Wednesday, June 1, 2011

POVs as structure in poetry

Feel free to dismiss this as pedantic rambling.
Poem the Second has got me thinking about the following:
Multiple Points of View within a piece of art.

1st person, 2nd person narrative, various characters within plus the artist's personal view, these all are potential POVs.
To be thorough, the viewer must account for all POVs. The more abstract or minimalist, the greater the possibility for the viewer's imagination to create POVs that were not considered by the artist (I suppose).
Is the artist using the work to argue a position? Ultimately how removed can the personal views of the artist be for any given work? Can the viewer actually know the intention of the artist in regard to the desire to express their (the artist's) personal view? To embrace a work the viewer must be willing to accept at least one of multiple POVs (I suppose). It's a commitment, because the viewer then invests in objective/subjective train of thought and comes away with some emotional response.
When experiencing art, it's a noble struggle to hit our internal 'reset button'. To re-evaluate, re-experience from a different POV. Don't let it keep hanging on the wall because it's a consistent 'home' for your psyche. Follow up on some ambiguity or alternate POV and re-experience it. Try to draw out of others what their experience is, add that to the list of the many ways you can see it.
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4 comments:

  1. I may be in over my head, but let me say this with regard to your comment "When experiencing art, it's a noble struggle to hit our internal 'reset button'. To re-evaluate, re-experience from a different POV." I think something like that recently happened to me. I was in NYMOMA in March looking at some Pollacks as part of the Abstract Expressionism show. I have always been suspicious of JP; like maybe his drip and/or abstract paintings were some kind of a "trick", and critics and fans had perhaps read too much into them. At any rate, I was next to one painting - I forget which one - and there was a plaque on the wall with a JP quote (the quote was from 1951 or 52, as i recall). And part of the quote was, give or take, (with regard to that painting), "This was the only way I could express what's going on in the world, here in the age of radio and atomic bombs." So I looked at the painting again and immediately saw it differently - not as a trick at all, but as a pure expression of emotion. With regard to Pollack I'd hit my internal reset button, and i look at his whole ouevre now in a new light. Am I at least getting some of what you are talking about, Bryan?

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  2. That magical hinge that opens the door. I remember once, Mike, someone we both know looked up at a reproduction of a Rothko painting that hung in the Pacheco Ave house and said, "Well, at least it's in Christmas colors!" and I thought, wow, a painting that meant a great deal to me, a whole history of looking at it. It had even had something to do with a short piece of prose that I had written. For this other person it was totally meaningless. Rather than trigger negative feelings toward this other person, it made me think, I wonder how many invisible hinges there are waiting for me in Contemporary art. Experiences like this have led me to look again at artists like Donald Judd or Keith Haring that are very difficult for me. Yesterday, in the calendar my daughter's school puts out every year I saw the most extraordinary sculpture, so evocative and meaningful in an immediate sense. It was done by 7th graders and the title was, "Ladders. Inspired by Keith Haring" Lastly, I was waiting backstage to congratulate a friend who is a master choreographer and dancer, on his latest solo piece, which had moved me deeply but which would end up in my saying to him "Congratulations. Thanks!" Before I got to him, his elderly mother stepped up to him, took his face in both of her hands, kissed him tenderly, and said with all the compassion in the world, "Honey, you aren't understood, are you?"....I started crying.

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  3. First of all, welcome, George! Second, i apologize for spelling Jackson Pollock's name Pollack. I promise to try harder in the future. (More to come on George's comment hopefully tomorrow...)

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  4. And now we have a Rothko reproduction up in our living room. Actually, I was at SFMOMA today and saw the original of our reproduction just minding it's own business on one of the gallery walls - 'Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960' (114 and one half inches by 105 and five eights inches). Danielle has been the one that's pointed me in the direction of my invisible hinges. Her touchstones are Emily D, Gertrude S, Mr. Rothko, Joseph Cornell, and Louis Bourgeois (among others). Now I'm suddenly looking at Joan Mitchell ab ex canvasses and thinking 'oh my god, that's beautiful', as opposed to the suspicious ways i might have viewed them in the past (a la my previous reference to J Pollock above). Also, in a gallery in NYC maybe a year ago or so i saw some VERY naughty Keith Harings, which made me like him even more, somehow.

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