Shaped, as in something whose shape might match the edge of a line. You could look at a cartoon and separate the lines in the drawings into bits. Since a mark with no conscious meaning was what Pollock was aiming at he would indeed be justified in chiding the viewers on their insistence that he intended a penis. This would be partly because their chatter would probably arouse memories of simple schoolboy humor.
-----Original Message----- From: Cheerskep <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Dec 9, 2012 2:26 pm Subject: Re: Kate's excellent queries; Barthes; etc In a message dated 12/9/12 12:10:24 PM, [email protected] writes: A mark is not a word. A mark shaped to resemble a small part of something is not intended to carry memories or notions and if the viewer insists that it brings memories and notions he is not looking at the mark itself in a field of other marks . He is you might say missing the mark. Kate Sullivan What Kate seems to be citing here is a mark of a kind I myself cannot imagine. My failing may in part be due to my lack of surety of what Kate has in mind when she says, "A mark shaped to resemble a small part of something". Does she mean it's INTENDED to resemble? My guess is she does not. She means, the shaper creates a mark that DOES resemble something (to some people) but that resemblance is, call it, coincidental - the shaper did not have that resemblance in mind. More strongly: the shaper had no intention that her mark "resemble" anything at all. Picture, say, a Kline or Rothko, or the first paint-fling as Pollack starts a new work. Let's say Pollack's flung paint hits the canvas in such a way that four out of five observers, upon seeing the shape, cannot help being reminded of a penis. Kate seems to be saying that Pollack would be justified in growling that they "miss the mark". But it seems to me arguable that Pollack is the one who's missing something here. What we tend to count on in any "artist" in any genre is her ability to control the response in her audience by selecting what goes into her work. Suppose a novelist names one of her characters Alfred Peter Enis. One reader after another queries that name: A.P. Enis. Is the novelist justified in saying "A.P. Enis is not intended to carry me mories or notions," and criticizing her readers because they "are not looking at A.P. Enis in a field of other marks"?
