When asked what her large, abstract canvases mean, Cuban-born artist Carmen Herrera proclaimed that “paintings speak for themselves” (Sontag). She went on to deny that her paintings have the sexual meaning that is sometimes attributed to them. For Herrera, artwork, at least her own, should stand on its own; it is a mistake to try to capture a work’s meaning in words. Indeed, why would an artist bother to paint, we might ask, if they could express what they wanted to say in words? In addition to this, we know that artists, like the rest of us, can be mistaken and self-deceived. And thus, their pronouncements can be wrong-headed, misleading, and self-inflated. In this post, I show that, despite these risks, there are several good reasons for artists to talk about their work.
I. The Perils and Pitfalls of Talking about Your Artwork
Artists have long been expected to talk about their work—to reveal information about their creative process and the meaning behind individual pieces. This communication can take multiple forms; they may write about their work in personal notebooks, respond to interview questions, give artist talks, etc. But the traditional problem of self-knowledge in the domain of philosophy of mind looms large and extends to mental states surrounding art-making activities. Minimally, artists can be mistaken about (a) the overall intention of their work and/or (b) the reason behind a particular artistic decision or aspect of their work.
Unmotivated Mistakes
An artist may believe that a certain piece, say, a painting, is about hope. In the face of a global crisis, the artist may take herself to be creating a work of art that inspires people with a sense of optimism and the belief that things will get better. But she may be mistaken. When she sits down to paint alone in her studio, a deeper source of inspiration may take hold of her brush and influence how she lays down paint. Perhaps, amidst romantic turmoil, her deep limerent longings are the springs of her artistic decision-making. We can imagine that her desires manifest themselves throughout her waking life and even reveal themselves at night in her dreams. How can we be sure that they are not playing a guiding role in her artistic output?
There is a sense in which we know exactly what we are doing when we paint. Whether a painter creates slowly or in great haste, there is generally a thought or plan behind each brushstroke—each act of laying down the paint. Depending upon what is being created, a painter may be modeling a nose, adding a highlight to a vase of flowers, or creating a dark and atmospheric background. The reason behind each of these direct or immediate actions may seem obvious to the artist and to others. But when we think about (a) the intention behind a work of art, or its meaning, we are often referring to something deeper. We may be curious about the artist’s overall intention or the intention for the piece in its entirety. Alternatively, we may wonder about (b) the reason behind a particular aspect of the painting—its color palette, the expression on a subject’s face, the use of animal imagery, and so forth. While it may be clear to us that a painter has painted, say, a figure in a particular context, we may wonder why they have done so. What is the meaning behind the piece? What are they trying to communicate? In all these cases, it seems that artists can go wrong or be mistaken.
Now, when a mistake is unmotivated, a desire does not drive or causally account for the mistake. Instead, the artists in question just get things wrong. Their mistakes are not driven by a desire to seem more profound, innovative, or worldly than they really art. They take an unbiased interest in getting things right but fail to do so. In my earlier example, no desire on the artist’s part causes her to believe that her work is about hope. Although she may be full of romantic desires, these do not cause her to be mistaken about the meaning behind her work. She has no desire that biases her in favor of believing that her work is about hope. She does not, say, believe that her work is about hope because she wants her art to engage with the latest trend so that she can sell more paintings. She just gets things wrong and fails to grasp the true source of inspiration behind her piece.
Motivated Mistakes and Self-Deception
However, at least some of the time, we suspect that an artist’s desires make a causal contribution to her mistakes. For example, in wanting her work to be more profound than it is, an artist may come to believe post facto that her art has a meaning or significance that it does not have. She may convince others and herself that this is what her work is all about. The mistake is motivated because her desire plays a causal role in bringing it about. Depending upon how we define self-deception, we may want to describe the artist here as being self-deceived about the meaning behind her work.
Importantly, artists are not always mistaken in the positive direction about their work. In some cases, an artist may be self-deceived in believing that her work is less profound that it appears to be. Like Herrara, they may claim that the work is just surface deep. Along these lines, Andy Warhol insisted that his Campbell’s Soup Cans were just about soup and involved no further meaning or social criticism (Hirschman, 30). Similarly, Francis Bacon denied the psychoanalytical/biographical interpretations often attributed to his dark and tortured-looking work, insisting that his paintings were to be understood and appreciated in terms of their formal properties alone (Freeland, 152). To be sure, we can never know for sure whether self-deception is at play in either direction. In the examples just discussed, we may be justified in taking the artists words at face value. But its possibility may prompt us to respond to any artist’s declaration about their work with a hint of doubt or skepticism.
It could also be the case that an artist is not deceiving himself about the meaning behind his work, but others—the viewers, the public, the artworld. He might do this for any number of reasons. Bacon, for example, might have denied the psychoanalytical/biographical interpretations attributed to him both to maintain a sense of privacy and to direct attention upon the formal features of his work.
