I’ve described Narrative gaps as one of the most powerful ideas that I’ve come across for helping to understand why people like certain artworks and not others.
The idea first surfaced in a blog by Hugh Macleod. Hugh is a marketing man so the idea was expressly connected to selling, but can be applied to finding any sort of audience for any sort of product, including art, both commercial and non-commercial.
Broadly the idea goes that people will like your work if it fits into their story. They will like it a lot (maybe enough to buy it) if it helps fill out their story and make it more complete.
This is, perhaps, best explained by example. You make pictures of wild landscapes….your audience isn’t going to be made up of people who think that a short walk on Steatham Common is the closest to nature that they ever want to get. You will have more luck with people who choose to live in and around the wild places, but probably not much. Your best market would be people who think that they want to live in such wild places. You are in the story and you help them live it a little more than they could otherwise.
Please note that the actual artwork hasn’t yet been mentioned. You can show the same work to a petrolhead, a rock climber, a farmer, and a big city commuter who wants out, and get radically different reactions according to a complex mix of whether your work is in their story or out of it, and whether it fills a gap in that story or doesn’t.
Take this picture:
It is from this short series – you can see a larger version by following the link.
I’ve chosen that particular picture to display here because I once swapped a copy of it with Steve Durbin.
During the preparation of this article I asked Steve why he chose that picture and he kindly agreed to write about it:
I wanted that Allium print for three reasons. First, I wanted to study how you handled composition with a frame-filling subject, and how in-focus and out-of-focus elements played off each other. These were things I was struggling with in my own work (Sourdough Trail series). Second, I wanted it for my wall because I enjoyed the combination of softness and precision in the image, and the overall grace and lightness. And lastly, it represented a point of contact in my search for a community of serious photographers. I don’t think this makes a great example of a typical purchase for me, but if I were to put it in terms of “narrative gaps,” I would say that the print represented several things that the narrative of my artistic life was missing at the time.
Notice that only one of the three things that Steve mentions is directly connected to the image as an image. His first point is a craft point and his third point is a social one.
At its most basic, the narrative gap idea explains why postcards of sunsets sell. They can be tedious pictures. Indeed the buyers sometimes recognise them as such, but they can hit the buttons in terms of filling a gap in their lives. They want there always to be beautiful sunsets and they want to be the sort of person who gets up and goes out to notice. Paul Butzi has written more about this recently.
It can be instructive when looking at a piece of art to work out why it appeals, or doesn’t, in terms of your own story and any unfulfilled parts thereof. But it is more instructive to realise that the fact that you like an artwork and somebody else doesn’t says more about your respective personalities than it does about the artwork.
So, if all this means anything, what are the consequences? Well, it means that if you can spot a narrative gap shared by a large group of people and then produce something to fill it, you might sell quite a lot (let’s ignore the question about whether this stops it being art). Similarly, if you produce what you happen to want to produce but want to maximise your audience, then you have to work out what sort of person is likely to be in your audience. Chasing the wrong people will be frustrating, because such a small part of your success in finding an audience is directly related to the quality of your art.
And now back to the soap powder commercials.
Colin, this is a really fascinating idea. I’ve only had time so far to read the main text, and haven’t followed the links. But I’ll take a closer look when I get home later. Thanks!
Colin,
I think this is insightful and true for so many people.
Unfortunately, I also think that it reflects how self-indulgent and closed-minded our culture has become. I am always drawn to work that exists outside of my “narrative”, that extends my life experiences and challenges my conservative tendency. This probably explains my appreciation for reading History.
This looks like the beginning of a compelling theory of artistic value. It would help to clarify things if you showed how it applied to a wide variety of examples: different media, different genres, abstraction, etcetera. I would also be curious as to how you think narrative gap filling relates to quality in art (whatever that is). It seems as if quality has little place in your theory as is. Is it just a special ingredient that makes the work stick easier (or not)? Are some works stronger than others that fill essentially the same gap? And if value is mainly subjective, what is the role of public gatekeepers such as curators, gallerists, crtics and historians?
