***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
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   [Date]: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 09:50:34 -0800
   [From]: Britta Erickson <britta2@leland.Stanford.EDU>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@hkw.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Curators, and interpreting art

Dear friends,

Throughout this forum, almost since the beginning, there have been
disdainful comments about curators.  I have thought about addressing those
comments, but haven't been quite sure whether or not I wish to open that
whole can of worms.  This morning, two forum contributions in my e-mail
finally combine to make me take the plunge.  First we have Juan's remark
"Curators, in an ideal world,  are supposed to know how to contextualize
this type of situations, instead they follow the path of finding the
"best"."  And then Raul's questions about how people can understand art.

I think there are some bad curators out there, just as there are some bad
artists, and some bad everythings.  There are people who do not properly
invest themselves in their work, whatever it may be, or who lack the
talents, skills, magical spark, etc necessary for their work.  But there
are good curators, too.  Curators can provide a service to both artist and
audience, if they can act as effective advocates for the artists and
interpreters for the audience.  They should be able to do this in a
non-intrusive way, too, so as not to come between the audience and the
direct experience of the work of art.  And the curator or critic should be
able to point out to the audience the process that gave birth to the work
of art--if process is important to a particular piece.  I am sorry if some
of the artists participating in the forum have had unpleasant experiences
with bad curators.

How do audiences connect with works of art?  This is a question of great
interest to me, since I write in English, for an English-speaking audience,
about Chinese art.  This puts me in the questionable position of
interpreting a culture into which I was not born.  But having said that, I
know that I understand the art I am interpreting better than the average
Chinese person would understand it.  A while ago a Chinese critic wrote an
article saying that Westerners cannot understand Chinese art.  Here is part
of my reply to him:

"First of all, I abhor the notion that only Chinese people can understand
Chinese art.  That is a completely ridiculous idea.  You can't limit things
in that way.  Would you say that only people from Sichuan can understand
Sichuanese art?  Can only women understand art created by women?  Can only
people in their 20's understand art created by people in their 20's?  Can
only a twenty-year-old woman from Sichuan understand art created by
twenty-year-old women from Sichuan?  Can only Ms. X understand art created
by Ms. X?  (And she may not actually understand what she has created.)
When you narrow things down in an extreme fashion like this, you realize
that it is an absurd thing to do in the first place.

"Artists anywhere in the world are creating their real art (not the art
they make to earn a living, like endless Mao's or beautiful Tibetan women
or whatever) for a very small circle of people who understand it.  In my
experience, artists don't care very much about the nationality of the
people in their audience.  And in China, aside from Zhao Bandi--whose art
is displayed in the Beijing subways-- and Zhang Dali--who sprays his heads
all over Beijing-- the average citizen never sees "Avant-Garde" art.  So I
would say that, in general, Chinese people do not understand Chinese
Avant-Garde art.  No general population anywhere understands it."

Once an artist finishes a work of art, its meaning can evolve.  Different
audiences will bring different perspectives to the work of art, and if it
is an open-ended enough piece, the audience can make it relevant to their
particular experiences.  (Of course, some art is about universal
experience, and then anyone can instantly connect with it.)  Some artists I
know enjoy seeing the metamorphosis a work of art can undergo as it travels
through space and time.  I think this is a process that happens to a work
of art AFTER the process the artist experiences in creating it.

I could say a lot more, but I imagine I will get enough criticism for
having said this much, so I will stop here.

Very sincerely,

Britta

Britta Erickson, PhD
66 Peter Coutts Circle
Stanford, CA  94305
U.S.A.

britta2@leland.Stanford.edu
FAX/Phone:  (650) 857-1007

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/art/china/