Distance As An Issue in Art

Relating to documentation and viewing a piece live, one of the Museum of Contemporary Arts (in Chicago) curators at a panel discussion about their curatorial practices spoke about the complexity of documenting and exhibiting performance work as the performing artists eventually become unavailable. Any piece that involves the context and viewer to deliver its content and impact presents this same difficulty. Individual paintings don't necessarily depend upon the context in which they are exhibited for their meaning and impact, even though they are reset in different contexts everytime they are rehung or repositioned in new sites. The sites may well impact viewers' interpretations but not necessarily the summary interpretation of the work over time. We look at the painting, not the wall on which it hangs or the room in which it hangs. IF we look at the painting ...

AS OPPOSED TO the photo of the painting. I'm reminded of something an art professor noted ... once upon a time, instead if having access to the actual paintings, many people relied on black & white reproductions in books to view and learn about the great paintings/painters/sculptures/scuptors, then on inaccurate color reproductions; now it seems we digest much from web images and what we imagine from accompanying and historical text that accompanies the reproductions. Distancing seems to be built into how we digest art.

Which brings me back to the photos of Ponder, and the extent to which I distance myself from my own work or not. Looking at the two photos of Ponder (and a few others I have), it occurred to me that I can see my struggle with flipping the piece and visualizing flow in the opposite direction during the reassembly; the piece feels more at ease in the first incarnation. I wonder if other pick up on the struggle. Perhaps my memory of the experiences hopelessly infect my perceptions of the piece.