Is it a joke to pretend that there are standards of value or quality that transcend individuals?
Colin.
I was so self-absorbed with my own ideas that I forgot to share this: the series “Allium aflatunense” is wondrous.
And as best as I can tell, they fill no gap.
Colin,
This strikes me, even with all the questions and caveates that Arthur mentions, as one of those aha! moments of insight.
Earlier on A&P someone (Paul?) said, about paintings vis-a-vis photography, that if you came to an exhibit expecting paintings and you saw only photography, that that could be off-putting because it trifled with your expectations.
In many ways, before we approach art, we already have a narrative going for us — this is the gallery that specializes in…. this is the artist about whom it is said… this is the exhibit of….
I work in textiles, using some traditional quilting techniques. But people who are quilters or who are going to quilt shows often strongly resist my work. It doesn’t fulfill their narratives, which are generally about technique, attractiveness, and cultural/personal histories. From my point of view (my narrative) they don’t “get” my work. From their point of view, their narrative, my work violates the stories about grandma’s handwork and 4-h projects and loving hands at home.
However, if I have a chance to address such a group, as I have, my narratives can sometimes bring some of them around — the breakthrough is obvious when after the talk they come up to tell me how much more interesting my work is when they’ve heard me tell about it. I have re-set some of their narrative.
Now all the other problems still exist — mostly we don’t get to tell the narrative. Artist statements don’t get read, visual art is supposed to be somehow magically impressive, without text etc. and so forth.
But as a communication tool, the narrative of the work seems to me to be compelling. Marketing too, of course, but more important to me is the communication. It feels bad to make work that gets short shrift, not because the work is unworthy, but because it can’t be seen — the narrative of the artist is too obscure or isn’t recognized or the narrative that the viewer brings with her is too strong, too emphatic.
Now I recognize that this goes against the idea that art should speak for itself. But I’ve always felt that that idea came from a false sense of one’s own importance, or perhaps the importance of one’s own peer group. You know, the WASP-males of the 1950’s who knew precisely what should be included in the literary canon, the musical canon and so forth. It’s a circumscribed set of narratives that pretends to be universal.
Your idea of narrative puts a kinder and more interesting “spin” on our theoretical knowledge of cultural differences.
I don’t think this idea of narrative interferes with the idea of quality, but rather travels alongside it. The work will carry a context of other work like it, as well as a narrative that communicates. And part of the narrative is embedded in the work itself — using silk to embody craggy cliffs reads differently than using linen, just as photographing craggy cliffs reads differently than painting them. But the narrative, within the artist and the viewer, intersects with the work itself.
Oh lord, I just remembered a literary theory that set up a ven diagram, in which the work was the central circle and intersecting around it was The World, The Artist, and The Audience. I suspect that one could play with these in terms of narrative.
And your other allium photos are enchanting.
Colin,
The narrative gap concept, does that imply that art is communication, or should be?
I was discussing narrative gaps over dinner with a few friends. In fact I was discussing a number of concepts – The Arc of Communication, Narrative Gaps and Context Clashes. I have to admit that though I am a small proponent of the later, the Narrative Gap idea was awarded with the most nodding. Mind you, we had all been drinking.
JohnJo
Mind you, we had all been drinking.
The best way
Karl,
The narrative gap concept, does that imply that art is communication, or should be?
Um, I shoot a sunset thinking I’ll make a few quid from this sucker. You buy the sunset thinking I wish the world was always this beautiful. I see no communication.
D
And as best as I can tell, they fill no gap.
I make no claims for universality. I just find the NG idea a powerful tool of analysis. However, your:
I am always drawn to work that exists outside of my “narrative”, that extends my life experiences and challenges my conservative tendency.
isn’t an argument against the idea. If you value change and challenge then to engage your attention I would need to fill that part of your story. The same old same old may not push your buttons no matter how well done.
