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Comment by ompogUe | Hacker News Reader

This! Many, many times I have talked to artists or read their statements, and seen that they are totally out of touch with how to actually communicate with their art. If you tell me your intentions for a piece, what you are trying to communicate, and coming at the piece without that information I see nothing to do with your intentions, you have failed. And the saddest part is when they have expectations that the audience will understand (or care) that all of the "meaning" they are trying to convey falls flat without the words.

I tend to go around the galleries without reading titles or statements. I get more out of it making my own meaning from your work, while being able to pay closer attention to formal qualities.

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> they are totally out of touch with how to actually communicate with their art

It sounds like you have a preference for a particular kind of art, and you’re expecting all artists to conform to that preference.

> If you tell me your intentions for a piece, what you are trying to communicate, and coming at the piece without that information I see nothing to do with your intentions, you have failed

This again seems to come from an expectation that all artists produce a particular kind of work. It’s possible that they’ve failed if measured against that particular preference, but that failure is relative to the preference.

To me, a piece that requires context and explanation is just another genre of work, and it’s a genre I appreciate. It can reveal that the creation journey often looks nothing like the finished product, and for many artists, the value of the work comes primarily from the process of expression.

This doesn’t have to be your cup of tea. But neither does it make the work a failure.

Yes, you are correct, it doesn't make the work a failure. However, with my practice and my intentions, I personally do think I have failed if I need a statement to explain the piece. In addition to contemporary audiences, I like to think of how future archaeologists might interpret an artifact, without any explicit context.

> To me, a piece that requires context and explanation is just another genre of work, and it’s a genre I appreciate. It can reveal that the creation journey often looks nothing like the finished product, and for many artists, the value of the work comes primarily from the process of expression.

I can get behind this. The issue for me is that artists who rely too heavily on their statements to impart meaning might be limiting themselves in their visual vocabulary and the conversation. Having known people who get upset when they are trying to convey very specific concepts outlined in their statement, but audience members choose to interpret it differently, the failure, to me, is within them, not the piece.

Part of my problem might be that when I was starting out, the only places in a gallery available for words was the name of the show and the title.

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