Who is the author of meaning?
How much can the artist be said to be the author of the meaning of their work? This is an interesting question because clearly the work hasn’t been made by anyone else. But if we explore a bit further, we can begin to understand that there are more sources of meaning than the person who put paint to canvas, or pen to paper. For the purpose of this post, I will write in the context of painting but I believe the principles apply to all art forms.
Put simply, when we stand before a painting with an open heart and an open mind, we experience the delivery of meaning. Meaning can be ambiguous too. I strongly believe it doesn’t have to be explicit or worded to make a significant impression. In fact, I would go further and say it is essential that the meaning isn’t a concise package to be digested cerebrally. But that for a work of art to truly have life, it relies on the exchange of ideas between itself and the viewer. It is a fluid give and take between the ‘subject’ (the viewer, who as a human is continually evolving and growing and negotiating relations to stimulants in its’ environment), and the ‘object’ (the painting) which requires a subject to land in, but is of itself, transmitting a meaning beyond the physical properties of brush strokes on canvas.
To that end then, we can say that the viewer is the co-creator of the meaning of the artwork. The viewer exists in a flow state, continually adapting to circumstance, each with a unique outlook and a personal history shaped by personality, events and influence. And crucially, in the encounter with the artwork, the viewer is seeking meaning. Far from being a passive activity, there is an attitude of looking that says ‘what are you communicating to me?’ whether political, aesthetic, emotional or formal. We go to a gallery with the expectation of learning and receiving.
As speculative, seeking humans, the idea that we have to bring receptivity to the artwork goes some way to explain why we can feel incredibly moved by a painting in one moment and then feel nothing before the same painting a few years later. It reveals why we can disregard huge movements of art altogether, though they may be lauded by critics and popular consensus. The meaning has to be reciprocal or it doesn’t exist.
Perhaps this was in Hilma af Klint’s mind when she stipulated that her paintings were not to be seen until two decades after her death because the world was not ready to see them. If the viewer plays an important role in delivering the meaning of the artwork, that leaves the artist in a curious place! Which brings us back to authorship.
“Artist “intent” is always irrelevant. An artist has no control whatsoever over how a work is *used*.” Jerry Saltz
I seem to inherently distrust an artist who goes to great pains to summarise all of the statements they are expressing in a particular artwork. (Strangely, this is a major aspect of arts education but that is best saved for another post.) I have had the mentality that says ‘if it can all be written down, why paint it?’ To me, the essential material artists work with, beyond paint or clay, is the relationship with the unknowable. Some people call it the muse and I think that is pretty helpful, although it often gets personified and becomes something romantic, which is a distraction from the truth of it.
When painting, there is a sense of reaching blindly to touch and hold the mystery and to acquaint oneself with it enough to pull down one element of one facet of it and leave a mark on the canvas that says ‘I reached it and felt it and this is what I found and I am bringing it down to share with you’. It is like a rare treasure from an epic journey into an unknown land. It speaks of origins and infinity. It is personal and universal. It is a microcosm and yet it holds everything there is to know in that moment.
That is not the kind of meaning an artist has come up with through studying or mastering the history of the masters. We are not technicians. We are not scientists or scholars. There is no equation for this kind of meaning. The meaning ‘just is’.
There are those who reject the notion of art as a portal, for being flighty and ungrounded. As though it implies a negligence of the earthy, real world human condition that yearns to be witnessed and made visible through art. And I would say yes, I respect that need for an anchor, but it is my view that rather than being mutually exclusive, they are co-dependent. It will always be a human viewing the artwork; therefore, the subjectivity of identities and human experiences is already part of the package. And as I have said, art that is entirely explicit and social (i.e., earthbound), can leave us cold. I am advocating for the position that art needs to be both – heaven and earth – by the very nature of its’ existence. Remove one of these and you no longer have meaning.
“If people want sacred experiences, they will find them here. If they want profane experiences, they will find those too. I take no sides.” Mark Rothko, 1961
Perhaps then, rather than portal, we could use the term ‘bridge’ to reference that elusive quality of meaning that must straddle both concept and imagination, tangible and ethereal. Name any dichotomy: beauty and horror, darkness and light and art brings us back to the unifying drive to integrate. To coexist, to accept, to relate and to acknowledge togetherness.
No one person is the author of that. When we enter the gallery, we all become artists for the duration that we are encountering this meaning. But it takes an artist to enter the studio, with all channels open, and grapple with the muse and the medium to deliver us of that experience.