June,
I’m using the NG idea purely as an analysis tool about the audience. I suspect that the narrative of the creator and the narrative of the viewer needn’t intersect at all (as in my reply to Karl). I’ll give some more thought to what you’ve said during the day.
Arthur,
I nearly wrote a longer piece addressing some of the points that you raise (but it was late…). However, to quickly pick away at one aspect of it: the curators/buyers/trustees/directors of the big public galleries are one very specific audience and some artists aim very squarely at them. These people are very educated in the arts and tend to approach art from a very intellectual direction. Art fills a different role in their lives from the role it plays in the lives of the average museum visitor, let alone the average tax payer. This may explain some of the gap between what they choose and public opinion.
D/June
Thanks for the comments on the photos.
The combination of soft and sharply focused objects gives rise to an amazing tension. In the picture that you show, the seeds appear to be exploding at the viewer. I especially like the complexity of motion in picture 17.
Colin,
Excuse my lack of linear thinking.
1. Summer before last, I went with my young son to the Tate Modern. One piece we experienced was Nauman’s night-time video recreation of his studio. Before entering the room with video projections on all four walls, there is typed documentation of what will happen. It is very comprehensive. It would take too long to scan, but easily, one realizes that overall, not much will happen. Bruce will not be showing up. The drama being, mostly,
S-SW
…
Mouse in 20:13.24
Mouse out 20:17.38
…
We go in. And of course, we feel our impatience immediately. We walk around for awhile and then wait. A steady stream of vistiors pass through muttering “Boring”. Some stop, but only briefly. They are sort of right. My son, who is usually so patient with me, is clearly ready to go. He tugs at my hand. Instead, we wait some more. I feel a bit uneasy; it is becoming sort of… spooky. And then another kind of fear: what if the action is behind me or to the side and we miss it? More people wander through. Their mutterings or indifference feel more annoying, a break from the general quiet of Nauman’s studio and even, possibly a distraction from something actually happening. This is a funny realization. I lean down and whisper into my son’s ear: We need to be quiet if we ever want to see the Mouse. I think he believes me. We wait some more and just before we move on, my son says LOOK and there scampering along under an old wooden table is a nervous, sniffing mouse. And then, over by the door, a cat. And then, the mouse is gone.
Why do we pass by? Are we really so content with the ordinary?
I guess my feeling is that an audience applying NG is more likely to look at work for Reassurance. To have it fit in or as you wrote above– “it helps fill out their story and make it more complete.” As an inter-active model of learning (and living), isn’t such an approach too limiting? I think it is. Certainly we don’t want to simply read, say, Huckleberry Finn as merely an entertaining story of adventure. I am not dismissing NG; in fact it has been a useful measure for me to understand what it is I find most compelling.
2. BZ’s observation in #10 reminded me of this, from a piece by Kimmelman walking through the Met with the painter Wayne Thiebaud:
This drawing by de Kooning, he says, is ”one of the most extraordinary I’ve ever seen.”
”You see how de Kooning’s using a landscape metaphor, blurring the back edge of the bowl to make it look distant, even though it actually would have been as clear to him as the front edge?” he asks. This is a little hard to discern, but Mr. Thiebaud has a point to make: ”I don’t agree with Duchamp that the eye is a dumb organ. Duchamp talked about the eye of the mind. I think the eye has a mind of its own, and there are different ways we see: there’s peripheral vision, the myopic up-close sensation, focused seeing. And the more ways you can put together in a picture, as de Kooning does here, the richer it becomes, the more like life.”
“A Little Weirdness Can Help an Artist”
August 23, 1996. NYTimes.
Colin,
THis topic is incredibly rich and full of possiblities! It is hard to know where to start.
How about very small — my little world in one of my day jobs: Right now I am sitting in a cubicle with that grey carpeted walls that require special pins to hang anything on them. Sterile is too nice of a word for the atmosphere in this place. In fact the Chair of Pediatrics specifically forbids people to put art on the hallway walls! Unreal, even worse because I recently learned his wife is an artist!