Failed Execution
Still, in other cases, an artist may be guided by an artistic aim—by a genuine artistic intention—but nevertheless fail to get this across in their work. In such cases, there is a failure of execution. The artist intends the work to have a meaning that it does not possess. And, as a result, the work fails to produce the intended effect in the audience. To be sure, we may sometimes think that the audience is not sufficiently sensitive or perceptive to grasp the artist’s intention. But, in cases of failed execution, the fault, as it were, lies with the artist; the artist has failed to communicate their intention to the audience by means of their work. The artist proclaims that the work has a certain meaning, but this fails to come through in what they have produced.
To appreciate this point more fully, consider the following example from my own personal history. When I was a young, undergraduate sculpture student, I had to engage in critiques with the rest of the class and my professor. We would gather in a circle, and each of us would have to talk about our work. We would share our artistic goals, decision-making process, and own critical reflections upon what we created. After we spoke, other students would have an opportunity to weight in. Finally, the professor would offer his own thoughts in response to our work. On one occasion, I was waxing poetic about the dark, angsty themes of my own piece – solitude, death, anguish, and whatever else I was thinking about at the time. At the end of the critique, the professor told me, quite rightly, that I had failed to convey those ideas through my piece. Although abstract, my piece was sensual, even sexual (like much artwork, he added); it certainly failed to prompt the lofty ideas that I had proclaimed it did during critique.
My own analysis of the situation is that, while I entertained those heady ideas during the creative process (I was, after all, an undergraduate philosophy major), I failed to express them through my sculpture. When we engage in creative activities or artmaking, our minds often flow freely from idea to idea; it can be—is often described as— an almost meditative process. And so, at that general time in my life, and while I was working, I did indeed experience the thoughts that I shared with the class during critique. But I had nevertheless failed to transmit said thoughts through the three-dimensional forms that I had created. Nothing about the forms that I used suggested the grandiose, existential themes that I attributed to my work. Interestingly, I think that something like this is at play generally when we try to acquire knowledge about our own minds. We make inferences about our own mental states (intentions, desires, beliefs, etc.) based on the inner dialogue the unfolds sotto voce in or our minds, but this is a topic for another post, another time.
2. Why Artists Should Nevertheless Talk about Their Artwork
As we have seen thus far, artists’ proclamations about their work are not foolproof; they can go wrong in more than one way. We might wonder, then, whether there are any benefits to be had from artists talking about their work. Perhaps, like Herrara, all artists should insist that their work speaks for itself and simply refuse to carry on about it. Although an artist’s communication about their work is not infallible, it can be beneficial for several reasons. Let us now consider some of these.
Directing Attention
It may be helpful for artists to talk about their work because they, like an art critic, can call our attention to what we may have overlooked. Viewers of art are sometimes rushed and inattentive; they may overlook an important aspect of a work that, when apprehended, sheds important light upon its meaning. Artists may point to the way that that their technique or composition, e.g., supports their artistic intention. In such cases, viewers may be able to apprehend the way that a concrete aspect of the work supports an artist’s intention. Even when an artist is not entirely successful in executing their intention, their artistic aspirations, and description of their work, may be instructive and illuminating. It is likely that they succeeded in establish some of their artistic goals, and that communication of these can help viewers appreciate their work.
Understanding the Artist
An artist’s discussion of their work can also help us understand the artist. Even when an artist fails to achieve their goals, the verbalization of these goals can shed light upon the artist, which may be of interest to some viewers. Many of us do not just want to know about a work of art, but also about the artist who created it—about the mental states that gave rise to it. We do not just want to know about Vincent van Gogh’s landscape paintings, but also about Vincent van Vogh himself—the flesh and blood human being who created these masterful works of art. Indeed, we often love and admire works of art because of their humanity; we recognize that a particular human being lived a unique life that resulted in the creative vision unique to that person. If we appreciate the art, we often want to learn of its creator. This also accounts for why many of us find AI-generated imagery or “art” to be vacuous, undesirable, and just plain disturbing.
Importantly, even if the artist is mistaken or self-deceived, we will learn something about their psychology. If nothing else, we will uncover part of their story; we will learn how they understand or related to their work. This may be interesting and important in its own right.
Prompting Discussion, Dialogue, and Creative Thinking
Works of art can prompt us to engage in reflective, free, open-ended, creative discussion and dialogue about various themes. Importantly, works of art involve creativity in their development as well as in their critical reception. There is a two-fold social benefit here in terms of creativity. (A) Artists themselves often engage in reflective, free, open-ended thought through the process of making a work of art. This is beneficial to artists themselves; they reap the various personal and psychological benefits of the creative process. But (B) the audience—the public at large—also benefits from the creative process when they engage with an artist’s work. They, too, will often engage in reflective, free, open-ended, creative thinking when they contemplate the work before them. And when this happens collectively in a social setting—a classroom, museum setting, etc.—they engage in this kind of thinking with others. Works of art prompt us to ask critical questions, expand our creative horizons, contemplate images and states of affairs that we might not usually experience in our everyday life. A viewer of Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid might wonder who the figure depicted in the scene is, why the painter chose to paint her, and what the artist thought that he would accomplish thereby. And when viewing one of Clyfford Still’s abstract paintings, a viewer might again want to know what the artist was up to—what, if anything, the monumental works of art convey about the human condition or experience. Works of art can open our minds and foster fruitful, imaginative, and open-ended dialogues.
