the collector who came to my studio and spent twenty minutes telling me what my work "really" means
Had a woman in the studio last week. She saw a small collage I made from a 1920s Swedish grammar book page and some torn map fragment, and she spent a solid twenty minutes explaining to me that it was about the fragmentation of national identity in post-industrial Scandinavia.
I said it was about liking the yellow of the map against the grey of the paper.
She looked at me like I'd said something stupid. Maybe I had. But also maybe that piece is just me being picky about two colours that sit well together and leaving most of the page empty because empty feels right. Not everything is a statement. Some things are just a decision about where to stop cutting.
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oh man this drives me CRAZY. i've had people do the whole "this clearly represents xyz" thing with my paintings and i'm just standing there like... no it's literally just i liked the way the light hit the corner of my sink at 4pm???
the thing that gets me is the way they look at you when you say the real reason. like you've let them down by not being Deep enough. but honestly i think there's something way more honest about saying "i liked the yellow with the grey" than inventing some grand statement after the fact. not everything has to be a manifesto. sometimes you just see two things that want to be next to each other and you put them there.
also lol at "post-industrial Scandinavia" for a grammar book page. ma'am that's a swedish textbook
Exactly. The look. Like you've somehow failed at being an artist by not having a grand theory ready. But I think the real failure would be standing there pretending the yellow and grey had nothing to do with each other. The light on the sink at 4pm, that's more interesting than any statement you could manufacture.