Sick
So last week I was coming down with a cold and by this weekend I was sicker than I’ve been in years. Awful. I have to admit, I am a complete baby about it, but there is nothing like being coddled by your mother/significant other when ill. But I’m all alone. Yes, I know it’s a hard luck story but I can take care of myself mediocrely well, and I’m feeling a little better now. Gallons (and I mean gallons) of water has done the trick- coffee is just not the solution to everything. Managed to see some of the EFA Open Studios (more later), which was great, and forced myself out Sat. to Chelsea, where I visited White Columns, where a strange but entertaining video called “Cluck, Cluck” involving crystals, a ranting English-accent on crazy alchemical sci-fi theories, and some very strange space-noises disguised my fever before I headed home.
posted by David Kurt @ 1:30 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
sorry about the illin'. and if you ever want to free yourself from java servitude, I'm here to help. Step into the light, Dave, it's better over here.
..as for your previous post, for such a visual dude you're sort of positing language as the supreme medium of meaning, yes? as in you seem to be assuming that a work of conceptual art is a partciular iteration of a preceding idea that is most purely (i.e. in a non-particular form) expressed in language. (Example: viewer sees fragments of frames stuck in wall and floor, thinks "ah yes, here in the 21st century we no longer have coherent or common frames through which to intepret our experiences." or something. whatever.)
so if conceptual art & imagery is always referring back to language, then yes, the issue of accessibility would be crucial: how easy should it be for the viewer to make the interpretive journey from the particular work in the gallery to the general idea that it represents, etc etc etc.
But why does the work have to be a stand-in for an idea expressed in language, any more than we think of an idea expressed in language as standing in for a work of art in a gallery somewhere? Certainly, in human experience visual meaning preceded linguistic meaning (cave dudes could see a tree and give invest it with meaning before we had any words for it, a mother's face means something to a baby even thought the baby can't even conceive of reading or talking).
and we also know that language is never pure either, but traps us in a partiular culture's (or sub-culture's) vehicles of thought, complete with blindspots. (Wittgenstien, blah blah blah).
point being the work of art should probably mean something on its own without reference back to an artist's statement. If you could fully express yourself in words, why make the art at all? You could just be a writer. methinks what's "necessary" in a work are those elements of it that go somewhere our language has yet to take us.
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