I attended Alix Pearlstein's lecture on Wednesday, which left me in a confused state about art and the exhibition of art. I would like to point out that I would have probably left her actual gallery exhibition feeling differently about the work and the presentation. However, in the given show space, the Student Commons Theater, it was difficult for me to experience the work how I believe it was meant to be experienced.
I feel as though I understood the point of the work because Pearlstein spoke about the individual pieces and her inspirations and reasoning. From her lecture I understood that the works were very theme-based and almost channeled age-old fables. (For example, Foresaken, was very much based on themes and fables about the abuse of power and the mutiny which ensues.) This specific video, I feel, was more straight-forward than the others.
Like I said, I understood the meanings of the videos, and I think they were very creatively portrayed. However, I didn't really understand exactly what the audience is meant to gain conceptually from the pieces. Pearlstein said herself that she would be very amused if someone in the audience was entertained by her work. This is a way of thinking about art that I had not really been exposed to previously. Art exclusively for the maker--should this change how it is presented to the audience, how it is exhibited or talked about? Should it be talked about? I would like to see more pieces of this specific genre to help myself answer these questions.
There is an interesting question that keeps being batted around which is should art entertain or challenge? If art is entertainment then what is entertainment? The same can be said of performance. Alix's work draw from both worlds I believe (art and performance) and so unfortunately we lost out not experiencing the work in its intended way. I feel like the expectation of the audience not being entertained is a curious one. Why do you think an artist(who needs to make a living) would intentionally not set out to entertain people? What does the audience gain from this and what does the artist receive in exchange? What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's necessarily a question of should art entertain or challenge. I think art can do both. I think this issue is so hotly debated because of different definitions of entertainment. To me, art is entertaining when it makes me happy, but also, if not moreso, when it repulses or horrifies me. I define entertainment as something that makes me feel in general. The idea of an artist intentionally setting out to not entertain a viewer, to me, is making a point. Just this drive to almost ignore the audience is entertainment enough for me. This being said, I did not get this from Pearlstein's lecture. I absolutely attribute this to the way we viewed it, which I'm sure did not do her work justice. However, even so, I didn't get the idea that the audience was irrelevant to her work (when it was exhibited properly.) I don't think she would have been as conscious of the way it should be viewed if not thinking about the audience.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I think an artist that truly creates work completely for his or herself, without regards for the audience, is an artist who does not need an audience at all. I believe any artist who is capable of this is has a gift of pure and untainted self-expression.