Month: September 2015 (Page 5 of 8)

There’s something beautiful about standing in a room full of beautiful and acclaimed artwork. But sometimes, it’s the conversations they elicit or that you hear in passing that are more interesting. This is because everyone has different interpretations of the same piece of artwork and sometimes even of one section of an art piece. Being in the MoMA is always interesting because there is always the opportunity to have engaging conversations about the artwork; because of this, I was glad to have been there with my partner, Nureen. As we walked around the galleries, we would point out and comment on the different paintings that stuck out to us.

Having read the Berger and Barnet readings made me view the artwork in a slightly different light than from my past visits. I, too, used to look at art and try to interpret it as an art expert or art historian, which put up a barrier between me and the artwork. I would try too hard to find some deeper meaning or message, but I never truly tried to figure out my own, independent opinion. Berger’s point about how the ability to replicate and reproduce art has allowed for a mystification really struck a chord with me. I had never thought about the barrier we place between ourselves and the art we see. This time around, I was able to try to interpret the art–with aid of the background information given on some of the plaques–on my own, which was a point made by both Berger and Barnet. We usually don’t know the artist’s intent, but one of the benefits of replication and reproduction of artwork nowadays is that it’s accessible to, potentially, anyone, allowing us to be able to see a piece of art and interpret it based on our own experiences and thoughts. Art is made valuable by the viewers who look at it and appreciate it, but everyone appreciates a piece of art for different reasons because we all think differently and have our own unique experiences.

For me, this idea really took shape when I was viewing the contemporary art gallery, which focused on using art to show political conflicts around the world. In the past, I may have just quickly walked through the gallery, occasionally reading the plaques of the interesting pieces, but this time around, I really took my time interpreting the pieces for myself. And through talking to Nureen, I got to see first hand the notion that people interpret art differently. For instance, there was an installation that was just a black room with one huge screen of bright white light, nothing more, nothing less. It certainly helped to read the three panels on the wall leading into the room, but once I got in there, it touched me in a beautiful way. The overwhelming light made me think of my own past and of some of my own personal memories, and I honestly almost cried because of the emotion it elicited in me. And it was nothing more than a huge, lit up screen. To Nureen, perhaps it was simply just a bright light in a dark room, but for me, it was so much more because it made me think of my struggles.

There is no right or wrong way to interpret a piece of art; I believe that part of the reason so many people feel so out of touch with art is because they feel that it’s something only certain people can understand. But that is not the case, and at least for me, I appreciate artwork so much more now than I did before. The meaning of a piece is fluid and unique, and there’s a certain beauty in just that itself.

One of the concepts, perhaps the core idea of John Bergman’s Ways of Seeing is that the context and perception of a piece of art may be just as important as the work itself. In a sense, The Last Supper that we see is not the same that Da Vinci and his contemporaries saw- they had a different visual vocabulary than we modern viewers, and so would have had a different way of seeing it. Even the most carefully preserved painting will never be the same as it was when it was created: we can preserve an object, but we cannot preserve society’s position in relation to that object.

To some extent, modern art’s use of abstract visual forms sidesteps this problem. To “get” a painting like The Last Supper, you need to study Christianity, Renaissance symbolism and lighting techniques, know what perspective it was created and the significance of that perspective, and so on. To “get” a Rothko work, all you need is an eye (and perhaps a basic understanding of color theory) By eschewing any sort of setting or object that could grow outdated, abstract artists hoped to make universal paintings that could evoke emotional reaction in any viewer. I am not trying to say that no piece of modern art does not need context- indeed, Fountain would become pointless when removed from the context of an art gallery or museum – but I do think that abstract art is actually more comprehensible to everyone than more traditional art.

Why, then does modern art get derided by the masses who say, “My 3-year old could draw that!”. Again, it is a matter of context. If I hang up a Pollock in my house, people view it differently than if I place it on a pedestal in a museum. Museums have an atmosphere and a price that primes people to expect “high art”. And of one the ways in which most people define “high art” is the difficulty in producing it. Anyone can look at the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo’s sculptures and know they required skill, finesse, and many hours of labor to produce. The same can’t be said of blobs of color or pictures of soup cans. But if these images were displayed in a less pretentious setting – say, on the street or on a bedroom wall – I think we all could see them in a way that would let us enjoy them.

Walking into the MoMA, one is already filled with the assumption that what is featured throughout the building will be art. Berger writes that, “The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe” (8). As a result, even exhibits that would otherwise seem like just everyday objects were viewed through a critical lens. According to Berger, this means that many learnt assumptions about art such as those concerning beauty, truth, genius, civilization, form, status, and taste come into play. One exhibit from the Dada movement was a shovel that hung from the ceiling. If it had not been in a museum, a shovel would be all it was seen as but, because it was in the MoMA, it was art. With this label of being art by Marcel Duchamp, the shovel suddenly gained all the assumptions that come with the label.

