!
DeleteWonderful responses from Speed! I might add that when I do try hardest to convey a particular thing in my work, a viewer comes along and vocally sees something entirely different. And not invalid. As she says, "It’s certainly just as valid and often way more interesting to me than my own thoughts..." I'll never forget standing near a quilt I'd made to capture the violent thunderstorms that had so impressed me when I moved to the Midwest, only to hear a very pleased woman say, "That's what a hotflash feels like!"
ReplyDeleteHer responses also have me thinking about how I view art exhibits these days, often trying to pinpoint why a particular piece has captured my interest, is holding me spellbound. Sometimes it's tied to subject matter, but I think even that is the least of it. What she says about getting everything else right, solving the puzzle of balance of elements, I'm guessing that is what I'm responding to as much as anything.
Yes, Sheila, I very much enjoyed Speed's articulate summaries. So much visual art is taken as explaining or depicting, and is thus judged by how much is seen to succeed by our own standards of understanding or seeing. Really we should stand and look, and let all the information, visual, explanatory, biographical, cultural, historical, etc. etc. come in as unfiltered as possible, then see how we respond. Difficult, but certainly more rewarding, I believe.
DeleteThe $400m was obscene, not least because of what good it could have done in other situations, be that with unknown artists struggling to make a living in the art world, or indeed with poverty or hardship in any circumstance. However, as Eirene said, I realise that’s not the point at all for the purchaser.
ReplyDeleteI think what angers me most is that when some people are so personally rich that their power is diverted to using it to corrupt value and appreciation of extraordinary talent in order to show how far they can piss.
Delete