A 2 A.M. Conversation with T.G., a visual artist and writer, on art, interpretation, and two-fisted justice:
LK: Speaking of art…
TG: Yes?
LK: I went to an exhibit opening last night. There were four pieces on display — two were plastic bags encased in lightboxes, one was a short string of lights suspended from the ceiling.
TG: Hmm.
LK: …and the biggest piece was three plastic bags attached to a rotating electric fan.
TG: I’m not sure I get it.
LK: The artist was someone I like personally, who seems neither an idiot nor a charlatan. But this was the neon sign inside my head: “WTF.” And all these people were gathered around, eating finger foods and talk talk talking, as if we were not celebrating an exhibit that looked thrown together in less than an afternoon, made up of essentially junk… which I guess describes many installations.
TG: Was there some sort of artist’s statement?
LK: There was a long essay on a flyer, which was a pain to read. I stopped trying after a paragraph. I guess it’s a comment on the economy or poverty or something similar.
TG: Yeah… it gets hard to tell sometimes.
LK: But I guess difficulty of execution can’t always — or even ever — be your gauge of art either.
TG: Ha, ha! It’s like… my mom keeps complaining that the only opera anyone ever stages here is La Boheme.
LK: I’m just glad I didn’t have to write about it.
TG: I think the artists are just waiting for someone to punch them.
LK: THAT COULD BE ME! OR YOU!!!
TG: Ha, ha. Yes!
LK: We could go around these exhibits punching artists.
TG: Yes. In some sort of costume perhaps.
LK: We could buy cool brass knuckles. And an Artmobile.
TG: Ha, ha. they’ll be on the ground blubbering about how they absolutely promise to use pretty colors next time.
LK: “I… I promise… Next time I’ll spend more than 10 minutes on the concept…”
TG: “And… I’ll reexamine it when I’m sober!”
LK: “SEE THAT YOU DO!” (Adds another kick for emphasis.)
TG: I’m sure your friend had some sincere motive, though.
LK: Yeah, I think so. Which is why he escaped my brass fists of justice.
TG: Ha, ha, lucky for him! And interesting things are possible, I suppose, with plastic bags. It’s just that artists learn to have a bit of a chip on their shoulder in school.
LK: About? The validity of their ideas?
TG: Well, they just expect everyone to be so stupid about art. So if they do something that people don’t get, they can always just revert to thinking people are stupid. But what’s the point, really?
LK: Ah, interesting. So does it become like a game of evading interpretation?
TG: Well, people have been debating whether interpretation is really possible, anyway. Which leaves the artist in rather a tight spot, really.
LK: So we come back to your question, which is what the point is.
TG: Well, so far it’s occurred to me that maybe you must be really, really convinced of something. Or be really struck by something that for some reason people need to see. But there are no real formats to follow anymore, in media as well as in thought, so artists are pretty much doomed to do whatever they think will get a rise out of people.
LK: …in which case it would really matter to you whether people “got it.”
TG: One would think, right?
LK: That may account for the exhibit I saw last night, then.
TG: Or a rise out of themselves. I honestly don’t know any more.
LK: Punching people is so much simpler.
TG: Ha, ha yes. It’s a much more cathartic response to poverty, anyway.
SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS CONVERSATION: Someone Else Can Make a Work of Art by First Rate People (available for free download online at their Bandcamp page); When I Go Out With Artists by Crash Test Dummies (from the underrated album “God Shuffled His Feet”); and Modern Art by Art Brut.