Art and Life [Longer entry]

Went to Goodman Arts Centre to catch an art exhibition last weekend. I went on the afternoon the artists were there to present and explain their works, and the session convinced me that visual artists are better smokers than Literature majors.

What do I mean by smoking? It's the ability to win someone over with words, where the content in one's argument either doesn't exist prior to the argument, or where it exists but is plainly false. When I assert, for example, that this car is what every young man dreams of, I am smoking. It is not the case that this car is what every young man dreams of. Yet the words may have a hold on a potential customer.

A Literature major might be quick to point out that they do back up their arguments with evidence from the text. They might thus say that the content of their arguments do exist prior to their argument. Usually, however, those arguments rely on an reasonable interpretation of the text. The activity of interpretation is, to me, essentially subjective. There is no one right interpretation, nor are there many right interpretations. There are just your interpretations, and how you present your interpretation in a persuasive and consistent way. Arguments put forth by a Literature student are evaluated on a different basis than that of say Mathematics, where reason is used to unearth objectively existing truths of the universe. Those truths verifiably exist in the world; while we might not see them physically, we grasp them first through the mathematician's logic and reason, and then our own. In Literature (and some other fields as well) interpretations don't exist objectively. They aren't there waiting to be unearthed. Rather, the interpretations are created. In this sense, Literature isn't about uncovering truths, but of creating them. The extent to which you can persuade your audience to hold your interpretation is the extent to which you are able to smoke.

Let's look at an example. The artist here presented this work (below) as something resembling a charred body. While we might think that yes, this does indeed resemble a charred body, while we might even accept his point that that part there is the leg, that part there is the torso, and so on, there is no independent truth that determines whether one is right or wrong in thinking this resembles a charred body. Someone might say this doesn't resemble a charred body to him, and we find that reasonable too. In this sense then, the artist is "smoking" when he says this part is the leg, this part is the torso, and this resembles a charred person. He is smoking in the sense that he is trying to convince us of a link that doesn't objectively exist. He would have sounded equally convincing if he had said these are the remnants of some coral reefs that had been poisoned and scarred by some man made chemicals. There is no objective fact of the matter whether his work resembles a charred body, mutilated coral reefs, or both.



You can find more cases of smoking here, this time dressed up in nice language. (The first one is okay though; I will touch on it shortly) Or you can visit an art exhibition when the artists are holding a talk. I am pretty certain you will see a lot of smoking.

Now, I may be sounding more derisive than I really am. I can't help it: some of the things the artists said were so incredulous I couldn't help grinning, so I feel more provoked than I usually am. I'll say one thing to give you a larger picture of where I stand on the topic of artistic licensing and interpretation.

One part of art is, in my subjective opinion, letting people see ordinary things in different ways, and in relating two objects in a way we hadn't thought of before. In this sense, I think there is, or there can be, a lot of art and beauty in life. Looking at an ant seated on the cover of my metal cup now, which is reflecting light from my desk lamp, I am reminded of a man at a summit baked in intense sunlight looking over the countryside below him. All that needs to be done here is to write that out in a story, relating that to a larger theme, or to other parts of the story. And then you have a passage of prose that can be moving, poetic, and original. You potentially have a work of art. Perhaps you scoff. Perhaps you are now grinning like I was grinning at the art exhibition last week. But art is subjective. That was something I maintained earlier. The audience at the art exhibition I went to weren't grinning; they probably held the comments made by the speakers seriously. Art pieces sometimes work for some, sometimes they don't work for others. That is just in its nature.

Another example. A few days ago I was having breakfast in an outdoor area. Ten metres away from me were two office workers standing about a rubbish bin smoking. I thought of that scene transposed onto a desert: two office workers and a thrash bin placed in the middle of the desert. The desert would have represented desolation, and also the arid dryness of smoking. If an artist had drawn such a scene I would like it. We don't usually think of office workers, smoking, and desert in one package. Art can bring them all together in a meaningful and insightful way.

Where does this bring me? Well, simply this: because art is, or can be, found in many places in life, I am usually quite tolerant of works of art, as long as the artist strikes me as sincere and the connection he is trying to make as not too far-fetched. I might not fancy many works of art, but I wouldn't dismiss them with a wave of my hand. Where visual artists sometimes strike me as being insincere, literary interpretations by some tend to strike me as being too far-fetched.

On a separate note, we will note here that the job of the visual artist isn't to uncover existing truths or connections, like the mathematician. (Actually, the metaphysics of that may be up for philosophical debate; but we set that aside for now) He creates them. His job, then, is to persuade his audience to accept a connection that doesn't exist. The extent to which he succeeds in this lies partly on the subjectivity of his audience, which is what makes art subjective and controversial.

Extreme smoking aside, I thought the art exhibition was a good experience. I like listening to artists come together and discuss their craft, debate, ask questions, forge alliances. The people who went there were distinctively bohemian, and I felt nice observing them and their intricacies.

Here's the piece that I found the most striking.

By itself I wouldn't have made much of a connection to dreams, which was the theme of the exhibition. But here's what the artist said:

In the sculptural work, Bench, a slight physical change has occurred to a typical piece of furniture. The (un)combination of the slanted form and the rigid square-ness of the ceramic titles results in a disharmonious state. Similar to Black Pebble, the slightly out-of-ordinariness makes it hard to rule out that one is already in a dream.

The artist makes a connection between dreams and a bench. (The seat is on the opposite side of the photo) When I read that in the brochure I went "Hm, that's interesting. I never thought of benches that way before". And now everytime I see a bench of vague proportions I will think of the vagueness of dreams. It wouldn't work for everybody. The charred body work above didn't work for me. But that's just a testament to the diversity of human thought and consequently the potential diversity of art.

I had my play staged last week too. Allowing for the nature of the organization and participants I thought it was okay. I went down 3 out of the 5 sessions. Second time I wanted to say hi to the actors and director, but I was too shy and hesitated for some time. By the time I finished hesitating some of them had already left, so I went down a 3rd time, though I didn't watch the play itself then. Talked to the director and some of the actors. It was good. I am looking forward to the post-production party, one of the few parties I look forward to. That is where I'll get to meet everyone together.

The important thing here is that I saw a lot of potential in the play, as it got acted out. I know it can be a lot better, and I know that if it does approaches its full potential it can be a great play. That energised me. But for now I got other things to take care of. I started my internship a few days ago at a firm that teaches analytical thinking skills through board games as part of a school module. Since it's only 1 module the internship isn't a fulltime one; I am only committed to them for 15 hours a week. More on this another time.