Art as Artifice

A long time ago, thousands of years possibly, I took a class called Individual Reading in High School. The class had a simple structure; student reads a book, student logs the amount of time spent reading the book, student discusses the book with the teacher then moves on to the next book.

I enjoyed this class because I love to read and in those days I could probably put away 300 words without so much as a blink. I loved it until I fell into a trap.

I decided to read Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four which as a book I thought was fine but at that point in my life it was safe to say that "The Higher Meaning" in a piece of art was entirely lost on me.

The post-mortem discussions with the teacher had usually centered around plot, characters and whether or not I liked the book but this one went differently. She spent a lot of time hammering on Orwell's motivation for writing the book and The Message, picking apart my answers and suggesting that I'd taken a shallow approach to the book. Ultimately she decided that I hadn't read it and that I'd watched the movie instead. The interview ended with her striking the book from my record. All that time lost, like it had never even happened.

Obviously I was distraught but back then I wasn't equipped to formulate a counter argument to an imposing adult especially one overflowing with literary expertise. Nineteen Eighty-Four has some heady concepts. It's not as if I knew at 16 the differences between communism, fascism and socialism, all of which I feel would help me make my case then or now. She was probably right about my approach as well but I could assure you that in those days I took a shallow approach to most things. I still do, to be honest. I just hide it better.

But you know, if I'd read The Brothers Karamazov then instead of three years ago the odds are pretty good that it wouldn't have become one of my favorite books either. Art is temporal and ultimately personal. When these two points intersect into an individual the meaning is found there, not because someone puts shit in a bag and tells you that it's a masterpiece.

I'm hard pressed to take serious those that tell you the meaning that should be found in something. Nothing means anything to another unless they decide it to. It's not the business of others to suggest the way you should interpret something. This applies to the artist as well. If the artist has to explain "What they were going for" outside of the piece then clearly the art has failed. Any piece should be able to stand on its own without outside interpretation in order to be valid.

This is not a rail against criticism. I welcome all kinds of criticism from construction to creation and I think that artists do benefit from cataloging the observations of others. After all, how could one tell if the mark they were aiming for were true without feedback from the audience? But criticism is not the holy grail. It's another point of view that may or may not coalesce into your own.

What I'm against is Empiricism in art. You can't impose your will on someone to see what you want them to see. We all have different experiences and tastes which lead us to formulate our own opinions. Understanding that gets us closer to understanding other peoples points of view which is really what we should be striving for, at least from a humanistic standpoint. One man's take.

I am humbled if anyone finds any sort of meaning in anything I create whether it is intended or not... up to a certain point though. I'd be pretty horrified if something I created were used as justification for an atrocity of any kind. That's my only disclaimer.

If I create something that makes you feel, I am satisfied. If I create something that makes you think, I am satisfied. Striving for anything more than that is an arrogant approach that I want no part of and those that tell another to feel or think a certain way do nothing but contribute to a know-it-all elitism that has absolutely nothing to do with the enjoyment of art.