So what do I surround myself with? A lot of lists and phone numbers for work. And then in a lot of the available space I have postcards hanging – mostly vintage postcards, the kind from the 40’s and 50’s you can find in junk shops – with the bright colors that don’t seem to exist anymore and off register printing. A lot of them are landscape or touristy, some are goofy like “the largest lemon tree in the world.” I like them for the colors mostly and their “off” quality. Then I have a postcard of a friend’s paintng, and Caillebotte’s “Floor Scrapers”
http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/caillebotte/CAG002.html
I have to be “professional” here and careful about what I put up, but I was determined to have stuff to look at besides the grey walls. I am thinking it will be revolving images.
So trying to apply the narrative gap idea to this small slice of my life (obviously this is not the art that I am most drawn to, but nonetheless these images resonate with me)..What gap do the nostalgic postcards fill? Vintage is so alluring to so many of us…is it a longing for the good ole days, a sentimentality about the way things were? So filling a loss? The Caillebotte painting reminds me of very physical things, the opposite of my sedentary job. I long to do jumping jacks here soemtimes – scraping a floor seems appealing too. And the painting is so rich, so as a painter I respond to what he does with form and a pretty limited palette.
THe painting by my friend reminds me of her. She lives far away and I miss her and I learn from this painting. It is very different from the way I paint — very systematic, almost rigid, but incredibly surprising things happen when I look at it over and over.
Ok, I have gone on too long, but as you can tell, I find this topic fascinating.
And I have a question for you and anybody:
How does completely non-objective art fit in this model? I notice people immediately look for things that do not fit the model, as if it is trying to be all-encompassing. I don’t think of it that way, more as a very thought provoking idea.
But a Rothko, a Clyford Still (sp?), a Motherwell…how do those gestures, feelings, ideas, pure paint fill gaps as well?
PS – love the series of photos as well. I have no idea what part of my story they fill…
I totally agree with you Colin. I’ve spent 16 years selling loads of different designs and from a commercial point of view all the best sellers are of local scenes and pictures of people’s hobbies or pets. People who like cats buy cat pictures. People who play cricket buy cricket pictures. They buy the pictures because they illustrate their interests. I think that’s a good thing. However there are people who are into art who appreciate things like the subtlety of shading. They’ll buy a picture for the shading.So I’d say you’re right but you can’t predict the customers interests. You do your work and the customers respond if it fits their lifestyle.
Macleod may have originated the term “narrative gaps,” but according to Google, Colin owns it now. I think it’s one of those ideas that’s very powerful, but also very slippery. I can see at least three ways for an artist to use it: 1) Identify a market, figure out an important narrative gap there, and make art to fill it; 2) Understand how the art you do could fit someone’s narrative or gap therein, and adapt your marketing to reach them; 3) Have such a powerful, original vision that you create gaps, or cause your viewers to feel them where they never would have otherwise.
The spectrum of art “viewers” is very wide (and perhaps somewhat shallow). But even the so-called sophisticated collector has a narrative, often embodied in the labels that high-end art achieves — the YBAs, Slow Art,Miami-Basel, and so forth. These labels are part of an in-group narrative. Other groups have their own narrative — nice doggies, why can’t art be beautiful? or whatever.
And of course you can pony up a narrative for the specific audience, and if that’s good for paying the rent, that’s good. But for me, the point is in the making of the narrative so it comes out of the art andalso speaks to the group. It’s not dummying down, but rather bringing along, educating people about what’s in my head.
Or,in a different perspective, the narrative that someone else speaks of in viewing a work of art will trigger a whole set of partial stories in my mind. Birgit’s comment about the exploding seeds of the allium, combined with the sharp and misty foci, bring me to a narrative that involves seeds that literally fly in all directions when they are touched. Her small narrative about the kinds of foci in the photos got me to thinking about how to focus my mind and my eye — not how to produce art, but how to think, maintaining the primary idea but surrounding it with the richness of context.And then returning to the allium photos, I found they had an additional richness of visual metaphor as well as literal vision.
