'Years ago, when I was living very briefly with a stockbroker who had a good cellar, I asked him how I could learn about wine.
- Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects.
'Nothing ever becomes real til it is experienced.'
A while ago now I briefly popped into Manchester City Gallery on my way back from town. There was a roomful of contemporary photography. Each photograph was mounted on the wall with a caption alongside. I was walking around thinking about a recurring theme I’ve noticed in this situation - the need to caption things in galleries. The need to caption everything. The standard procedure of it. To not do it would be unusual (and scary). Visual art has become something that is necessarily accompanied by text. What other art form is like this? Music is left alone to be music (and is probably the least inherently questioned art form, and what a wonderful thing it is), but look at a painting and we are at once desperate for a piece of writing.
The photographs in the room were a real mixture. There was art photography, conceptual work, observational stuff. One was of Sarah Lucas photographed with fried eggs balanced on her chest. The caption for this was very small. The image is immediate and provocative and obvious; perhaps this is why. (I didn’t read the caption). Other captions were longer. A large, high definition photo of two men staring into space. They look vacant. There is something uncanny about it, something slightly wrong and beautiful at the same time. I look at the caption. The caption tells me that the two figures have vacant expressions on their faces. It is though I don’t have eyes in my head. It then goes on to tell me what this means. Generally the less ‘obvious’ the image the longer the caption, the more justification needed. And the captions here strayed away from fact; strayed into interpretation, into ‘telling’ you what the work was about.
Does art necessary require writing to accompany it? I wonder. This is difficult and there are many things to consider and I’m aware that I’ll probably be scratching the surface here. Richard Billingham with writing is different from a Sarah Lucas with writing. It is a matter of being sensitive to the content of the work.
I know the way we experience art is subjective and for this reason my opinion can only be my opinion. In that case, here is my opinion: I find the caption has a nagging voice. It has a sort of presence which disturbs my attention. If I could just spend some time in front of any of those photographs without it tearing my eye away from them perhaps I could have discovered something for myself; something private and entirely my own and very possibly, to whatever degree, moving. It’s so important for the initial experience of something to be yours and yours alone, but with the caption you’re not alone. It’s like someone standing in front something blocking your view, it’s like being interrupted in conversation. It’s like having someone explain the plot whilst also telling you how to feel about it.
If all captions contained was a sentence or two about the artist, or the historical context or simply the title (or better still nothing at all, I am tempted to add) all would be well. It is this authoritative stance the caption takes in relation to the art that worries me. The message it gives out in a wider sense is unhelpful and, ultimately, damaging. It says let us tell you what this means. It says don’t trust your own eyes. It says intellectual thought is more valuable, more impressive than feelings. It says visual art can’t stand alone, it is too weak a form of communication; it requires words to justify it. All the value is placed on one side of our brains.
The whole thing is an anathema to me. Can we not each of us grasp something through our eyes and our nervous system and ours heads? And yes, there are many many types of art all doing different things, all speaking different languages, many of it conceptual, but fundamentally art is about experience and if it's visual art then you should be looking at it, the art, there on the wall, not reading a bit of text next to it. Read bits of text afterwards, I say, if you really must. Bits of text are often fun to read. But they can't match the experience of the thing in itself.
(There are a lot more things to consider here.)
No one reading a book purely for pleasure does so accompanied by an additional explanative text. Do we not go to galleries for pleasure? I feel constantly reminded that the British are a nation of writers. We have never really accepted visual art in the way we have writing. It can’t win, really - either it’s lightweight (decorative) or pretentious (conceptual). Art that is immensely skillful (photo realism for example) is met with approval because 1) we couldn’t have done it ourselves and therefore we are suitably impressed and 2) it mimics reality and therefore we ‘understand’ it.
I needn’t use the abstract painting argument, but I will. Looking at an abstract painting without a caption we think our three year old could do that. So the caption is introduced which contains lots of long words.
And here things become polarized. Two things happen, and more besides: many people are understandably put off contemporary art as pretentious, treating it with suspicion (much more to be said here). But people also begin to rely on these captions, to expect them. It goes like this: caption first, art second. Additionally, art is made by captions to seem clever. Good art must be (seem) clever art. My overwhelming feeling walking around galleries is that it is like the Emporer’s New Clothes on a grand scale: I feel that because long words are used in a way that I don’t really understand - probably because they don’t make much sense - this piece must, surely, carry significance. It is not the art at fault, it is me for not understanding. Catch up, it says to me. This is an alienating experience. We should, each of us, go at our own pace.
My criticism is not with the work itself, whatever it may be, but with the way in which it is displayed and the people responsible. We are far too busy intellectualising everything. Jeanette Winterson says in Art Objects that 'art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be.' Perhaps, then, the problem runs deeper: we are alienated not from art, even, but the use of our own senses.
'A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not 'work the lake out', it is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.'
