I am certainly no expert on this, but it sounds like your friend is pursuing some classical form of allegorical representation. Insofar as that is true, she need not include an explanatory text; she simply needs to be able to draw upon a 'standard' metaphorical system, or create one within a work or series of works, in order for the 'abstract conceptual registers' of her work to come into view.
Failing this -- that is, failing any attempt on the behalf of the artist to actually include some manner of 'decoding' her work, like using more standard means of representing self/family/society -- it strikes me as premature to complain about being misunderstood. In fact, if the connection between what is represented and what is implied through this representation is based solely on a private system of signs/symbols, then I might even suggest that this particular work is a failure, at least as an allegory for something. Of course, it is only a failure because there is no way of moving from what is given in the painting to the conceptual registers associated with it by the painter. Moreover, most trends in modernism -- according to at least one narrative -- involve collapsing these two registers together (in order to produce a larger problematic of art's relation to society at large [e.g. Adorno]), or excising any pre-existing, foreign conceptual content altogether (in order to identify and develop the essence of art [Greenberg]). In such a climate, a naive allegorical impulse is going to be significantly more difficult to succesfully implement, especially when the putatively allegorical work can easily be mistaken for an itude: still life. There is good reason, I think, why successful allegories tend to use some form of personification, which hinges on the notion of agency, particularity, etc. On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Chris Miller <[email protected]>wrote: > Last night, during the opening of her show, a young Chinese woman from the > "stinking ninth class" (i.e. a family of intellectuals) took a small group > of > us down to the gallery basement to show us some works in progress, and > bitterly complain that nobody understood her paintings (however much we may > be > liking them) > > For example, she had painted a display of flowering branches, and she > explained how the ones in the foreground represented the self, the > middle-ground was the self's immediate world of home/job/friends, and the > flowers in the distance represented society and civilization - while each > different species of flower had a special meaning known to those who > specialize in flowers. > > She really seemed quite serious about all this. She had something important > to > communicate and people just weren't getting it. > > So now I'm wondering -- is there any law against her posting text next to > every painting ? Would it make a difference if that text were more like > poetry > and less like an index of explanatory footnotes ? > > And it also occurred to me that, even though she practices European > techniques, she comes from a world where extensive text and images are > often > displayed together, while we don't really expect that in our Euro-centered > artworld, outside of Medieval manuscripts, illustrated books, and, of > course, > William Blake. > > Done anyone know of an artist who wants the display of his or her work to > be > accompanied by explanatory text ? (perhaps that happens in those museums > of > contemporary art that are so foreign to me) > > > > > ____________________________________________________________ > Come clean with a brand new shower. Click now! > > http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/BLSrjnxSDIBMHllS0t94po3ZIeaLDj > sDVnjjFxzTLogzEvORbZ5Cd9oAXa4/<http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc /BLSrjnxSDIBMHllS0t94po3ZIeaLDj%0AsDVnjjFxzTLogzEvORbZ5Cd9oAXa4/>