I like Steve’s comment “Have … a powerful original vision.” And bring it to the viewers so they can share something of it, both through your words and your visual art.
There’s a generosity involved in sharing your thoughts as well as your art, and a kind of meanness in refusing to reveal the narrative.
June:
Reading your writing is an absolute pleasure.
D,
I enjoyed your anecdote.
As an inter-active model of learning (and living), isn’t such an approach too limiting?
Yes, very limiting, but then most of the world doesn’t want to read Huck Finn at all let alone worry about whether it is just a story.
Leslie,
Thanks for the comments on the photos.
Regarding non-objective art: I feel that it is possible to explain the appeal of the artists that you mention in terms of the NG idea. But any such analysis wouldn’t necessarily be right, nor would success in analysis prove that NG was an overarching theory. It is just useful.
John,
Generally I agree, although there are exceptions. Certain themes appeal to large groups in predictable ways. Equally, those themes are unlikely to appeal to the judges of the Turner Prize.
June,
I’m sorry but I don’t get the point about the overlap between what the creator thinks and what the viewer thinks.
Would you feel any different about the Alliums if you knew that it was just a hardware test? Pure Geekery?
And your:
There’s a generosity involved in sharing your thoughts as well as your art, and a kind of meanness in refusing to reveal the narrative.
is awfully presumptive. And I think bad advice for anybody in search of an audience. As this whole article is based on an idea of Hugh Macleod’s here is another of his ideas: there is no demand for messages.
Steve,
Thanks for letting me quote you.
Have such a powerful, original vision that you create gaps, or cause your viewers to feel them where they never would have otherwise.
Now that would be success indeed.
Wow, Colin, I tested out Steve’s claim, and you do own “narrative gaps” in Googleland! (I believed him, but I still had to see for myself).
I think Steve’s 3 scenarios cover a lot of ground, and I’d like to propose a fourth, which I’ve discovered by showing my own work. And it relates to his post today.
4.) Do non-objective, visually ambiguous work that grows out of your own explorations, and then have people tell you what they see. The art in this case acts more as a gap-finder than a gap-filler. I’ve been experiencing this when I show my linoleums. People see all kinds of things that I never would have guessed.
And I suppose smart marketers could use this information. For instance, if someone read my interpretation of Steve’s photo today, and they called me up and offered me a chocolate chip cookie w/ white chocolate chips, well they’d be pretty much guaranteed a sale.
David,
I think the ultimate ‘gap finder’ would be the blank canvas/white square on a white ground type work.
A viewer’s comments would tell you a lot about the state of their imaginiation, and what subjects are important to them. It also might tell you a lot about their relationship with art in general.
I’m not sure that a white square on a white ground would come over too well on the net though. Hello, this page isn’t loading. Click.
I think the ultimate ‘gap finder’ would be the blank canvas/white square on a white ground type work.
I agree, though you’d also get people thinking you’re bullshitting them, which is what many people already think about much contemporary art. So they’d be reacting out of their distrust rather than really using their imagination.
But if people think there really is something there they’ll try to find it.
D. — ah shucks. Thanks.
Colin, I guess I think there’s usually some overlap between what the viewer thinks and what the artist thinks — this is blue, that is black, this is a shape, that is a line. If your point is that when there isn’t likely to be much overlap in abstract conversations and ideas about some art (much of abstract art that expresses inner selves, for example) you make up a story to entertain the viewers in order to get their money — well, yes, I guess you can do that.
Seen that way, it’s clear that’s why “there is no demand for messages.”
If I read Hugh MacLeod’s info correctly, he posits that we as consumers are fed up with TV advertising (other kinds, too). The made up stories about objects becomes exceedingly tiresome, particularly because they are made up and because there may well be no connection between what the audience gets and what the story tells us (you know the kind of thing — this lemon of a car will bring you sex, youth, and happiness).
