Part 3: Those of us who had read Philip’s book Drawing (1969) also thronged the Hayward Gallery to see the Tantra exhibition.
Suppose this drawing of mine is the only one I like.
I do really like it, but doubt if anyone else will share my enthusiasm.
This doesn’t matter, my appreciation needn’t translate into a corresponding act of reception. All this talk about the ‘continuity between artistic creation and aesthetic appreciation’ needs qualification [1]. The mess on my work table produces both portable and non-portable experiences.
Note 1: Arnold Berleant. 2004. Re-Thinking Aesthetics : Rogue Essays on Aesthetics and the Arts. Aldershot: Ashgate, p8.
That both types of liking occur together is magical, it’s how art becomes dissensual [2]. When I was working in art schools, the magic, if it happened at all, happened in public. My most experimental practices involved experiments with public collections. I was an expanded-field practitioner interested in the notion of practice-based research, and my long engagement with museums was an expansive social art form.
Note 2: Jacques Ranciere. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum.
But, having stepped back from my art school commitments, my concept of public art seems limited. I used to think that everyone, including the artist, is an audience member. When a charismatic ‘originator’ is required, everybody steps back to select a volunteer [3].
Note 3: Stanley Fish. 1998. Is there a text in this class?: the authority of interpretive communities, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
What’s left out? Well, a specialist community’s ability to set aside and isolate certain aesthetic calculations at the point of productive specialisation. The distinctiveness of making artworks relies on holding back for a speculative ‘one-who-will-understand’ [4].
Note 4: Louise Glück. 1994. ‘The idea of courage’. In Glück, L. 1999. Proofs and Theories: essays on poetry. Manchester: Carcanet Press, pp23 – 27.
Undoubtedly, Mary Richardson’s attack on the Rokeby Venus was authorial [5]. But the thrill of the suffragette’s (very public) transgression is nothing in comparison with the private (impossible to share) calculation that risked Velázquez not hanging on to that freshly painted picture in the first place. I take this moment of aesthetic vulnerability to be the unique concern of practice-based research.
Note 5: Alfred Gell. 1998. Art and Agency: an anthropological theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.