Placing Pebbles Exactly: Art and Ambiguity

Dr. Judith Findlay

• Art is a modern invention.• Art is modern.• It is made ‘distinct’.

• The term ART as we understand it began to take on its modern meaning in the late eighteenth century: an original creation, produced by an individual gifted with genius.

• The ‘distinction’ of Art was created• By museums• By galleries• By theory

• Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London: Routledge, 1995)

• Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (San Francisco: The Lapis Press, 1976)

• Mary Anne Staniszewski, Believing is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art (New York, London: Penguin, 1995)

• But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, we might become aware of another, seemingly contrary, one: a way of seeing, of perceiving, of considering that mixes rather than separates…

• If we were to let go of our fond conviction regarding modernity what, Bruno Latour asks, would the world look like?

• What, we might ask, would art look like?

• ‘In the eyes of our critics the ozone hole above our heads, the moral law in our hearts, the autonomous text, may each be of interest, but only separately. That a delicate shuttle should have woven together the heavens, industry, texts, souls and moral law - this remains uncanny, unthinkable, unseemly.’ Bruno Latour

• Art as ‘quasi-object’…• Keywords:

– Interdisciplinarity– Hybridity– Ecology (relationship, connections)– Followabilty– Narrative– Imagination– Identity– Ambiguity

• Ambiguity: 1. The possibility of interpreting something in two or more distinct ways. 2. An instance of this….3. Vagueness or uncertainty of meaning…

• Embodied ideas– Nature/culture– Local/global– Inappropriate– Home– Here/there– North East of Scotland

• Can art ‘exist’ like this?• What is Art?

• Art is a puzzle…• ‘The experience of grappling with the

puzzle might be integral to the experience.’ Paul Huxley

• Art is ‘ambivalence’

• ‘Doubt is the discipline’ (Colin Painter)

• Ambiguity is key

• ‘You need to present [people] with ambiguities. But the simple difference between good art and not-so-good art is knowing how much ambiguity you can [use]…You’ve got to seduce people and if you can’t maybe your being too ambiguous and they won’t reflect on anything.’ Douglas Gordon

• ‘There is a difference…between the fact stated and the circumstances of the statement, but very often you cannot know one without knowing the other, and an apprehension of the sentence involves both without distinguishing between them…An ambiguity…is not satisfying in itself, nor is it, considered as a device on its own…;it must in each case arise from, and be justified by, the peculiar requirements of the situation.’ William Empson

• In other words:

• There is a difference between an artwork and context, but you can’t know one without knowing the other.

• Ambiguity - artistic ambiguity - depends on context.

• ‘Horizon of expectation’ - Hans Robert Jauss

• ‘Versimilitude’ (truth-real life) - Tzvetan Todorov

• …the secret of the pleasure you feel is two-fold: the relatedness of everything to everything else, and the creation of proper spaces in which to see each work, each stone, each flower in its own right.

• ‘It is salutary, that in a world rocked by greed, misunderstanding and fear, it is still possible and justifiable to find important the exact placing of two pebbles.’ Jim Ede

Tomorrow - Tuesday 13 Feb:

• Seminars, A34m, Gray’s School of Art:• Group 1 - 9.30 am• Group 2 - 10.30 am• Group 3 - 12.00 pm

• The Significance of Objects/Re-Membering Places (Fact and Fiction): Bring along a personal object (not a photo) or think of a place from your past.