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Sensation: A Rational View
by Camille Chang
© 1999 ALL RIGHTS RESERVEDhamartia (ha-mar-TEE-uh) noun
[Greek, from hamartanein, to miss the mark, err.]
Tragic flaw.
Art is a form of communication that requires active viewing. The artist, in essence, has created a visual language that anchors his message in the physical world, while subjugating those things that make the physical world physical (i.e., matter, energy, space and time). A work of art is proof that the creative event has occurred. Art is the artist's attempt to relate his message to the world and is, at best, a crude way to represent a quality by using a quantity. So, we have the case of "Sensation," an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (October 2, 1999, through January 9, 2000), which raises questions (once again), of NEA grants.
The test of an artist's success is how well the work stands up in time with its original message intact. That is not to say that different viewers' viewpoints are not also attached to the original message. René Magritte's painting, La trahison des images (The treachery of images, 1929) is an image of a pipe with the words "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." (This is not a pipe.). True, the image is not a pipe, but rather it is a painting or image of a pipe. But it is not merely a painting of a pipe either. Do you recall a father, or perhaps a favorite uncle, who smoked a pipe? Do you remember him blowing smoke rings that could be caught on a finger, only to slump and diffuse until the only evidence of its existence was a faint trail? Is it always evening, after dinner, when this moment occurs? Consider "peep," the French pronunciation of "pipe." Those from the eastern United States know that "peeps" are marshmallow chicks that are only available during Easter. These are the personal experiences that become co-joined with Magritte's original conversation about symbols. The job of the artist is to create a visual language that will slow the viewer's personal time or catch attention enough for personal experiences to be realized and interpreted while being constrained by the materials at hand, a hard task. Art persuades the viewer to interpret quantity (paint, clay, found object, etc.) into quality (memory, experience, emotion...).
Slides, photographs in books, and images on the Internet, while better than no experience with an artist's work, are not a substitute for the actual encounter with the work. Images of art quantify quality. The image distills its subject to a flat, two-dimensional rectangle, the same size (or nearly so) as all the rest and diminishes the ability of the work to impact the viewer. It is possible to go to four or five galleries and be thoroughly exhausted from putting so much of one's self into the work, but look at scores of slides and come away tired from boredom.
The work in "Sensation" may be meant to shock the viewer into the reverie of personal experiences; unfortunately, shock also has the tendency of sticking the viewer where he already is. Only seeing quantity, he feels cheated and becomes outraged. We've all too often been fooled by the emperor's new clothes. Are we originating qualities to works that were never included in the piece by the artist in the first place, or has society degraded so far that artists are reduced to using what amount to foul language and poor vocabulary to get active viewing? The Brooklyn Museum of Art is enjoying long ticket lines, which is not a regular occurrence.
As for NEA grants, bear in mind that governments always quantify quality. When the government gets its hands on anything, a general mess ensues; and perhaps more important, he who holds the purse strings calls the shots. Do government grants amount to the "kiss of death" or a pact with the Devil? Mayor Giuliani expressed doubts as to whether the Brooklyn Museum would be getting any more funding from the city (7.2 million dollars, one third of the museum's budget) unless the show was cancelled. He was careful not to object to the exhibit being seen, just that it was funded by public money. Translation: the government is telling the public what will and will not be publicly funded in its public museums. Fair enough. Some of the public is offended by the art. But if the Arts become dependent on public funding, the next step is the government telling the public what will and will not be seen. Isn't that one of the major fronts the Arts have always resisted?
About Camille Chang
Camille Chang is an artist and writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest
updated May 15, 2004