I write visual art reviews for The Uniter. Typically I check out the art, ponder it a while, jot down a few notes, and then go home to write up my review. E-mail it to my editor and a week later, it’s published. Last week, however, I had the opportunity to attend a visual art reception: the opening night of a visual art show. That meant that not only were a number of artists present, but I also got to meet the artist of this particular show himself.
The boyfriend and I arrived right on time. A few of the artist’s friends (who were artists themselves) were already there, and this artist- Adrian Williams- was hard at work on a piece that wasn’t quite finished. He was sprawled on the floor in front of a large painting/collage while someone else swept the floor around him, preparing the room for the night’s event.
It was fascinating to see the artist at work, and perhaps that was part of the reason why that particular painting captured me so much. It was gorgeous. The boyfriend and I wandered over to examine it almost as soon as it was up on the wall, and one of the other artists approached us. He commented on Williams’ skill, and then added that the art really spoke about social issues.
One could look at the art and interpret it as a portrayal of social issues. Then again, anything can be interpreted to mean whatever you want it to mean. The film American Beauty comes to mind; one of the characters videotapes a plastic bag blowing around in the wind and raves about its beauty. The plastic bag is meant to be symbolic. If you can extract meaning from a plastic bag, you can extract meaning from just about anything.
I wondered, however, if Williams had intended on portraying social issues. The particular piece that I so much adored was of a woman getting ready to take a shower, for example. Another piece showed boxcars on tracks. Still another was of a man’s shoe. A portrayal of social issues, or just really nice art that I’d want to hang on my wall?
After I’d strolled around the room several times, examining each individual piece and then looking at the collection as a whole, jotting down notes all the while, I decided I was curious enough to interrogate the artist. Luckily he didn’t mind my questions and was only too happy to discuss his art. When I asked about the painting of the girl getting ready to take a shower, he began describing how the art could be interpreted as a commentary on industrialization. He pointed to the pencil in one corner and the papers flying out the window; the shower head and the materials he had used to create the collage. Then he paused and said that all of this was coming to him just now, as he was talking about it. He hadn’t thought about it before. He had simply created the piece following intuition, doing what felt right at the time.
There was no intention of portraying this issue or that phenomenon. He was just doing what felt right. The result was a masterpiece.
Rhetoric involves a lot of analytical work. There is a reason for everything that we do, regardless of if we are aware of it at the time or not. What we do is emblematic of our knowledge and assumptions about the world. Williams was creating what could be interpreted as a portrayal of social issues because of his own background; the artist who said that it was a portrayal of social issues also interpreted it as such because of his own background. We take what we know and what we expect from what we see and we make connections. Rhetoric allows us to create our own kinds of meanings.
Or he could have done it due to a complex of socioeconomic/geohistorical factors that made him really, really like those materials.