"I have walked past half of everything not knowing if it's art or not."
I feel like a lot of contemporary art really goes hand in hand with its background information. As in, you can't really hope to figure out what it means by yourself. Any kind of interpretation you do comes almost entirely from your own head.
I was talking to my friend, and he told me that he sometimes thinks that the background information might render the artwork itself irrelevant. I told him that it shouldn't, because the art should also express some things which are beyond words. He told me, "Ain't shit beyond words." I think he thinks that because he's a writer. Goddamn writers. I think that everything is beyond words.
Although having said that, I think everything I've made in the past up until recently was extremely heavily reliant on the ideas and concepts behind it, which tended to be quite complicated and "word-y." Whatever required less extra explanation had the explanation right in the work (that is, there was text in the work). I feel like I'm just beginning to get into the habit of communicating purely using the work. I don't think that's a good thing or a bad thing; I have never been against needing background information to understand art. However, I think it's a refreshing change. I sometimes don't like words, and I'm enjoying the fact that everything I want to communicate is right there in the images or sculptures, and not in words.
Today I saw Mariko Mori's "Re-birth" at the RA. Fully knowing that I am going to sound like a GCSE student, and possibly even intending for that to be the case, I am going to say that the work was aesthetically pleasing. More importantly, I like that that appears to be the point of it. It's refreshing to see "nice-looking" art with people who aren't going out with the intention of over-analysing everything. I'm not one of those people who's started to complain that too much art these days aims to be ugly, because I completely agree that art these days should not just be about aesthetics and showcasing skill, and that there's a world of other purposes for it (there has to be, otherwise we're all just using paint to do things such as record - things which we can now do more easily using other methods). I'm just saying that it's interesting to consider that maybe we're too quick to dismiss the idea of aesthetics as an aim. Maybe that pushes us in the direction of our art having all these over-complicated meanings, and maybe it also means that we're letting ourselves think that our art says more than it actually does.
(Maybe it's just pretty and atmospheric, and maybe that's fine.)
I've just bought some polypropylene sheets (what's with art people and their unwillingness to use the word "plastic"? the Mori exhibition listed "lucite" as a medium an awful lot...) and I'm going to make some stuff. I want to make more stuff that doesn't speak in words. I think there's a lot you can say without words, and without your concept being some sort of essay.
