Grayson Perry has written a great piece in the Times about explaining art. Quoting only the really good stuff would require including almost the entire article, but here are a few nuggets:
I am asked to talk about my art sometimes. I sense that hunger for understanding within the audience. I used to feel pressurised to come up with answers to satisfy that hunger. I have learned that it can lead to me coming up with hurried and spurious interpretations of my own work.
…
Nowadays I employ a more open strategy and talk about the things I was looking at and thinking about when I was making a particular piece and leave it up to the audience to make their own direct connections. This feels more satisfying and true than any nailed-down explanation.
I couldn’t possibly agree more. Art isn’t something that can always be put into an intellectual box and tidily wrapped up with a bow. I understand the urge: ambiguity is scary. Looking at what your own interpretations tell you about yourself can be uncomfortable—most growth is. I think there’s an impulse to want to keep your eyes shut tight when standing in front of that sort of mirror. But art is human, messy, and asks more questions that in answers (at least the stuff I get the most out of does). I think when artists or the art world hand down or viewers ask for pat interpretations, everyone is robbed of their own genuine experience, and that’s a damn shame.
I’ve been working on a more direct version of my artist [non-]statement that reflects this better than my current one does. It’s not finished, but here’s a relevant excerpt:
Nobody feeds me easy answers, and the whole exercise would be pointless if they did. Anything I could come up with would be bullshit anyway as the ones I do are only valid for my personal experience at a particular point in spacetime. They’re fleeting, incomplete, unsatisfying, and may completely contradict any previous or future experiences without invalidating any of them or itself. What can you do? Life is like that.
I don’t have any easy answers for you. My father used to say that you’ve got to make sure you’re talking to the right end of the horse, and I’m not it. You are, as only you can tell yourself about your experience of anything, art included.
It’s a little light on heady abstractions and touchy-feelies, but I feel like it’s at least approaching honesty. As the Perl programmers say, TMTOWTDI: There’s More Than One Way To Do It. Suitable as a philosophy for both computer programming and life in general.
Read article at timesonline.co.uk
Via ArtsJournal (my headline lifted from theirs)
Related post: Jörg Colberg on artist statements