Barnet writes that, in order to get to the meaning of a work, one must interpret “the subject matter, the material and form, the sociohistoric context, and perhaps the artist’s intentions” (55). First the work itself must be analyzed. What details does the artist intentionally place for the the viewer to interpret? The colors, title, and artist all lend to the larger picture of the meaning of the work. Then the time of its conception and the circumstances in which it were made add on to its image, and may even change some original assumptions. These kinds of background information allow the viewer to see what movement was going on at the time and create some kind of individual interpretation of the work. Barnet’s writing encourages the reader to question everything there is about the piece of art in order to fully appreciate and interpret it.

A single work of art has multiple interpretations. There is the intended meaning given by the artist, and then there are the assumed meanings given by audiences from different places and times. Once the time period or movement of the artwork is seen, the viewer may even try to create meaning by viewing the piece from the standpoint of when it was created. Berger additionally writes that different meaning is created in the viewing of authentic works of art as well as the presence of reproductions of a work. The point that is made is that there are many ways to analyze a work of art as well as many factors, personal and otherwise, that will play into how it is analyzed. The accumulation of all this becomes a unique interpretation for each person.

Reading Berger and Barnet’s works really changed my perspective on viewing art. Going to the Museum of Modern Art this past week was much different than my previous museum visits. I had never been to the MoMa before, so it was a brand new experience for me; both the works and the museum itself were unfamiliar to me. A fresh environment, fresh art, and a fresh perspective.

The first exhibit I visited was the gallery of Andy Warhol’s works. It consisted of several images of pop culture, from Elvis to Marilyn Monroe to the Campbell soup can. A prevailing theme in Warhol’s works is repetition. Many of his works were either redone and copied with variation in other works or included the use of repeated images overlapping each other. Reading the descriptions next to each painting, I couldn’t help but think of chapter 1 from Ways of Seeing. I thought of the disparity between words and images. The descriptions cited the use of repetition in the images as a way for Warhol to illustrate the common and commercial existence of the subjects. While it seemed likely that that could be true, it was still “mystical.” The idea wasn’t confirmed by anyone – it was even written that Warhol preferred to refer to the meaning of his works with the phrase “no comment.” I thought of how the descriptions of these works were, in a way, unnecessary. The viewer should be the one to interpret the art, based on the context of the art and the mind of the viewer. From what I understand, this is what Barnet labels the reception theory. The art is not limited to what the artist intended or what the person who wrote the plaque thought the artist intended. I thought of the other possibilities of the meaning of the artwork. Maybe the repetition is a metaphor for Warhol’s delusional mind, or of the duality of American society at the time. As I thought of more and more possibilites, I realized that they are all valid because I was a viewer who was engaged with the art.

Another thing that struck me was viewing Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night. It was not nearly as massive as I thought, especially in comparison to the huge crowd that surrounded it. When I observed it up close, it was undoubtedly beautiful, but I did not find it more or less beautiful than many of the other paintings around it. Yet, it was by far more popular, and without a doubt, more expensive. The scene reminded me of Chapter 5 from Ways of Seeing. This piece is extremely valuable just by possession, which is true for the rest of the works to an extent. The value of an item is not really dependent on the work that the artist went through, or the significance it initially had socially, but of how well the artist’s name has persisted. Van Gogh is famous for being Van Gogh, and so his artwork is valued higher than others. It was fascinating to think about, as I saw the crowd grow around Starry Night while not many people stayed around the Franz Klee pieces.

The final piece that I saw during my visit was Mark Rothko’s No. 10. It’s a personal favorite. I had been told that to fully appreciate a Rothko, one must stand very close to it to observe all it’s underlying colors, which has been said to evoke great emotion from some viewers. However, as I stepped closer to the painting, a security guard told me, politely, that I was too close and to back up. I understood and respected his wishes, but as a result, I don’t think I got the full experience. This was a very insignificant moment, but it struck a chord with me later. I, as a viewer, could not view the piece to its full extent. If, as a viewer, my perspective is important in giving the piece its meaning, by rule of the reception theory, then Mark Rothko’s piece was left incomplete.

