In the Weave of Time– Now at Principle Gallery
Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out … and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
–A. E. Housman, The Name and Nature of Poetry, Cambridge lecture May, 1933
One of the things I worry about in the weeks leading up to a show, as well as at my openings and Gallery Talks, is creating too much of an emphasis on the meaning I attach to any single painting. That is, of course, vital to me in creating my work but as the poet A.E. Housman points out above: perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
In short, my meaning may not be your meaning.
And that’s the way it should be, especially in my work, which is most often not representative of any single place or time or narrative. Every piece of art I create has meaning in it that speaks to me in terms of feeling and mood that come from the experience and sensations of my own life. My own narrative.
Ultimately, my personal narrative is not the most important aspect of my work. It is that feeling and mood that is communicated to the viewer and resonates with their own experiences and sensations. That speaks in a poetic manner to their own narrative.
I often compare my work to poetry or music here. Maybe because both work with rhythm and movement. The meaning is left to how the reader or listener fits into that rhythm; in the form of the feeling and mood it creates within them.
The meaning–the poetry and music of it– is in the eye of the beholder.
That’s what I hope occurs in my work. I know that it sometimes does, enough so that I think those who follow my work have come to trust that meaning of some sort exists in it.
I am grateful for that. It keeps me going.
I write this because so much on my own meaning is described in this blog and in talking to folks at openings and Gallery Talks that I fear it might overshadow their own poetry and music they could otherwise take from it. I don’t want anyone to experience the work based solely on the meaning I place on it.
The meaning is theirs to give.
This probably appears as a wobbly mishmash of words and phrases. It might be one of those posts that I revisit years from now and say, “What the hell does this even mean?”
Maybe. Perhaps it’s like those paintings where the meaning I saw in them initially changes subtly– or sometimes drastically– based on changes that have occurred in my perceptions of the world.
Who knows? But for right now it makes sense to me and right now is all that matters right now. I was going to rewrite that last sentence, even as I was writing it, but decided that using right now three times in one sentence fit my mood this morning.
I was initially going to comment on the absurd goings-on at the White House last night. But I don’t know what actually happened and, to be honest, don’t really care. I want no part of the Bread and Circuses we are being offered. I wrote about this at a different point several years ago in a post called Circus of Cruelty. Almost every word of it applies today, even the warning of what might occur if we didn’t to stop them. We are seeing those consequences taking place in real time, unfortunately.
Okay, let’s wrap this up. Here is a song that I loved when the Animals recorded it in the 60’s and equally love when performed by the great Nina Simone. This is Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.
It’s the concern of so many artists when their work goes out into the world, that it will be seen in ways they never intended nor even saw in it when it was being created.
That meaning will be lost…
