Week 7: Processing the Grey Area

Kiki Smith's work is open-ended and a continual process of play. She creates a space where the interpretation and giving of meaning through the audience is essential. The physicality of the body, the roles the body plays in our reception of our own and others thoughts and ideas, and the necessity for constant observation of our worlds. Art 21 describes Smith's work as "the body as a receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling". She is interested in the process, of letting her work evolve in its own time and in its own way. It is interesting to note Smith's take on Catholicism and art, and how the two go hand in hand because "both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world" and there is also a great deal of story telling going in, in both religion and in art. Smith also mentions the transcendence of art through space and time, and how the making of art is really all about bring the unconscious (inside of us) out into the conscious (the world). She says "art is in a sense like a proof: it’s something that moves from your insides into the physical world, and at the same time it’s just a representation of your insides." Smith also thinks along the same lines as Barthes in regards to thoughts, in the sense that what we may be thinking is something that has either already been thought, or that other people in this very moment are also thinking. She says "That’s why you can recognize things from two thousand years ago because it’s not radically different" which I think is a great representation of why art now and art back then, along with writing, or whatever other medium, may be a bit more difficult to relate contextually, but we still do recognize and understand elements, thoughts and ideas from two thousand years ago because they are relatively the same elements, thoughts or ideas that are transpiring today in the minds of many. Our relationships to objects in our daily lives is also something Smith mentions. She views these relationships we have to "things" as inherent to human nature. She also says that designing, or making, is different in the sense that one must be a listener and a collaborator of your own self at the same time; that is to say, to make art, there's the listener side of things, wherein you listen to yourself and your world, and the collaborative side, wherein you listen to your thoughts and ideas in the context of the world around you, and then you being to create something meaningful from there. It's a continual process, and I think, for Smith, she views these making process as playful and likes to keep things fresh and exciting. For example, she mentions that she had only ever drawn animals before, and then one day, she drew a person, however horribly, and then everything, her drawing, the process of making, it just evolved from there. I like how she doesn't have a strict and rigid thought process; instead it's more about the process itself, and letting it take her wherever it may. She sees making art as a way of thinking, much like Kentridge and Bengston.

Carla Bengston was intriguing to listen to. I definitely felt as though she viewed art much in the same way Smith did, not in terms of technique or thematically, but in the way she honored and embraced the process. What I found exceedingly brilliant was her making of the paintings with the ants. This perfectly demonstrates her work as an ever evolving process. Through her work, Bengston asks questions, questions of meaning, intentions, the impact of subtlety versus blatant intentions when making work. The work she made in the forest demonstrates he relationship between the artist and the environment, and also between the artist and the audience. How we viewed the piece and took the meaning was entirely up to us. Bengston gave us a piece, and imparted her own meaning into it through her making process, and then through our process of viewing the piece(s), we then impart our own, perhaps entirely different, meaning onto the work.

This is much the same idea that Barthes expanded on in his "The Death of the Author" writing. He highlighted this grey area, where we, as viewers, have the responsibility to extract meaning from a piece. We all took away a slightly different meaning from Barthes piece, much like we all took away a different meaning from Bengston's pieces and talk, and Kentridge's pieces. The meaning that is taken away from a piece depends, largely, on the audience that is viewing or reading it. Barthes also illuminates the power that signs hold in our culture; signs have meaning built into them, and neither the artist nor the audience can do anything about the meaning that the sign inherently holds. The tricky part is, then, that the symbol, much like the painting or the meaning behind a writing, is different for everyone, and thus it is interpreted differently. This means that the artist doesn't hold all the power, and doesn't get to define the sole meaning of his work; the audience does. In this sense, we as observers of work, symbols, meaning, writing, whatever, we are essentially being "born", as Barthes notes. And on the flip side, the birth of the reader (or audience/observer) comes as the expense of the death of the author (or artist). It seems Barthes main question is this: Who gets to make meaning? And there really is no implicit answer. The transmission of meaning is not a linear, concrete thing. The transmission of meaning is ever changing, a process of observation and interaction between the work and the audience and the artist, in that meaning changes in context of space and time.

William Kentridge's work is also a continual and playful process of the exploration of meaning. His ability to play and experiment is imperative in his creative process and the success of his work. He views looking and seeing as a metaphor for how we view the world, as we can see through his continual playful processing and experimenting in his animated films and opera productions. He, much like Barthes, encourages us to utilize "the agency we have, whether we like it or not, to make sense of the world" and symbols and meanings in our world as we see fit. Kentridge wants that we make our own meaning. For all of these artists, there is a definite trend. There is a necessity of the maker to create, there is a necessity of the observer to listen, and there is the power of the interpretation of a work that manifests itself through the inside out, starting in the unconscious of the observer/audience/reader, and then perpetuating and projecting its interpreted, differential meaning outside to the world around us.



Lady Gaga in general, and specifically in this music video, can be interpreted differently depending on the person. At the end she chooses to be a nun and her mouth and eyes disappear, symbolizing, to me, that she is is choosing to leave the evils of the world behind her. But that's just me, Lady Gaga is a crazy cool lady that will never fully be understood by anyone, including herself. Her work, specifically seen in her music videos, showcases the ever evolving process of playfulness and creativity that provokes the audience and encourages them to take away their own meaning from it all.