I believe that no work of art can be understood before some preparatory work has been done in the person doing the understanding.
Even as I say it I think to myself “That seems little extreme.” But before I thin the credo let me explain that…
In order to find a theory of art that encompasses more than one field you need to find out what similarities exist between the different art fields. The fields are diverse so there are a lot of possible answers. The only satisfactory connection I have found is communication. Every work of art that I could think of was an attempt by its creator to communicate—or possibly mis-communicate—something.
I believe that humans are linguistic by nature. We are not defined by the words we use but we find or create word to define our world. Further words are tools with which we build ideas.
The Judeo-Christian concept of man asserts that he was created in Gods image. God created everything by speaking it into existence—He created with words. No surprise then that man, in God’s image, cannot create or conceive of creation without words.
Communication is part of necessary adaptation. Adaptation occurs by one of two forces.
Force one is natural selection by which the defective or inadequate options are removed from the pool of possible options. In language this happens when we choose not to use some words or phrases that might get in the way of the message we want to communicate. We choose not to behave in certain ways because we see that those behaviors will not help us to achieve what we want. Natural selection alone is not adequate to solve the worlds riddle. If you have to tell your neighbor something you might eliminate a lot of unhelpful words but narrowing the pool of word doesn’t necessarily mean that you will find the word you need. Natural selection is a negative approach (it relies on restriction) and can only be relied upon when the pool of options contains all the necessary solutions. (Natural selection is the provable part of the evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory deals with this fundamental flaw by claiming that random mutations can add new solutions to the pool of genetic options. I’m an agnostic where this claim is concerned.)
Force two is creation. Creation is the process of generating new solutions. New solutions might be a combination of old ones but more often they reshape basic materials in a way that multiplies (as opposed to adding) their effectiveness.
Art attempts creative communication. The goal of the artist is to mold a new solution from basic concepts. This new solution is then encapsulated in the work of art and tossed into society.
Each work is like a bottled message bobbing on the ocean of society. When the bottle containing the message (in most cases the artwork contains the message in a cognitive bundle but the art work is not itself the message) plunks onto a strand of sand where you sit you won’t immediately get the message. Just looking at the container doesn’t convey the message.
You might open the bottle and look at the message in it and if you understand the language in which it is written you will be able to read the message. Here is where the seed concept comes in. The seed is the message encoded in the art. Language is the cultural soil that the seed must have in order to grow in your mind. Language prepares you to receive the message in the work of art. Without this soil construct you won’t get the message. You might look at the art but it won’t make sense to you.
The seed of art grows in proportion to this soil. Knowing how to speak a language means that when you listen to people speak in another language you can probably pick up on some emotional clues based on pitch and volume. The better you understand the language being spoken the more your get from the speech. Increased preparation before hand means increased comprehension.
Preparation comes in a lot of forms but it all enables comprehension. Without this preparation there is no comprehension. Solomon said that the simple person reading the proverbs would get some basic information, the wise man who reads it would be able to cultivate wisdom, but to the person whose heart had not been prepared with a fear of God the book would be puzzling or empty. Looking at art without the necessary preparation is trying to understand a blank sheet of paper.
I think humans are defined at least partially by the words they use.
We define foreigners by the languages they speak. Usually a person with little or no education can be picked out from one that is erudite just by listening to the words they speak.
To say that no work of art can be understood without any preparation is a bit extreme but in general it makes sense.
The more information one has about an artist and why he does what he does usually the better one will understand his work.
My idea of preparation can include basic language skills or cultural understanding—the kind of stuff you pick up as a child without thinking about it. I’m not saying that you have to do research or anything but you have to have some common ground with the artist in order to understand the art.
Posted by: Jwaggone at July 28, 2004 09:06 AMBut does the artist has to have a meaning in his work. Does he/she has to explain it? I think you necessarily have something to show, maybe just an impulsion, a though. But do you have to understand it completly to be an artist. Or is it non-artist that try to understand art and rationalize it by asking us "what did you want to tell with that piece of art"?
Posted by: Nouknouk at July 4, 2005 02:53 PM