I'm not an art historian. I'm not well versed in modern art movements. I know the terms that everyone knows; Dada, Post-Modernism, Modernism, Cubism, an so on. I'm clearly no expert. With that disclaimed out there, what I got from the article was attention to detail. Artists started paying attention to how text looks, not just what it 'says'. Ducker points out that these artists and poets thought about the aesthetics of words in a way that hadn't been thought of before. Sure the monks drew ornate illustrations to go with their hand-copied texts, but they weren't thinking about words the way that this new generation of artists was. There was a push towards noticing every detail of how something looked on a page, like a font where the lower case f wasn't symmetrical. This is pretty significant. We might take concrete poetry for granted or even say it's simplistic and lacks technical prowess, but before it had been done... It was unthinkable and so original.
That being said, the article was stuffy. I kept thinking about my future identity (or not) as a writer. If this is what scholars do to artists, I don’t want it. This mechanical vivisection of what was genuine, emotional art takes away from the raw authenticity that was originally intended. It’s disingenuous and loses the sense of organic creation. The article wasn’t disrespectful, it was even reverent at times, but I couldn’t help but think that the art wasn’t meant for her, or for that. What would the original artists think of how their work was talked about? Would the shake their heads, would it be disgust or amusement? Did they mean the depth that is assigned to them? Is the pretension always present?
I think writing, like all art, is suggested to academic analysis. I also think the importance of this is to understand how the concept of (whatever art is it) applies to the world and the importance of what the artist/author is doing for the world. I had a difficult time reading through the article because it read very academic but at the same time I felt it was trying to outline and discuss how other movements have experimented with text and what came of it, etc. There was a lot to take in and I must admit that I probably need to reread the article several more times to have it all sink in.
ReplyDeleteMaria,
ReplyDeleteI was very interested in your interpretation of this piece. I did not really get the same vibe as you did, so I am really intrigued by reading the feelings Drucker's work gave you. I was honestly overwhelmed by her writing and am not even sure what it was that I got out of it, so I was curious to see how my peers responded to the piece. I thought she was stressing that a word or letter is more than just a representation, but an existence. so, our work is more than just representing a word but representing that existence!
I think it's really interesting the way you say that the art wasn't for Drucker. I can see where you are coming from, or at least the idea that the art maybe wasn't meant for such detailed scrutiny as that which she put it under.
ReplyDeleteI feel like a big claim Drucker made in this article was that the art should stand for itself. But by talking about it too much, or analyzing it too much, it stopped standing for itself as much as it might have before. I feel like it was scientifically broken apart, whereas if I was just given the chance to look at it/read it (i.e. if this ginormous article was made up of a lot more visual examples rather than long-winded explanations I didn't fully comprehend), they would have spoken for themself and I would have understood much more simply. Or, perhaps they wouldn't have stood for themselves, and Drucker's whole claim would have been disproven.
Even though the general goal of writing something is to have it read, I worry about what will happen to my writing once it is out there in the big scary world of scholars and critics and people who like to think they know everything about everything.
ReplyDeleteI know the point of a piece isn't always to derive some meaning from it, but I hate feeling like I can't grasp the original intention of the author. And then, if I can't figure out what the author's original intentions are, I don't feel like I have the authority as a reader to make derive my own meaning from it.
So, don't worry--you aren't the only one who worries about picking and analyzation until the point of deconstruction.