-Jaimee Rodriguez

In Ways of Seeing, John Berger starts off by saying that “the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe in” (Berger 8), meaning that all art is relative to the person and their past experiences in life. The way one person may see a painting may be completely different from the way another sees it. According to Berger the way people look at art is also affected by “a whole series of learnt assumptions about art” (Berger 11). For example, people may go into a museum expecting to see works of beauty or truth and even though they may not see it in a painting at first, they may force themselves to formulate some type of interpretation that includes these assumptions rather than making their own interpretation. When visiting the MOMA, I found myself approaching most of the paintings with a mindset full of the assumptions Berger described. I felt that they greatly influenced my interpretations too. For example, there were some paintings that I really couldn’t understand and didn’t think were all that great but then I would consider the possibility of abstract beauty being displayed in the paintings or the fact that there must be a deeper meaning behind it. Berger also emphasizes how the authenticity of a painting plays an important role in how people view it. I understood and experienced what Berger meant when he says that “their historical moment is literally before our eyes”( Berger 31). In the MOMA seeing authentic paintings such as “Starry Night” made me feel like I could essentially see and feel what the artists did when they were creating the paintings.

Moreover, Barnet highlights how anything can be art if artists and the public say it is, this is called the Institutional Theory of Art. I found that I could apply this theory when viewing some of the more abstract paintings and sculptures. Sometimes I would ask myself, “How is this is art?” but then I would remember what Barnet said. I couldn’t really see the artistic value in some sculptures but I may just have not been able to see the art piece as other people do. Barnet also introduces the Reception Theory which states that art is not a body of works but is rather an activity of perceivers making sense of images. Thus art is a collaborative effort and I was able to see that when my friends and I worked together to interpret and figure out the meaning behind some paintings we viewed at the MOMA.

Many of the art pieces we looked at in the MoMA were abstract, often defying reality and instead adopting a dream-like, irrational quality that is characteristic of many surrealist paintings. As a result, attempting to interpret the images can be a bit difficult. However, it is possible to interpret art through context, as Berger states that art represented “the totality of possible views taken from points all round the object (or person) being depicted” (18). One of the paintings we observed contained familiar objects such as balloons, shooting stars, and kites despite the unusual context in which these objects were painted–these items were depicted with a gray, dark, and messy background, which makes it challenging to understand how these objects are connected to each other and the background. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge that such objects, which in this case are often seen in childish, innocent contexts, can actually be shown through a variety of different perspectives and concepts.

Barnet emphasizes the importance of asking basic questions such as “What is my first response to the work,” “When, where, and why was the work made,” and “What is the title?” in order to formulate ideas and interpretations (57). Initial reactions towards especially shocking pieces of art can help to clarify an interpretation of an art piece, as it pushes us to go back and find the specific features of the work that elicited such a reaction in the first place. The background information of the work is also helpful. For example, for surrealist paintings, understanding the movement behind the work, as well as the place in which it was created can help us understand the abstractness of the painting. For example, although Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” might be confusing to the viewer at first sight, knowing the purpose of the surrealist movement might help one to determine why or how the painting is surrealist.

Often times, many of us are afraid to interpret an art piece in fear of drawing the wrong conclusions, or more specifically, interpreting the art in a manner different from how the artist intended. This fear brings up Barnet’s question: “Does the artist’s intention limit the meaning of a work?” (23) It is important to remember that everyone views things, especially art, differently. According to Berger, what we see is “the relation between things and ourselves” (9). Naturally, how we relate to things, such as images, vary as we have different experiences. Therefore, it is often argued that “the creator of the work cannot comment definitively on it” because “the work belongs…to the perceivers, who of course interpret it variously” (Barnet 24). Our interpretations of art are valid, as it is perceived differently by everyone. This can be applied to surrealist paintings, as their abstract qualities magnify the variety of interpretations because they are meant to stimulate the imagination, which is boundless.

When I have previously visited museums, which mind you has been very rarely, I never knew quite what to look for and generally just cruised through the floors without paying much attention. This Friday, I went with a mind full of purpose. For one, I had to be very vigilant when it came to the paintings because our grade depends on it for our future essay. I also looked at the paintings differently however, in part because I wanted to recruit the new skills that I had read about in our weekly assignment. The first chapter in Ways of Seeing introduces the reader to the conception of relative perception, which I found very interesting because it intuitively made sense. To test this, I asked my friends what they thought of certain paintings and realizing that they looked at things differently than I did.

On the other side of observation, the online reading introduced a very objective way of thinking about art. The online reading promoted thinking about the time period that the art piece was created, as well as trying to find an objective way to determine the definition of art. I wasn’t too successful in understanding how the time period affected the paintings that I observed, but I was able to look at some of the exhibits differently by realizing that they are considered artistic depictions in one form or another at a particular time.

Glenn Collaku

So, a few thoughts that stuck in my head when I was walking about MOMA, and their relations to Berger and Barnet’s concepts… and some more things that I might think about when I go there again.

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