Looking vs. Reading

very cool, Max. i've been thinking about this for awhile. unfortunately, i
don't have an answer but another question. maybe its the same question.

when i experience art … i am not likely to appreciate it for itself. i
frequently see the [artist] via their work. i try understand them through
their werk … what they are saying about themselves and their view of the
world. i almost always look for the person … in their art.

is this a common approach?

i will confess that there are times when a movie/book/art will capture my
mind … i get caught in the werk and just enjoy the ride. i love it when
this happens but i'm not sure that that is what the artist is trying to do.
i think that the artist/author is more successful when they have given you
something to see … instead of a means to escape.

judgment, in my opinion, is better than description (if such a comparison
can be made).

david goldschmidt


by Kubrick, 09.18.02 11:12 am

Here's what seems to me to be a discussion worth having. If there is a
battle going on in the art world today, it's the one between looking and
reading. Some questions: are they mutually exclusive? If you're looking, how
then do you talk about art? If you're reading, what is your claim to having
something to say about art and not just something entirely disconnected from
what you're purportedly describing? How important is description when we
talk about art? Is there a way to talk about art without describing the art
object, whether that's a painting, sculpture, video, photograph, etc.? or is
description really the only thing you can do legitimately? That raises the
next question: where do you draw the line between description and judgement?


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by welchsonnyo, 09.18.02 12:08 pm

When a work of art becomes the leading work, a Pollack loss leader, as in
the case of Guggenheim, the two were tandem, and other great artists who
know what the leading edge was about took a stand upon that advanced
knowledge. Guggenheim and other first tier gallery owners have an eye
evolved to see what is beyond, a midas touch maybe not, but an eye with out
reading Greenberg, first, I think that there is a gossip filtering to them
that there are meetings of a ferment, and people breaking into unchartered
waters. People know, and may not dare but they know. It could be just as a
stock market broker, there are a million ways to invest and they all go
broke.

The reason for chaos is a study in the rise and fall of markets, among other
things of interest.

When an artist is committed to the words only he is thinking in linguistics,
the other side of the brain is involved with the images. Some are not
capable of blending the two.

If that is the case is reading necessary for the buyer, and the writer who
think in words that artists see in images? Both are true, the intelligence
of a buyer could and must be evolved and/or genetic.

The example of Dewey and Barnes found their philosophy was harmonious with
the Moderns.


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by maxherman, 09.18.02 12:43 pm

Well poststructualism and Derrida said/say everything is a text, everything
is reading. I don't agree but it's been the doxa ! for many years. As in
bathwater. Either way it's deep scheize.

As to explaining/describing, I was reading Louis Menand's piece in a recent
New Yorker that you can't analyze "America" because it's contradictory and
unclear. A priori I guess. Not a very inspiring piece; he dissed and
dismissed both Chomsky and Arundati Roy as "unpatriotic dissenters," Vidal
made "patriotic dissenter."

Roberta Smith called paintings "good reading" as well, which adds to the
soup. It's no teeny problem. I blame it all on DeMan de Yale.


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by maxherman, 09.18.02 12:46 pm

What about looking v. typing? Said New Yorker had a 2page ad with the Chief
Curator of the Gugg, Carol Allison (?), looking at a painting with a laptop
atop her lap, the ad being for Intel Inside. Like a pieta from Carly
Fiorina-the curator looks basically the same as Carly or Martha or Paula
Zahn.


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by welchsonnyo, 09.18.02 01:08 pm

After I posted I thought you might bring in the Post structuralists and
Derrida, which are being argued against as a philosophical construct. I find
that Derrida has shaped my viewing of things in general, I still find Kant's
Aesthetics of some value but not a priori. It comes to mind that no
scientist uses a priori for judgements. Aren't they judgements of a
deductive manner. Axioms maybe. When Derrida explains everything is
textural, it makes me wonder if he needs to look at the real situation to
know anything. Kant said: "you can never know a thing in itself", Fecte said
"things are all we can know" Derrida said the signponge is the sign
of the signified. How can you know anything only through language or text:
It isn't an argument for the visual arts any way. Derrida argues that the
language users are talking about a certain signafied from a certain stand
point. The popular idea is not in favor of a former Nazi. So IMAGE is
everything in art?


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by Kubrick, 09.18.02 01:24 pm

i've never found much use for luke menand. he's smart, but
ultra-conservative in his liberalism, like a richard rorty without the
southern drawl. thinks that all you need to do is have a smooth writing
style and you can solve the problems of the world. the new york review of
books is behind greenberg as far as i'm concerned intellectually. but then
again wasn't it greenberg who called the new yorker high-brow kitsch? i
think so. well, it hasn't changed much. it doesn't peddle in art, i don't
think. it just peddles "culture." yuck! look at the 10 greatest artists of
the past quarter century….do any of them have any taste for "culture"?
double-yuck!


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by matsonjones, 09.18.02 02:47 pm

A good exhibition currently on display now that shows an artists dealing
with this very subject matter is the Gary Hill installation at Gladstone.
One of the issues that he has explored for many years in his artistic output
is the precise question of looking vs. reading.


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by maxherman, 09.18.02 02:51 pm

I didn't like Menand's piece either. Yes the NYer is kitsch, however
everything is now. The alternative is too depressing so we have cultural
Zoloft, to prevent insanity, anxiety, and suicide. Pills wear off though
unfortunately.

Lisa Dennison, not Carol Allison. The ad's grabline, NYer 9-2-02 pp. 4-5 is
"somewhere between surrealism and cubo-futurism"-great epitaph eh? Count me
in on those corn dog futures.


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Re: Looking vs. Reading

by maxherman, 09.18.02 03:00 pm

Hill had a real good piece in SF around '98, a dark room you walk around in
and gradually hear voices and see images as your eyes and ears adjust; takes
about 30 minutes. "Stories" maybe? I saw "Tall Ships" in Buffalo but it was
too Viola-ey (I think Bill ripped "The Crossing" from GH's TS pretty much).

I think that reading and looking should be mixed, also, and well. They're
not so separate in the end or in realtime either-cavemen basically would
narrate the visual on the spot. So do virtually every vocal species, from
whales to cardinals. Another screwed-up departmentalisation of genius
courtesy of modern efficiency.

Plus cruddy textualistic Derridaeans messed up both literature and painting
by getting too excited tearing down the cubicles.

OK CubicleRick? Just kidding, I like anyone who disses Smoothy Menand.




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