Firstly, you are reading the 100th article to flutter down from the windows of 'Artfully Abstracted Towers' – any bottles of Champagne gratefully received!
Now, on to business.
One of the loveliest things about art is that we creators can give away as much or as little about what's 'in it' as we wish to.
When I give a painting a cryptic title, I do so because I want to stimulate the viewer's imagination. I want them to start thinking, and feeling, as a result of standing in front of my picture. Why would I want to tell them what it is about if, indeed, it is 'about' anything at all. The following article https://www.artfullyabstractedblog.com/post/agnes-martin-and-the-non-meaning-of-art may offer some insights into 'non-meaning'. I don't particularly want people to know more about me as a result of gazing at my art, though they can guess all they like. The best scenario would be if their imagination takes them, in a stream of consciousness, far away from my title.
That sounds aggressive – I don't mean it to be. I just like to retain the Austin Powers factor – International Man of Mystery!
What is really beautiful is when the viewer learns, from the painting, something about themselves, or about the moment, and I mean their moment, the moment in which they find themselves, in their current relationship with my painting. Many collectors tell me that their reaction to my paintings changes from day to day. The viewer might feel a sudden, new sensation, or perhaps experience a resonance, deep inside, of something that occurred years before, possibly even in a past life. I hold a candle for that simple mission.
And what of the titles themselves? To stimulate the process of art-appreciation to the max, I would prefer to name all my paintings UNTITLED, but I'm told this just won't do. Punters don't like it, and perhaps this is good, for an imagination-piquing title may at least serve to catapult the viewer in an entirely opposite direction from the art's overt content, out of sheer caprice.
Titles can be loose, and they can be precise. They can chuck a whole net of red herrings at us, or they can say a painting is something simply because the artist says that is what it is; though the latter is not an approach I usually adopt. I just deflect.
December 13th saw the 158th anniversary of the birth of Wassily Kandinsky. On that day, I came across an article online which was illustrated by his 1909 painting, STUDY FOR IMPROVISATION 3.
I started off wanting to write about the meaning of Improvisation, to try to delve into why Kandinsky would make a 'study' for something that is meant to be spontaneous. I wanted to talk about how, in classical music, Schubert's two sets of IMPROMPTUS for piano are named as such when, in reality, they are tightly constructed architectural masterpieces, at least two of them having a strong affinity with Sonata Form. I wanted to look at Chopin in a similar light. I wanted to cite Francis Bacon's many 'STUDIES FOR...' which are, in fact, final paintings.
I wanted to attempt to find a rationale for creators doing this, naming things that actually they seem not to be; and then I realised that if Erik Satie could compose and publish THREE PIECES IN THE FORM OF A PEAR, piano pieces that bear no reference – musical or otherwise - to a pear and of which there are seven and not three, we just do not need to ask how or why. I tried to invent 'reasons' for all the above, and found that to be both futile and a dullard's quest.
I remember a discussion in a University friend's room, circa 1983, about the Aristotelian notion of 'essence' – that what makes a table, a table, is not that it has four legs and a top, but its 'table essence'. This discussion came about, I believe, after a reading of Antony Flew's excellent book THINKING ABOUT THINKING (Harper Collins, 1975). I have always loved the 'table' notion. Aristotle tends to be laughed at in some circles for it, but I celebrate a world in which we can something whatever we want, if we feel it has that essence.
Any art that we make, we have a right to name according to our fancy, and we really do 'make it up as we go' in all we do; that is the fact of time allied to the fact of action. Perhaps all paintings are 'studies' really, because they all prepare the creator for the next stage, the next stop on the cruise, the next drink of the painterly pub-crawl; and perhaps they are all improvisations, because any work of art bears the germ of a moment's inspiration, constantly developed and augmented.
Happy Christmas, everyone!
MAKING IT UP AS WE GO copyright Haydn Dickenson 2024
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