It’s Not About Understanding
For the longest time, after I had started teaching myself about photography, art, and creativity, I believed it was important for me to understand exactly what an artist had intended to communicate through their work. Failure to do this to the smallest detail, I believed, meant that I was a less-than student of art, a partially deaf receiver of any kind of real meaning deliberately imbued in the visual experience. This was an odd place for me to find myself, because I don’t generally tend to over-intellectualize my own work, or my day-to-day life for that matter. Generally speaking, I’ve always held that life is anything but black-and-white and, when it comes to decision-making, “analysis paralysis” can be a very real roadblock to progress.
With time, though, it occurred to me that it was never actually for me to completely understand every art work that I consumed. In fact, there was a near 100% chance that I would never completely “get” any given work reaching me through reflected, or generated, light or on vibrating waves of air. This realization was a comfort, somewhat, as I realized I had simply been asking the wrong questions, but it still left me wondering: If art is not about fully understanding, in some kind of concrete sense, then what is it all about?
Original Instructions, 11/17/24
Every piece of good art, in my opinion, offers limitless potential for interpretation, and we are allowed to derive sensory pleasure, intellectual stimulation, and/or emotional connection from a work that seems difficult or even impossible to comprehend. When I experience an abstract photograph, such as one made using intentional camera movement (ICM), I cannot possibly put myself in the artist’s shoes right in the moment of its creation. I certainly cannot think their thoughts - nor would I ever want to, in any literal sense.
Thankfully, I can extend my own subjective experience in a way that is meaningful and relevant to me while viewing a piece. Maybe, if I am lucky, I can approach the artist’s frame of mind by allowing their chosen patterns and colors to open up emotions inside me that serve as a shared experience. I can also use my imagination to come up with some fantastic story that is extremely farfetched, but still a rewarding result of viewing the work. Perhaps there is an intentionally-designed portal into the artist’s emotions through their work, or maybe their “wall is up” and the piece is not reflective of their feelings but, instead, aspirational.
I like to believe that Thomas Cole’s famous painting, The Oxbow (which I was fortunate to view in New York City a few years ago), was created to inspire feelings of awe and majesty in the public of nineteenth century America regardless of whether its geography (the Connecticut River) could really be ascertained by anyone viewing it. Maybe I am wrong, but my understanding of Cole, and other painters of the Hudson River School era, is that he tended to prioritize the bucolic and pastoral over any depiction of the “real America” of the time. Life for most Americans was difficult, and any sincere read of American History will reveal significant class- and race-related upheaval in the mid-1800s. The Oxbow is an idealized, jaw-dropping vista that invokes the sublime and big emotions, and beautifully depicts humankind’s impact on the land, but not a terribly realistic understanding.
Transcription, 11/17/24
Taking it a step further, what happens if my comprehension of a work of art goes in a wildly different direction than the one intended, and the original intent is lost translation. It is actually common to love a piece of music without knowing the composer’s precise “message”. Many people “like the beat” or the melody of a song they hear on the radio, or streaming on Spotify, without ever knowing what it’s about. If the song calls to them repeatedly, and they become compelled, they are free to look up the lyrics on the internet. Of course, lyrics are a completely different language (descriptive, poetic, allegorical) than that of visual art (graphical, metaphorical), but both are important expressive channels for human emotion. I couldn’t begin to guess how many times I’ve “misunderstood” a song over the years, after singing it incorrectly (and poorly) before finally looking up the lyrics. When this happens, my understanding of the song almost always changes, sometimes just slightly but very often quite dramatically.
Many Americans today enjoy Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture because it inspires feelings of victory and patriotism, and they associate it with the Independence Day parades and festivals of their youth. For a lot of American citizens, the 1812 Overture is about military strength, triumph over a common enemy, national superiority. This was certainly how I perceived the piece most of my life, until my love for classical music deepened and I discovered the rich history of Russian composers. A lot of Americans do not realize that Tchaikovsky, a Russian, wrote the piece to commemorate Russia’s defeat of Napoleon during the French invasion. For a country still reeling from the tragic embarrassment of the Vietnam War, the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos, and the explosive scandal that became known as Watergate, the music lifted the spirits of countless Americans when the Boston Pops Orchestra presented it to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial in 1974. It arrived just in time to fill somewhat of a collective emotional void, and has remained a symbol of American nationalistic pride ever since. While no fireworks spectacle is complete without the 1812 Overture, it is fair to say that Tchaikovsky never intended for the piece to represent American patriotism well into the future. The feeling, the emotion, comes through triumphantly, but the composer’s original message of commemoration is lost.
Earlier I mentioned I would not want to think an artists thoughts. That’s not entirely true. When I view a work of art, particularly one that moves me deeply, I can’t help but to wonder what might have been happening in the artist’s heart. How was the artist feeling on that particular afternoon? What music was in their head? How had their job been going? How is their father recovering after a serious illness? How had the wind impacted their mood, or had the warmth of the sun softened their sensitivity to the gifts of the natural world? What deep anguish or joy or whim or tragedy compelled them to create?
The unknowing, the very mystery of the artist’s subjective reality - their emotional response to the world combined with their unique sensibilities - is what appeals to me more than anything else about a work. It means a hell of a lot more to me than the artist’s perfection of technique, their financial success, their bondage to the “style” they have developed, their loyalty to cell phone apps leveraged by corporations to sell ads, their placement in competitions, or the distinction of the galleries or museums in which they show their work. In my view, it is the emotional mystery of a work that compels and moves a viewer, not the facsimile representation of what exists in physical reality.
Ultimately, I have learned, it’s not about something that can be written down, copied, or prescribed. It’s not about solving a puzzle, and it’s not about understanding intellectually. To me, art is all about feeling. Everything else is secondary.
