And so we suffer yet another week of faulty page numbers on the Art Theory calendar. Nevertheless, after about 15 minutes of skimming rough page estimations, I finally found what appears to be this week’s reading. I’m choose not to go into the Material Culture and Everyday Life section too much on account of the fact that if I’m forced to read more than about 5 pages or so at a time, odds are I’ll remember very little about what I read as a whole. Not to mention that there really should be more pictures in this book. It is an art class after all. That’s not to say I don’t remember anything from the section. I do remember reading about some elephants that could paint and a lady that made a milk bar out of a boob of one of her giant sculptures. There was also some guy named Weegee. Not sure how significant he was to the section, but his name reminded me of this.
Complaints aside, not all the readings were too long. The two main artists we looked at this week, being Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns had rather interesting sections of their own, especially the Rauschenberg guy. In his Note on Painting section he just throws a bunch of random phrases into what he’s saying. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you what for, but it was entertaining all the same. I guess he’s trying to turn the reading itself into its own unique form of art by adding all the random phrases. I suppose the last sentence pretty much sums it up. “It is extremely important that art be unjustifiable.” So maybe the whole point he was trying to make is that there is no point as to why he did it, and that he thinks that all art should be that way. You shouldn’t have to give a reason for why you make a piece of art. There’s nothing I hate more that when somebody tries to over analyze something I’ve said or done.
Now herein lies the problem with that. As stated by Jasper Johns, “often one is blind to the fact that there is another way to see what is there.” Everyone has the right to analyze or interpreted what they see and hear. Even if you’re the one to say or do something, others may take it completely differently than what you had or had not originally intended it to mean. This is just part of being an individual, and while it can definitely be annoying at times, it’s just something we have to deal with. As artists, I believe that it’s our job to make the art, but how it’s interpreted is completely up to the viewer and, as artists, or even as humans, this is just something we have to deal with. Johns likens this to someone who makes chewing gum that everyone ends up using as glue. Even though they originally intended to make chewing gum, everyone relies on it as if it were glue.
Jonathan Robinson