Gianni Zucchet
24 October 2022
Hermeneutics: Playing the Game
Art has lost part of its Self due to the over-evaluation by the modern public audience. We tend to psychoanalyze, justify, and defend our opinion over the work, whilst grasping little to none of the content. There is a necessity in modernity to understand deeply, go beyond the surface, and make connections in order to invoke intellectualism and convey a refined interpretation. Essentially, we are in an epidemic of self-proclaimed connoisseurs with overblown egos, who, by over-interpreting, simply miss the point. This weekend I spent a great deal of time at the Dallas Museum of Arts, focused mostly on abstract art in order to prevent myself from reading too far into a works’ content, and simply play.
The phenomenon of over-interpretation is one that I’ve considered since reading Susan Sontag's essay, Against Interpretation, she specifically mentions: “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there.”. When I catch myself reading too far into a work, whether it is a tv series or lyrics in music, I take a step back and allow myself to become engulfed in the work rather than flooding it with my own ideas. The purpose is not to defile the work with your preconceptions, but rather, allow it to permeate your thoughts, and give you an understanding of what it is.
It is a difficult, and perhaps an impossible task, to remove all implications prior to observing a work, and attempting to grasp its true essence. Gadamer describes this encounter as: “a mysterious intimacy that grips our entire being” (187), this was my task as I stepped into the world of abstraction. My critique of the modern audience arose from the fact that numerous visitors seemed more interested on the descriptive plates next to the works, than the work itself. Avoiding said plates, I was intrigued by Kwon Young-Woo’s P80-103, and with an open mind, stepping back to view the work in its entirety, we played the game.
Discreetly looking at the work, in seriousness, the distinct undulations of the piece stimulated my mind in non-descriptive as well as descriptive forms. There was a direct relationship with the time spent in this game, and the new perspectives it revealed to me, as if we were having a conversation. Insofar as the descriptive - due to its third dimensional nature - the shadows created by the wave-lake formations, were unique in each bubble, and I honed in on as many as I could. “Play fulfils its purpose only if the player loses himself in his play” (321) As in a reminiscent discourse with an old friend, I’d completely lost track of time while listening to the works’ dialogue.
I became aware, too, that when you encounter a situation such as this, the piece follows you as if it has become a part of the self. The consent to such intimacy is an approval for the work to imbue itself on the consciousness of the individual, and as such, as I lost myself in the maze of the underground parking garage, I continued pondering the vague memory I had of the work; and the impact which it effected on my psyche. This too, I believe, is a diluted form of the “festivity” that Gadamer mentions, since I feel drawn to repeat the experience, and share it. Though my experience with the fine arts is at the level of a complete beginner, and I would be unable to properly critique or even comment on a piece, the idea that art speaks in a universal language, and that it is not constrained by the shackles of time, is true.
Works Cited
Cazeaux, Clive. The Continental Aesthetics Reader. Routledge, 2011.
Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Penguin, 2013.
“Kwon Young-Woo.” The Warehouse Dallas, 25 May 2021, https://thewarehousedallas.org/artists/kwon-young-woo/.
Kearney, Richard, and David Rasmussen. Continental Aesthetics: Romanticism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Blackwell, 2008.