From Previous week:
“In the hands of interpretation, art becomes, at best, merely a visual illustration of an idea equally and fully expressible through other means, an idea that ultimately (and perhaps most clearly) be articulated verbally.” p25
Quotes:
“Art helps us live in the moment without having to explain it, to find ‘meaning’ in it.” p27
Question: Is meaning lost if there is no interpretation? Why or why not? If there is no interpretation what happens to meaning?
“The art critic creates space for works of art to breathe. This is difficult because he or she must use one medium (words) to communicate the significance of another medium of expression (paint). Moreover, a painting by its very nature fights against words, defies words, undermines the capacity of words to make sense of it.” p28
Question: Is there contention between verbal and visual expression? If so how, explain your answer.
Quote:
“Yet the art critic’s task is necessary. It is necessary because a painting is more complex then we assume. Every day we are bombarded with the images that are produced to catch our distracted attention for only the briefest of moments. Because a painting, unlike a poem or a piece of music, makes itself present to us all at once, we want to treat it like all the other images we see around us on television, on the Internet, and on billboards. But the art critic exists to remind us that a painting, like a poem and a piece of music, unfolds over time, that it cannot be treated like other imagery. It demands our full intellectual and imaginative effort. A painting is much, much more than what hits our retina…The art critic’s responsibility is to remind us that painting operates in a world in which the slightest visual distinction carries monumental importance.” p28
Poem:
Words by Dana Gioia
The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.
And one word transforms it into something less or other—
illicit, chaste, perfunctory, conjugal, covert.
Even calling it a kiss betrays the fluster of hands
glancing the skin or gripping a shoulder, the slow
arching of neck or knee, the silent touching of tongues.
Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot
name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica.
To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds,
painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving
each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it.
The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always—
greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon.