But my point lies, I hope, outside advertising or even enticing to buy. I think your idea of the narrative is swell because I think people love narratives — even when they are meant to sell stuff but more when they are ways of looking at and/or explaining the world.
I have nothing against making use of the narrative to sell your art — but I think its usage can go beyond that.
And it’s a way to connect viewer and artist, which seems to me to be A Good Thing. Maybe that’s where we differ. I like connections; hell, I’m even in favor of communication.
It’s true that I am being presumptuous about the stinginess that I see in artists refusing to say anything about their art. But aren’t they being more presumptuous (maybe it takes one to know one )? That is, the artist who sits on her pedestal and says either you like it or not, either you understand it or not, tells me that if I want to know more, I’m stupid.
Well, having something of an ego myself, I fight back a bit when confronted with that.
Now I do know that for some artists, the pain of dealing with words is so great that to ask for a narrative from them is to tell them to hit themselves over the head with wet noodles. I respect this disability; I just don’t see it as a virtue.
And I do think that the allium speaks well enough that as soon as Birgit said “explosion” I said “yes.” If it were pure geekery, and she said “explosion,” I think I would have said “yes.” And probably gone on a rift about plants that “explode” when you touch them. Which is to say what you said, I suppose, that there would have been little connection between the narrative I set myself up with and the geek object-du-jour. Maybe your narrative about the presumptive Geekery would have set me on an entirely different narrative. Why refuse me that pleasure?
If Colin had just been only been doing a lens test, he probably wouldn’t have set it up to look like you’re in a bursting firework. I’m not saying he was aiming for that particular effect, but I think he experiments with symmetry and liked this result well enough to post it. Anyway, this is just to say you might be interested in previous long discussions on “Art and Communication” and “Compelling Fictions,” if you haven’t come across them already. Colin strongly resists the notion of “art as communication” and expresses himself clearly there. Not that the matter is settled…
I totally agree about narratives connecting artist and viewer, whatever their exact relation to the work of art. That’s not just good marketing, it’s sincere human contact.
Colin,
As an addendum (and because I thought the post above had been lost so I was rereading your material), I was puzzled by your query about the overlap between viewer and artist — the assumption, I suppose, is that there is some shared ground between the two — they are both human, for example, and presumably have eyes with which to see and so forth.
So when I read your post about the “gap” I was presuming that it wasn’t an abyss or a chasm over which one could only lay a fabrication. Bridging the gap has to have the art itself as its foundation and cantilever (sorry about the metaphorical excess) out from that to reach the viewer, via your narrative.
Is that making sense?
Thanks, Steve, for sending me back to materials that I read quickly when I first came to A&P. The nuances of those discussions, not to mention their evolution, made my eyes spin a bit when I tried to read them to get a feel for the discussion.
However, I made my way to the Minor White essay on Equivalences, which I found thoroughly involving and very much of its time. It struck me that out of some of his sentiments (which must have been widespread at the time) evolved the abstract expressionists who claimed their only subject matter was paint itself. This allowed the Equivalence to go off on its own without reference to the art or artist — and lots of philistines got identified when they expressed equivalents.
I’m not sure where that came from; I admit to having a love for the ab exes art, followed closely by a disdain for their views. That’s perhaps why I think art/artist/viewer are necessarily intertwined, even if the definitions of art keep pulling them apart. And now I must go on to “what else might they be?” But I think I’ll just absorb, not respond.
Folks:
Before I make the mistake of opening one of these girlskissing things, is this some kind of popup?
Jay,
Sorry if you were interested, but I removed that comment when I saw it. Our spam filter is pretty good, catching hundreds a day, but a few leak through. Every once in a while it makes a mistake the other way, and a legitimate comment doesn’t show up (especially if it has links in it). If that happens to anyone, please email me/Rex/Karl (current admins) and we’ll fix it.
Steve:
Darn! I was interested. As in who’s doing what to whom. Makes me thing of that song, “I wonder who’s Kissinger now”.