While works of art alone can do this, an artist’s reflections upon their work can enhance this process or push it further along. Their thoughts and ideas can prompt us to consider additional questions, thereby deepening our engagement with the work and the questions it poses. Consider, for example, how Georgia O’Keefe’s thoughts about her own work might affect us both inside and outside an art gallery—both when looking at art and living our ordinary lives. O’Keefe wrote that she paints such large paintings of flowers because doing so allows the viewer to “zoom in” on their interesting and beautiful structure. In ordinary life, she laments, “nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see take time like to have a friend takes time” (O’Keefe)
Interestingly, she goes on to say that she finds similar beauty in less obvious places, such as in the red hill that she depicts in one of her paintings. She notes that some of her viewers struggle with this and would much prefer that she just paint flowers. But, for O’Keefe, such scenes are just as beautiful and deserving of our time, attention, and admiration as flowers. The red hill—the dessert—touches her heart just as much as flowers touch the hearts of others. She brings the discussion to a close by pronouncing, “I fancy this all hasn’t much to do with painting” (O’Keefe). While she may be right, painting is rarely just about painting. And this, I want to urge, is one of the contributions that it can make to society. Painting—the art-making enterprise, the artworld—can promote ways of thinking that challenge, enrich and enliven our lives. Painting is not just about painting. The arts encourage us to step outside our comfort zone and to escape the monotony—the given—of daily life. They present us with an opportunity to contemplate the extraordinary, to ask questions, and to experience wonder and awe. And they often help us find, attend to, and appreciate these qualities in our own everyday experiences.
O’Keefe is making a philosophical point and one that we can take away from her work as well as her reflections upon her work. She writes about attention, perception, and beauty, among other things. While her work may itself prompt these ways of thinking and being in the world, her words provide us with further guidance and inspiration.
Now, in some cases, the work may have no deeper meaning; it may be about nothing more than its formal properties. A painter may be inspired by the beauty of a scene or object. They may want to capture the way that light scatters across a tabletop of interesting objects, or the graceful movement of a dancing figure. This might be all. In such cases, as Herrara has put it, the painting speaks for itself. But even here, the artist’s words might benefit the viewer in a some of the ways just discussed. They may, for example, call attention to certain formal properties of the painting that the viewer would otherwise have failed to notice or appreciate.
Some Qualifications
None of this is to say that artists must talk about their work. It is certainly not obligatory for them to do so. Artists can do as they wish, keeping the meaning behind their work a mystery if they decide to do so. Indeed, some artists may not want to discuss the meaning or intention behind their work for fear that it may bias the perception of their viewers. This is a legitimate concern. It is understandable for an artist to want a viewer to approach their work with an open mind—a tabula rasa, as it were. My goal here has just been to show that, even when artists are mistaken, their efforts to communicate the meaning behind their work are not in vain and can give rise to various social benefits.
Ideally, artists should strive to let their work speak for itself, conveying what they can through the medium in question and not relying about words to do the work for them. After all, as Herrara rightly points out, there is a reason why a painter creates a painting, and a musician writes a song; different mediums present us with different expressive possibilities.
Conclusion
To sum things up, when it comes to reflective, free, open-ended, creative discussion, I am something of a maximalist. The more we have of this, the better. The arts allow us to enter this realm—this cognitive space—and explore thoughts, ideas, and feelings that would otherwise be neglected or not exist at all. Importantly, as I have suggested, they do this in a two-fold way: they allow us to engage with the world and these modes of thoughts both (A) when we create, and when (B) we engage with the artistic output of others. An artist’s words and reflections can also highlight aspects of their work that might otherwise go unnoticed and give us important and interesting insights into the artists themselves—into their characters, their minds, their personal histories. While artists, like the rest of us, are not invulnerable to the perils and pitfalls of self-knowledge, they can nevertheless benefit society by sharing their own thoughts about their work and creative process with the world.
References:
Freeland, Cynthia. But Is It Art? Oxford, University Press. 2001.
O’Keeffe, Georgia. “About Myself.” Georgia O’Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils and Pastels. New York, An American Place, Jan. 1939. Museum of Modern Art Library Digital Collections, https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16028coll4/id/19467.
Sontag, Deborah. “At 94, She’s the Hot New Thing in Painting.” The New York Times, 20 Dec. 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/arts/design/20herrera.html
Warhol, Andy. Interview by Ruth Hirschman. Pop Goes the Artist, KPFK radio, Fall 1963. In I’ll Be Your Mirror: Selected Andy Warhol Interviews 1962-1987, edited by Kenneth Goldsmith, Carroll & Graf, 2004, pp. 27-46.