This is the first time I have kept a blog and I feel a little apprehensive about making my thoughts public. But no matter, it’s all about deeper understanding and this is a great way to experience both sides of it.
I read a lot of art history. In fact, a few years ago I made the decision to stop reading literature, which I love, and focus my efforts on art history, which I love even more. And I have never regretted a minute’s time reading.
Currently I’m reading two books, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz and The Death and Return of the Author, by Seán Burke. I’ve had Theories and Documents for years and have picked my way through, reading bits I was interested in, but I determined I would read the whole thing from beginning to end this time. It of course has led me off on tangents, which is how I found my way to The Death and Return of the Author. I took a turn looking into Roland Barthes and his ‘Death of the Author’. I was searching for the original essay of this title but came upon Burke’s book and bought it because it was exactly what I was looking for.
The detour paid off because I found the very nugget of truth I was trying to find in my own theorizing and statement writing. I had been walking all around it but hadn’t stumbled on it until I read this:
‘Even if the author-creator had created the most perfect autobiography, or confession, he would , nonetheless have remained, in so far as he had produced it, outside of the universe represented within it. If I tell (orally or in writing) an event that I have just lived, in so far as ‘I am telling'(orally or in writing) this event, I find myself already outside of the time-space in which the event occurred. To identify oneself absolutely with oneself, to identify one’s ‘I’ with the ‘I’ that I tell is as impossible as to lift oneself up by one’s hair…’
Mikhail Bakhtin
This quote allowed me to revise my artist statement and nail the concept I was trying to formulate but couldn’t. My artist statement now reads, with the introduction of the quote above:
I’m exploring this impossibility of self identity, not only in terms of time-space but also in terms of forces outside of myself which influence my actions. An artist never creates alone and the intent of the artist is never fully realized as conceived. There are always things outside the artist which impact the moment of creation.
This reinterpreted gesture is not a search for identity; it’s not a search at all. It simply is realization. It realizes the paradox that the ‘I’ exists only within context and the ‘I’ faces obliteration from that same context.
And I hope this is a good introduction into this blog and my head.
