Steve’s previous post made me think about mystery and ambiguity in art, particularly as they help to create meaning. And his image reminded me of this recent image I made as part of my “Unholy Gost” series. I use ambiguous spaces and images in this series of paintings.
I talk to my students about the difference between “deliberate ambiguity” and disorganized confusion. While I encourage the happy accidents that occur in the process of creation, it can sometimes be an excuse to leave a piece unfinished, unclear and incoherent. Beginning students often want to make images that deal with the idea of chaos, but end up making disorganized messes. Mysterious images can so easily be so ambiguous as to be unreadable with no entry way into the work.
These can be pitfalls of art making. How can you tell if ambiguity is purposeful or if it reflects lack of clarity on the artist’s part?
Have you explored ambiguity in your own work? What are the challenges you face when doing so? Do you have any favorite artists who use ambiguity successfully?
PS – I tried to make the image larger, I swear, and the best I could do was a thumbnail you can enlarge. Anyone can go in and fix it if they are so inclined. I apologize for my ineptitude.
Hopefully I’ve fixed the image problem, but not in the way I expected. Please comment if anything looks peculiar with your browser. Now, on to think about the questions…
I think of ambiguity, in the positive sense, as something that can be read two or more ways.
If I have no idea how to read something (either meaning-wise or spatially), then for me it’s just disorganized confusion. But if I see something and think, well it could be this or it could also be that, then the ambiguity is potentially a plus.
Leslie,
I really like how you’ve integrated the window with Oscar’s eyes. The fact that a window is for seeing out or letting light in, the “eyes are the windows of the mind” concept, the white of the eye relating to the white sky out the window: all these make it clear there is deliberate ambiguity here. Being deliberate, it must be an important part of what you’re saying with this picture. That I haven’t entirely worked that out is not detrimental, rather it’s intriguing enough that I want to keep coming back to it. As David said, if I hadn’t been able to see any possible reason for the ambiguity, it would have failed for me.
I love ambiguity at the right level, and I definitely think about it in my own work. To me, visual ambiguity is roughly equivalent to metaphor in writing. It’s also connected with abstraction, moving away from the single clear referent. I’m not coming up with good examples of practitioners off the top of my head, but maybe I’ll think of some later.
Oh, and thanks for the mention of my photograph. I’m flattered. ;-)
I like the green arm, the leafy fur, the swayed hip and eyebrowed skirt, the silly crankiness of Oscar, the important phone conversation, the partially cloudy sky, the white and orange and white and blue and white something, the glass and glass, etc. It is nicely over-whelming.
What a great picture! It grips me. I want to keep looking at it.
Thanks, Steve, for fixing the image. It looks fine on my screen. I don’t know where my glitch is (user error for sure) but one day I will figure it out!
I like your observation of the eyes and the window and the white to the sky. I hadn’t noticed it. I actually sold this one in a show last year and the paint was still wet practically, so I haven’t looked at it a lot.
The connection of ambiguity to metaphor is also one I hadn’t made, although it makes sense when you say it. Metaphors often (or always?) refer to more than one thing…
David,
You said more clearly what I was trying to say about needing a clue as to how to read something before the ambiguity is a positive aspect of the work. The trick there is there will be clues for some viewers and not others, right? Well, you can’t please everyone:)
D.,
Thanks for the thoughts! I didn’t notice the eyebrow skirt, and I am tickled you noticed the person is on the phone. Many people have trouble even finding the figure, which is fascinating to me. Or they find other things like birds or Noah’s Ark (no kidding).
Birgit,
thanks. Keep looking and let me know what you see!
Leslie,
I also like how the green arm at the shoulder defines the figure as having her back to us, looking out the window. I think a good painting, or any artwork, provides quiet details such as this.
Leslie
What I feel, so far, is the rhythm and dancing. Perfect for San Louis, notable for its jazz.
I think of the cliche: If you do it once, it’s an accident, if you do it again, it’s an improvisation.
Accident is my friend. I depend upon it to create my most compelling images. The point is to recognize that you’re letting into your process a degree of uncontrollability, but that you manage it. Incoherant results are not the end result, because there is an editor at work who is judging the aftermath. I leave room in my process to fail a lot, and I cull a lot as a result. This is often how I find the compelling new road that I then follow with a measure of discipline.
Leslie,
I’m intrigued by your comment about deliberate ambiguity and disorganized confusion. With students, that’s a particularly important distinction. However, like David, I think on a ‘higher” level it might be false — what is ambiguous to one viewer may be quite clear to another. It is there that serendipity comes into play. When your art works on many levels, there are perhaps other levels that you can’t explain. They may be the levels that someone else, who thinks and looks with care, can make sense of.
The difficulty, of course, is to make sure the organization works on enough levels that it doesn’t feel like a disorganized mess. And knowing the difference between a mess and a truly wonderful chaos.
Accident — David has it. And Culling. Which is what you were trying to get students to comprehend.
As usual, I’m interested in the interplay between viewer and artist and the work itself — that’s where riches lie for me.
It’s one reason why reading I always read Birgit carefully.
I apologize for inserting this irrelevancy here but I needed to tell you that A and P has been nominated for The Thinking Blog Award by yours truly.
This is a 21st century version of the Chain letter, but I didn’t resist it — the nomination is on Thursday’s southeastmain
Doug,
“I leave room in my process to fail a lot, and I cull a lot as a result. This is often how I find the compelling new road that I then follow with a measure of discipline.”
I love that! I also love the word cull:
According to Merriam Webster online
1 : to select from a group : CHOOSE
2 : to reduce or control the size of (as a herd) by removal (as by hunting) of especially weaker animals; also : to hunt or kill (animals) as a means of population control
Both definitions are interesting although the second is a bit Darwinian. But maybe ruthlessness is required in weeding out the “weak” images, ideas, etc. I will use this idea of culling to further try to talk to my students about this process. While I do not want them to edit themselves prematurely (this leads to what I call artistic constipation), I do want them to develop a critical eye for what comes out (after it is out). My challenge has been how to encourage them to make the mistakes, churn through the work and disappointment of that and get to the other side.
Are the failures and accidents and spirit of experimentation more inevitable in photography than other media in which the hand can so carefully control? I try to “trick” my students into letting go of that control…
I’d like to hear your thoughts about the “measure of discipline” that follows. What does that look like in your process?
June,
“As usual, I’m interested in the interplay between viewer and artist and the work itself — that’s where riches lie for me.”
Me too. I love to read artist interviews and journals for that reason. I would have never looked twice at an Ann Truitt sculpture if it were not for her wonderful writings. I still don’t like them much, but I have a new appreciaiton for them.
I subscribe to a concept of ‘meaningful abstraction’. This work has strong elements of that – as soon as the viewer is given the first cue, the work starts to resonate strongly bringing out stronger underlying details. Whenever abstraction spills over the trough of valid interpretations, it becomes disorganized confusion. I liked this work.