“Now
tell us when you are free and in mood, whose aesthetic interpretation of a work
should we go by when there are conflicting interpretations of a work--the
artist's or the art critic. Especially when the artist is simple and down to
earth and not good at elucidating ideas and the critic is extravagantly
imaginative,” ask my artist friend, Usha
Ramachandran. She is an artist who has devoted her life to capture her emotional
responses to life in various mediums including drawing, painting and
exquisitely modelled bronze sculptures. Older than me by many years, she keeps
a young mind when it comes to art. Like a young enthusiast she engages with
questions regarding art raised by people in private and public platforms. Even
when she disagrees with your point of view, she poses it mildly without causing
any hurt to anybody, but stands by her opinion with energy and clarity. Such
energy and clarity are seen rare even amongst the artists younger by age.
Hence, I find it is extremely important to answer the question raised by her.
As quoted above, the question is: Whose view is ‘the’ right view, of the artist’s
or of the imaginative critic?
I remember a view expressed by a contemporary
artist on one such occasion. He said: Once freed from the studio of the artist,
a work of art takes to its own trajectory, finding meanings and leaving
interpretations possibilities till it finds it resting place in a collection or
a museum. Though the commentator avoids mentioning about the agency of people
who helps a work of art travel from one place to another, the implication is
quite apparent. There are people who help the work to find its own path; they
are the critics, gallerists, buyers, dealers, collectors and now the new tribe
called curators. In each step facilitated by these agents of meaning production
both spiritual and economic or in other words, intrinsic and extrinsic
meanings, a work of art behaves in a very flexible manner without disputing
such meaning generations, at times succumbing to the negative pressures and at
times finding wings to soar further high. This flexibility of a work of art
opens up its possibility as a visual text capable of generating multiple
meanings often not intended by the artist himself or herself.
Text is the key word here. A freed work of
art from the clutches of the artist/studio is a text. A text carried as an
implied meaning as intended by the artist. But the intended or revealed meaning
of a work of art as seen within the confines of an artist’s studio is the
primary meaning therefore a visual code or clue. A work of art in this sense,
is a text containing one or more clues. As the artist does not work from a vacuum,
his very meaning production through the creation of a visual text itself is the
result of the artist’s effort to contain contesting ideas or experiences in a
one comprehensive and aesthetically logical visual clue. That means, a work of
art in itself is a negation of various meanings, which struggle for manifesting
in the work of art. Had it been a verbal text the artist could have
accommodated several meaning at one go through various characters, incidents,
plots and subplots. The biggest problem faced by a visual artist is that he has
to work from within the limitation of a single moment, even if the work shows
the tendency of being narrative. Either it is a decisive moments, painted,
sculpted, captured and documented or it is a series of decisive moments spread
around one singular point of departure. Raising of one point over the other/s
in effect results into the obfuscation of the other points or moments in a work
of art. While literature also leaves spaces for further interpretations, it
becomes a bit more ‘liberal’ in the case of a visual work of art.
This is where we talk about sub-texts. Each
reading of a work of art by a critic (informed or not) or a common art lover,
or in that case by anybody who happens to spend a few minutes on it, is the
production of a subtext. Here, this critic or the viewer is not an innocent
person absolutely coming from a vacuum. He/she too comes with a set of acquired
knowledge and experience which automatically functions as a key to unpack the
given text. As we have seen that the given text is the negation of several
texts in favour one, the reading of it becomes at once an acceptance of the
intended text and the negation of it. The whole effort of the viewer is to subconsciously
negate the diktat of the artist/author and find his/her own text there. This
again happens as a series of negations; first the negation of the intended
meaning/text and the replacing of it with several subtexts. Even the selection
of the subtexts cannot be a crowding affair. There the viewer chooses one of
his preferred meanings which could either go by the author’s intentions or by
his own knowledge and experience. Hence, the reading of a work of art (as it is
seen as a text), is the negation of authorial intentions and consecration of
the readerly intentions. In other words, a writerly text turns into a readerly
one and in the process, it ones again becomes a writerly text or subtext. It happens
like a chain of fissions and that is how the reading of a work of art
proliferates.
Now, one may ask how then ‘a certain kind of
reading’ or meaning making takes predominance over other meaning making efforts
and comes to have a canonical presence. It depends on the right of speaking;
who says what and when and also why. If the author is supposed to be the sole
authority of a particular research and his work of art is the result of such a
scholastic effort and in a given context if none is capable of challenging such
erudition, naturally the verbal explanations accompanying a work of art direct
the reading of it. The artist may speak for himself or even through a catalogue
writer (not necessarily a critic), or a gallerist or a dealer. They all tend to
repeat the scholarship of the author/artist as their tools are limited to
interpret or challenge the meaning which has been already intended by the
artist. In a different scenario, we see a viewer or a reader confronts a text
with equal or better erudition on the given field of research within the given
context and reads out a new meaning or cancels out an intended meaning. Hence,
I would say, reading of a work of art is a sort of power game. It is a
relationship between two or more power centres; author claiming his right to
hold his meaning and the reader challenging it. While the former scenario where
the artist is near to God in knowledge of the given, the reader yields to the
artist’s authority and in the second scenario in subtle or aggressive ways, he
questions the authority of the artist. An informed critic, while reserving his
praises for the authorial intentions, reveals the chinks in those intentions
and creates a new meaning in his critical intervention. However, such critical
interventions do not cancel out the very existence of the work of art. Instead,
it becomes an event, a point of departure that spurs too many events around it.
In any situation, creation of a work of art
and reading of it or interpreting of it is a political act. What I mean by
political is not in the conventional sense of pragmatic politics. This politics
is about the ideology of self or rather idea and ideal of the self. How does
the self negotiate past, present and try to cross over to the future. Even in
the choicest expressions, unintentional ideologies could crop up as the artist
is subconsciously driven by such ideological forces. It appears like a slip of
the tongue that goes unnoticed. But it gets noticed in another political act,
the act of reading and understanding a work of art. As I mentioned before, the
viewer also does not come from a vacuum. He has his own conscious and
subconscious ideological leanings which lead him towards the production of a
meaning which is totally different from that of the artist.
There are three main aspects when it comes to
the creation and understanding of a work of art. First of all, a work of art is
an intentional and unintentional text at once so is the reading of it. So one
cannot claim authority over the other in a given ideal situation. Two, it is a
power game pertaining to the right to speak as well as to be heard. In this
both the artist and the viewer participate in this game for power and
prominence. But interestingly, both are not cancelled out in the process.
However, one gets dominance over the other in a given situation which is prone
to change when the situation and context change. It may take even centuries for
such changes to happen. Three is the ideological negotiations of the artist as
well as the viewer with the past, present and future. Some ideologies are so
strong that they become myths that are hardly challenged by any. It happens
both with the ideology of the artist as well as that of the reader. This myth
is also prone to be deconstructed with the changing times; but the difference
is unlike the second scenario, even the myth is challenged and reinterpreted
for changed times by readerly intentions and creation of subtexts, the myths
once created remains to be a myth, therefore a starting point for newer
interpretations. The artists need not necessarily be vocal even when the
critics are hyper imaginative. The mutual cancellation is simultaneously mutual
rediscovery. I can say this much that in this process the artist and the viewer
get constantly re-discovered, at times vigorously and at other times in very
subtle ways.
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