There is a story of a Russian man who went to the MoMA in New York, soon after it opened. Looking at the paintings he was furious, he could not understand them. He looked at a Picasso and asked, “What is this, it does not make sense!” His poor tour guide who had been chosen for her ability to speak Russian rather than her art knowledge was unable to answer. The man continued, outraged by the abstract nature of the work. Then another guest approached him, and spoke in Russian: “Friend, you make us all look bad. Imagine if this was mathematics on the wall. Would you be shouting that you could not understand the equations? Of course not.” After this conversation the man quietly studied the pictures and read the panels, then went home to no doubt read up on modern art.
This comparison between art and mathematics works well; it has a very simple beginning, that we learn in school; we get to the level of the ancient greeks, and perhaps in high-school we get to the level of Issac Newton. Then everything after calculus is considered specializing in mathematics/physics leading to a PhD, or in our case, a MFA degree.
There are as many definitions of art as there are art works. The constant fluctuations of new ideas, people and axioms enrich works almost as quickly as they date it. With this incessant drumming of new, newer, newest – comes the echoing old, older, oldest, and there we find context.
To fully understand a work it is vital to know when, where, why and by whom it was made. There is no art that does not answer these four questions when examined; a failure to do so is the fault of the curator, viewer or museum; never the artist.
Artists can be blamed for many things, but they will never be blamed for creating a purely aesthetic work. It the act of attempting a purely aesthetic work the artist is creating context. It is an unavoidable equal and opposite reaction that occurs. Tying back into mathematics, the most ‘boring’ number paradox is the attempt to find a number with no special properties, however the very act of being classified as dull now makes the number interesting.
There is a picture by Robert Capa, The Falling Soldier, which shows a man getting shot during the Spanish War a Loyalist soldier. The viewer has an immediate sense that the man is shot, and there is a war; but the picture becomes more tragic when we learn what he was fighting for, socialism against fascism and ultimately his party lost the war.
Capa’s photograph proved to be staged – but does that matter? Knowing that it was staged we feel a sense of betrayal, that we were lied to; a documentarian turning out to be a fraud. However, the picture is still there – still important because of the context. It was staged to show what was really happening. The act of staging a photograph, pretending it was real and arguing about it for decades is simply context. Had The Falling Soldier been a painting there would be no argument; Picasso’s Guernica shows the same war in a less realistic light, as it is both painted and abstract – however it still elicits an emotion when we view it. It is in their intent, date and subject that these pictures are similar, only the medium and artists differ.
In the 20th century Robert Mapplethorpe’s works are made more important by the scandal they created, the message they carried and the identity of the artist. The argument of ‘what is art’ continues to this day, and is still defined by it’s context. Irrevocably attached to every work – literature, painting or photography – is a context that enriches and explains the work; any attempt to look at art in a detached matter simply gives another layer of context.
John Hutt 