I’m writing this response in two parts. I’m going to read the first interview, write, and then read the second, and then write again. I’m afraid I’ll mesh the two if I read at once, and then write at once.
The first interview I read was with Lee Revlas. My first thought was that her tactic about finding another’s consciousness through reading was eerily similar to what I do. Her mention of knowing a character from a novel without having the ability to pick them out on the street was intensely familiar. Reading as a kid (and now) was a way for me to explore the inside of someone else’s head while still in mine. This year was the first time I thought to engage this further and to make art surrounding that idea. I enjoyed the way she took this idea and drew it out to (un)categorize a body-an engagement with interiority and external influence while still giving the piece life and room to be its own entity. My second thought was that Lee would really get along with Laurie Anderson. I think a collaboration between the two would be interesting since they have the same ideas and musical influence. My last thought was that I need to read The Kills by Richard House immediately.
The second article featuring works by Anthea Hamilton was exactly the type of super high brow editorial I thought I’d be reading, not understand, but discuss anyway when I moved to New York. To be honest, I still don’t really understand it. Anthea’s works are really beautiful. And I think I get it; giant semi-improvisational works that play off her influence from movie sets and cinema while making an object farther than the image it’s supposed to represent. Using flatness in cinema as an influence, Anthea pulls iconic images to test the strength of its independent validity, allowing some objects succeed in their ability to evoke emotion and others failing and resting in that emptiness. I watched some interviews with Anthea to try to understand her works deeper. In order to engage her works, I had to turn to other sources since Anthea’s concepts weren’t communicated in this article. Herbert’s writing focused more on his ability to use a thesaurus rather than his genuine relationship with her pieces. I get what he’s trying to do here, but I don’t believe it’s working. Through pretentious soliloquy, Herbert pushes his reader further from the truth and deeper into his confusing and forged analysis.
What I took away from reading these two articles was that in order to deliver a genuine exposé about an artist-one should probably get as close to that artist as possible, whether it be through the artist’s works or via interview. How an artist makes a writer feel is important and should be written and explored deeply, but not in a way that is conflated with the artist’s intent.
