09-08-2014, 05:54 PM
This may be a topic that has been brought up before, or gets brought up a lot, or never gets brought up at all, I don't really know. But it's something that's been on my mind a lot recently.
For those of you who don't know what "death of the author" is, click here. In short, it was an essay written in the 60's about how only by completely ignoring the creator can the art be truly free to interpretation (for more eloquence and depth, read the link, honestly).
I hadn't really thought too much about it until recently. Before, I've always looked at the art in context of the artist. Here's an example:
I've played piano since I was six. When I was a teenager, my piano teacher wanted me to play this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2nfwY1wjeA
Before I did, she gave me some context on it. I'll give you a hint: there's a reason why it says "Auschwitz Requiem" at the beginning. Although this song wasn't performed at Auschwitz, it was performed at one of the many Nazi concentration camps. When I knew that, I thought it helped me understand the song more. The discordance, the lack of any real stable meter, the chaos. To me the song made sense because I knew the composer's life.
Then I started getting a bit into art, and being the "ooh look how edgy I am" teenager, I was really fascinated by Rothko (I still am, he's my favourite). If you are unfamiliar with him, look him up. His most popular works are abstract 'multiforms'. In essence, they're coloured squares. During this period of his art, he said this quote:
"To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command!"
I'd not viewed art in that way before. I was used to the Van Gogh where you observe a scene from his eye. I was used to the Picasso were you observed all of the perspectives. I wasn't used to Rothko though, where you no longer observed, but you were enveloped by the painting. If you've seen a Rothko in person, you'll know this feeling. He recommended that viewers stand about eighteen inches from his paintings in order to truly become part of the painting.
So that got me thinking about what art was and how it was meant to be observed (art of course refers to all the arts, not just paintings).
Now I'm starting to expand my musical tastes more. They've always been pretty broad, but I'm starting to get more and more interested in the EDM (electronic) family. Because so much of EDM doesn't have melodies, or harmonies, or chord progressions, or other conventional musical structures, I find it to be a very different experience. Instead of being able to tell "oh this is a happy song, because I can how the musician used major keys to create an uplifting theme, and he wrote happy lyrics, etc", I think "how does this particular rhythm make me feel? How does the use of that sample make me feel?" Because the music was so, almost foreign to me, I was able to listen to it without any thought toward the composers, because I didn't know anything about them, because they often don't put themselves in their work like conventional musicians do (again through lyrics, etc).
(Man this is a bit more wordy than I intended. Sorry.)
Although Rothko wasn't necessarily a preacher of 'death of the author', I think in some ways he was a bridge for me to get there. I went from thinking about what the art meant to the artist, to thinking about what the artist wanted me to think, to eventually some vague point around 'death of the author': what do I get from this. Completely ignoring the artist/poet/author, what does this piece of art mean to me?
I don't know if I'm a 100% 'disciple' of the 'death of the author' philosophy. i still love that piano sonata because I know what Gideon Klein was experiencing at that time. But on the other hand, I find art (again I use the blanket term, not just paintings) to be much more personal, enjoyable, and accessible when I completely separate it from the artist.
So what are your thoughts? When you read poetry, do you read it with 'death of the author' in mind? Do you think it's an appropriate way to interpret art? What do you think of it? etc etc.
sorry for the awkward wording, scattered ideas, and whatnot. It's late at night and I just wrote this in one go, pretty much how it all went through my head. So yeah.
For those of you who don't know what "death of the author" is, click here. In short, it was an essay written in the 60's about how only by completely ignoring the creator can the art be truly free to interpretation (for more eloquence and depth, read the link, honestly).
I hadn't really thought too much about it until recently. Before, I've always looked at the art in context of the artist. Here's an example:
I've played piano since I was six. When I was a teenager, my piano teacher wanted me to play this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2nfwY1wjeA
Before I did, she gave me some context on it. I'll give you a hint: there's a reason why it says "Auschwitz Requiem" at the beginning. Although this song wasn't performed at Auschwitz, it was performed at one of the many Nazi concentration camps. When I knew that, I thought it helped me understand the song more. The discordance, the lack of any real stable meter, the chaos. To me the song made sense because I knew the composer's life.
Then I started getting a bit into art, and being the "ooh look how edgy I am" teenager, I was really fascinated by Rothko (I still am, he's my favourite). If you are unfamiliar with him, look him up. His most popular works are abstract 'multiforms'. In essence, they're coloured squares. During this period of his art, he said this quote:
"To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command!"
I'd not viewed art in that way before. I was used to the Van Gogh where you observe a scene from his eye. I was used to the Picasso were you observed all of the perspectives. I wasn't used to Rothko though, where you no longer observed, but you were enveloped by the painting. If you've seen a Rothko in person, you'll know this feeling. He recommended that viewers stand about eighteen inches from his paintings in order to truly become part of the painting.
So that got me thinking about what art was and how it was meant to be observed (art of course refers to all the arts, not just paintings).
Now I'm starting to expand my musical tastes more. They've always been pretty broad, but I'm starting to get more and more interested in the EDM (electronic) family. Because so much of EDM doesn't have melodies, or harmonies, or chord progressions, or other conventional musical structures, I find it to be a very different experience. Instead of being able to tell "oh this is a happy song, because I can how the musician used major keys to create an uplifting theme, and he wrote happy lyrics, etc", I think "how does this particular rhythm make me feel? How does the use of that sample make me feel?" Because the music was so, almost foreign to me, I was able to listen to it without any thought toward the composers, because I didn't know anything about them, because they often don't put themselves in their work like conventional musicians do (again through lyrics, etc).
(Man this is a bit more wordy than I intended. Sorry.)
Although Rothko wasn't necessarily a preacher of 'death of the author', I think in some ways he was a bridge for me to get there. I went from thinking about what the art meant to the artist, to thinking about what the artist wanted me to think, to eventually some vague point around 'death of the author': what do I get from this. Completely ignoring the artist/poet/author, what does this piece of art mean to me?
I don't know if I'm a 100% 'disciple' of the 'death of the author' philosophy. i still love that piano sonata because I know what Gideon Klein was experiencing at that time. But on the other hand, I find art (again I use the blanket term, not just paintings) to be much more personal, enjoyable, and accessible when I completely separate it from the artist.
So what are your thoughts? When you read poetry, do you read it with 'death of the author' in mind? Do you think it's an appropriate way to interpret art? What do you think of it? etc etc.
sorry for the awkward wording, scattered ideas, and whatnot. It's late at night and I just wrote this in one go, pretty much how it all went through my head. So yeah.