OK, I'll think it over and try to be more clear about my critique of your views. I'm going to stick to my opinion that expression is mirrored experience (the thing experienced as the proxy for expression; the expression as make-believe experience).
As for my late good friend, Ed Paschke, who never missed the irony and comedy in art or life, Chicago collectors who picked up his early paintings in the 1970s for $1,000 are now reveling in the news that his works on display at Gagosian in NYC are priced at $140,000. I know Ed is plucking his harp, chuckling and saying, Hey, what's in it for me?" Well, he's got Heaven and his collectors have their greed. Ed painted the losers and freaks but he also loved them enough to buy their food, bail them out of jail, give them money to start over, and visit them on their deathbeds. Like any good artist, Ed followed the path of paradox. WC ----- Original Message ---- From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, March 21, 2010 9:02:43 AM Subject: Re: Phenomenology of Signs On Mar 20, 2010, at 10:59 PM, William Conger wrote: > None of what you say goes beyond anecdotal talk. I want to know what really distinguishes experience from expression, if anything. This needs to be thought through. If experience relies on expression, then is expression active or passive? If active then it has an experiential source; that is, it is formulated and conveyed in some fashion. But if passive, how can it be formulated? I suppose you could say it's formulated by proxy, by means of signs and cues of social norms, through the fashioning of an artist, speaker, author or anyone else. But that is a hopeful proxy, fraught with likely error on the part of the one making the proxy and more error on the part of the one who imaginatively reconstructs it and then experiences the reconstructed "expression" as if it were located in the proxy. How can expression be passive? Perhaps you are referring to a quality in the work that is an embodiment of something, which is colloquially said to "express" X or Y. But that just points back to the origination of whatever is in the work that you refer to. "Expression" as it relates to art occurs as an activity of the maker, not of the work (except by linguistic conventions of casual usage), and certainly not of the third-party viewer. When one says, "That Goya painting expresses the drama of the revolution, etc.," one is pointing to the proxies and cues and signs you mention. I don't understand what you mean by "experience relies on expression." > When you speak of something being well made but not moving you, how do we know that you really know it's well made and how do we know you are not projecting an iconoclastic ego as if to say, "it's well made but not well enough for me (and my higher standards)"? What difference does it make what *you* know about what I know? If I say the Kinkade is well made but doesn't move me, you can look at the Kinkade yourself and then form an opinion about my judgment. I said several years ago that I didn't much care for Ed Paschke's paintings, but I recognized their quality and had to "take them into account" (I think that's how I put it). You have read into my comment far more than I wrote, and you chastise me for something I did not say. I said I recognize something is good (i.e., well made) but I don't like it. "Projecting an iconoclastic ego"? Please. > I think the artwork, as a work of art but not an actual example of art (an important distinction) is a proxy or proposition that invites the viewer to "frame" it with a contextualizing idea or set of standards or point of view ranging from the art historical to the "unart" values of propaganda, commerce, you name it. The framing of the work establishes the nature of its form and content. When we experience artworks we are invited to pretend that we adopt the framing seemingly proposed and then relish the surprising new awareness we have.We have suspended our disbelief that our experiences can be enlarged by means of the artwork. Yes, I believe you are correct. The viewer adopts or steps into the "framing" of the work, as much as one can by inferring the range and nature of the frame and contextualizing idea. > Even when you say the artwork is no good, you have enjoyed the affirmation that your experience is not enlarged by it, which, perversely, enlarges it. Again, there is a big distinction between judging a work to be "no good" and acknowledging that you "don't like it." You seem to place a great deal of importance on the self-affirming effect of viewing (passively experiencing) a work of art, whether you deem the work to be good or not good. Perhaps that takes place, but I don't see how that acts as an important factor. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
