Specter Collective • On Seeing "Red": Or, Why I'm Selfish When It Comes To Art

On Seeing “Red”: Or, Why I’m Selfish When It Comes To Art

There is, and will always be, the question of art.

Or to be more apt, the questions of art.

I watched a production of “Red” at Dayton’s Human Race Theatre this weekend. To be vague and surface-level, it’s about Russian-American artist Mark Rothko and his assistant Ken, who happens to be an aspiring painter himself. It’s about the creative process, and about what happens when artistic ideals and capitalism collide. But what it’s really about is the questions of art.

What is the purpose of art, really? It’s a question that has a myriad of potential responses. The question of art in the creative world is like asking the question of pi in the mathematical world. It’s infinite. It can represent, challenge, and call into question ideas, thoughts, culture norms, societal standards, and preexisting structures.

This was the topic of conversation as my boyfriend and I left the theatre, both of us enthralled and inspired and also even a little hopeless.

Let me explain.

We started going back and forth. What is the purpose of art? Is it worth something, or is it worth nothing? Do either of these things really matter? I should clarify that the two of us do believe in the power and necessity of art, but we started asking these initial questions to facilitate a sort of Socratic dialogue. We were trying to talk about why art was important, and what role (or roles) it plays in our lives.

What kind of a person do you have to be to appreciate or to “get” art? I suppose that in painting, much like in writing, the artist has an “ideal audience” in mind. And while I’ve heard plenty of my professors discuss the importance of one’s audience, I really don’t think about it all that much when I’m writing fiction or nonfiction. I feel that if I present myself clearly, provide enough dots for the reader to connect them, and use compelling, interesting language to tell a compelling, interesting story, then I’ve done my job.

That’s the extent to which my concern with my audience goes, but then, maybe that’s absolutely enough. Then again, maybe I have an “ideal audience” and I don’t even know it – people who are intelligent enough and will be invested enough throughout reading the piece that they connect those dots, that they pick up the trail of breadcrumbs that I have left in the forest.

Rothko seemed to believe, especially at the end of the play, that there was no one intelligent enough or worthy enough to view his paintings, let alone understand them. And I will admit that when I initially walked into the theatre to see a Rothko-esque painting outside the door, I was puzzled. It essentially was a large square canvas painted red, with two brownish rectangles painted inside. My first question, rather than to spend time with and react to the painting, was this: What am I supposed to get from this?

There is something about art that is both enthralling and intimidating to me. I love the set of challenges that a painting or sculpture presents, but I suffer from acute shyness when it comes to verbalizing what it makes me think or how it makes me feel. I am intimidated by the artist, his or her work, and I feel as though I’m supposed to “get” certain things from a work. I worry that if I do not get x, y, or z from a piece, that somehow my intelligence has failed me and the artist, and that I am, as Rothko said, one of those who “aren’t worthy.”

Let me illustrate with an example.

A few years ago, I attended “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present,” Abramovic’s performance retrospective at MoMA in NYC. In it, Abramovic was in the process of completing one of the longest performance piece in history (700 hours). The exhibit also included a retrospective, featuring actors performing her most famous pieces of work.

One of these works had a naked man and woman standing in a narrow doorframe, facing one another. There was a very small amount of space between them, and the purpose – if one was willing to participate – was for you, the viewer (or in this case, the participant), to squeeze between the two of them. The catch: you would be forced to make bodily contact with both.

I wondered what the point was, but I got in line to walk through anyway. When I finally did, I turned toward the woman without even thinking about it. As I thought about it, I figured that being a woman, I was more comfortable with her nakedness than the man’s. But I also felt strange about it – guilty, even – as if I had somehow violated her. The surface level response and surrounding feelings were really interesting to me, and so I began to ask myself: Why was I feeling this way?

I wrote something short about it afterward, more of a personal journal entry than anything else, and told a friend about it. His response was irritating – he suggested that I read the New York Times article about her retrospective, so that I could use that for what I was writing. When I tried to explain to him that yes, I HAD the article, but that the whole point of the exercise was not to read it until AFTER I had completed gathering my thoughts about the experience, he told me that I should really read what the experts had to say. After all, that’s why they are experts.

For the same reason, I avoid reading critical reviews of movies or television shows before I watch them. My interest is not piqued, more or less, by critics telling me what I should think of the work. If I want to see something, I will go see it. I prefer to experience it as neutrally as possible – and yes, I always go and read the reviews after, comparing notes between my experience (just your average, everyday moviegoer or TV watcher) with those who are experts on the subject.

My primary interest in the Abramovic exhibit was not the philosophy and ideas informing her art, but how I felt on a visceral level during and after the experience. To me, that was where the value existed: what the art told me about myself. In that sense, I am someone who believes first and foremost in the subjectivity of art.

The play reinforced that for me. The subjectivity is where the power of art lies.

If you think about it, the way we experiencing visual art, music, writing, is subjective. While the artist always creates with intent, we as viewers are not always privy to that. Consider the case of famous, long-dead people who created masterpieces. We don’t know all of their intentions. For some, we know none of their intentions. And since it’s been 200 or 300 or 500 years, there’s really no way to distill the artist’s original intent.

I believe that humans have both similar and disparate, incongruous experiences in common with other humans. We all grapple with the big stuff, like what it means to be alive and why we’re here. But regardless of what we have in common, we all come to view something in our own unique way. Part of this can be attributed to influence and environment. Maybe even biology.

But we all have a unique set of experiences that make us who we as individuals are, and we view art with that unique sense of self. So it seems accurate to say that when you and I and three of your friends view a Rothko painting, we’re all going to take something different away from it. We’re going to experience something different.

That, to me, is where the miracle of art lives.