I went to Hyde Park Art Center’s Open Crit today. The dialogue in this program is a valuable contribution to the art community, and hopefully, they’ll keep the program going.
Today, I was reminded how easy it can be to feel separate from the art world, at least the institutional art world, when art theory starts to be expressed. In commenting on one artist’s work, one of the moderators said, “There’s no expression in painting.” Of course there’s expression in painting -- by its very nature, painting involves making marks, which can’t help but be expressive, even if the artist conceptually or strategically tries to restrain or absent expression. Acknowledged or not, emphasized or not, expression and concept both are present in painting -- and in whatever form of art we might make.
The moderator went on to make a good point -- an artwork has to reach beyond the artist’s personal idiosynchronicities (the artist’s “feelings”), which may have motivated and informed its creation, and connect with the viewer to engage and to make a lasting impression. It cannot depend on the personal for its meaning and success, as the second moderator noted. At the same time, it can’t be generic or it'll be forgotten. Talking about the place at which the personal touches the universal or the universal reveals the personal is different from saying that there’s no expression in painting.
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