Saying Things

The relationship between art and words

I pay close attention to the words people use to describe art. Like most preoccupations, this interest in words feels equally innate and compulsive. Years ago, when I began working in art spaces, I developed a deeper fascination with the relationship between words and images.

I'd overhear a gallery associate rattle off an artist's concerns over the phone to someone planning to write about their work. I'd catch myself trying to spot the differences after an art advisor definitively declared one painting in a series better than another. I'd linger outside a gallery's private viewing room long enough to hear a partner enticing a collector into an acquisition by describing a work as museum quality. 

Back then, I thought of words as instructive. You don't want to say what a work is about; you allude to general concerns. You don't point out what makes one work better than another; you trust that your audience sees things the way you do, because that’s the way they are. A collector doesn't need to hear that a work will look great in their home or office; they want to imagine that they could own something worthy of an important museum's walls (or storage facility). 

Years of listening to people talk about art have made me aware of the difference between looking and seeing. Looking is the act of focusing your eyes on a thing, taking in its form and content. Seeing attempts to make sense or meaning from something witnessed. One is rooted in observation, and the other is rooted in understanding. 

On the left, I’m reading bell hooks’s book Art On My Mind which includes among many things, an illuminating essay about Jean-Michel Basquiat. On the right, I’m visiting the Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure exhibition in New York.

Words, both spoken and written, casual and scholarly, overheard and delivered directly, have been crucial to my understanding of art and have expanded my ability to see. They help resolve the endless mysteries of artistic creativity. 

While each edition of this newsletter could be described as a string of words about art, I think it makes sense to dedicate a portion of it specifically to examining the way words work with art. So in the future I’ll send out versions of this newsletter that focus on words.  

A Fictional Example 

At the beginning of episode three of the show Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Truman Capote visits an auction house. He's escorted by Babe Paley, the second wife of CBS executive Bill Paley. In the scene, an auction specialist presents two paintings for Babe's consideration: a seascape by Monet and a floral still life by Manet. After describing it as "alluring," Babe dismisses the Monet and spends her energy dissecting Manet's painting of two roses. She calls the work "breathtaking," marvels at Manet's "concentrated power," insists that the compact work has "so much wall power," and concludes "the Manet over the Monet."  

Édouard Manet, Two Rose, c. 1882 in MoMA’s collection, credited as part of the William S. Paley Collection.

The scene, meant to demonstrate Babe's studied appreciation of art and underscore her sophisticated taste, reinforces a widely held belief among art aficionados that Manet's work had a more significant impact on the course of art history, specifically the development of modern art, than Monet's. 

I did a little googling and discovered that this is another instance of the show taking liberties with the truth. In the show Bill is portrayed as someone with little interest in his wife’s art collecting activity. In real life, Bill Paley started collecting art years before he married Babe. He served as one of MoMA's first trustees in the late 1930s. He donated a significant portion of his collection, which consisted of works by artists like Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Francis Bacon, and Kenneth Noland, to the museum. Last year, Sotheby's auctioned a handful of still lives from the William S. Paley Collection by Picasso, Henri Rousseau, and Pierre Bonnard. Sadly, no Manet. 

An installation shot of a 1992 exhibition at MoMA of The William S. Paley Collection. Artists shown: George Regal, Arman, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Al Held.

An Example from the Field 

I went to see Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys at the Brooklyn Museum a few Sundays ago. Much more to say about that later, but for now, I'll share something I overheard while staring at a Deana Lawson photograph. While walking away from the pair of Lawson photographs in the exhibition, a guy told his female companion, "looking at this feels invasive…on my part." I pretended to take a picture but opened my notes app to type out what he'd said. On my part still rings in my ears. It seemed to acknowledge the responsibility viewers or consumers of art have in completing the artistic process. And in that way, it implied that something private or sacred had occurred between Lawson and her subjects, and here we were interrupting that, transgressing an imaginary boundary, invading a space we didn't have a clear invitation to. 

I won't attempt to describe what Lawson's photographs look like; better for you to see for yourself. But I will say that museum visitor's words captured my occasional sense of unease with Lawson's work. For me, encountering her photographs can feel like someone wanting to share some emotional or traumatic experience that I'm not sure I'm ready to process. I worry that what they have to say will haunt, burden, or upset me, but they're such a gifted storyteller that I decide to let them tell me anyway. 

Binky and Tony Forever, 2009. A familiar Lawson photograph for Blood Orange fans. The image served as the cover art for the musician’s 2016 album Freetown Sound.

The Extras

Last Thursday Artnews posted an image of Beyonce from the singer’s launch party for her haircare line to announce that marketing for her forthcoming album was projected on “major New York museums.” The next day it became clear that these projections (on the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the New Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design) were not authorized by the museums. I felt a sense of relief knowing that this wasn’t sanctioned but I find it disappointing that some art media outlets gleefully reported this coming together of celebrity and art institutions rather than grappling with what it means for museum facades to become glorified billboards.

Have you said, heard, or read anything interesting about art lately? I'd love to know. 

Until next time.