Grasping Shadows and Writing on Water (Art and Precision)

Judith Findlay

'Imprecision' is a common enough artistic theme. It may at times be labelled by other words--'obscurity', 'meaninglessness', 'undecideability', 'irresolution', 'ambivalence', ambiguity', 'openness', 'doubt' to name a few. Nonetheless, these amount to the same thing: an 'everyday' characteristic of art that is always mentioned but rarely, satisfactorily explained--a 'most self-evident, yet puzzling idea' . When the present theme of 292 was decided upon therefore, I was both glad and disappointed: at last this reticence might be addressed--but what I want acknowledged is the precision of art as much as the imprecision. This then is the purpose of my essay. Precisely I am concerned with that 'art'--that part of visual culture--called fine or visual art.

Paul Huxley has argued with regard to experiencing 'the puzzle' of art that '[t]he experience of grappling with the puzzle might be integral to the experience'. As he says, the possibility that the 'true' meaning of an art work as 'intended' by the artist might never be understood by the viewer . This, as I understand it, is how our theme relates to fine art: the 'imprecision' of art--'the quality of undecidability in an art work, the impossibility of resolution'. It has been suggested too, that ambivalence is fine art. As Colin Painter has said in relation to Huxley's proposal:

'Perhaps, within this paradigm, the doubt is the discipline. Perhaps fine art can be evaluated by reference to the extent to which it generates doubt. Perhaps one reason that it is essential that artists do the teaching [in art schools] is that they know and value this doubt and can share it authentically - fine art as essentially a debate about the variable nature of experience and the meanings of representations. There would seem to be no reason why doubt and debate should not themselves be operationalised in [art school] curricula and evidenced through assessment criteria'

I want to make two points about this. Firstly, with regard to Painter's proposal concerning curricula and assessment criteria, one might simply ask such questions as the following: how does one include doubt in curricula? How does one assess it? How does one use it as criterion? For doubt is too vague to be operationalised in curricula and evidenced through assessment criteria. I cannot really imagine doubt being on a timetable, or the amount of doubt in an artwork being measured with regard to some sort of formally agreed scale that has been written into a course document. Doubt as a yardstick seems strange, a contradiction in terms. At the same time by consciously stating doubt as part of curricula and criteria vagueness is surely made certain (doubt is the benchmark and so is not doubtful anymore). It is a paradox and perhaps I am taking Painter's statement too literally. I am sure he is right to place importance on doubt (just as I am sure 292 is right to place importance on imprecision!). For I am confident that it is correct to focus on what might be further specified as ambiguity. And while ambiguity may be academically difficult to define, that difficulty--that debate--is academically interesting. It provides a curiosity--a starting point for study.

Secondly, while I understand Painter's point that doubt characterises fine art my understanding contradicts or, in a way, cancels out this doubt. For I assume that Painter I are familiar with fine art. Therefore, I assume that we share a more or less common understanding (a working understanding) of the discipline. In other words, I understand what he means: that doubt, or, let's say, a type of 'freedom' or 'obscurity' concerning meaning is a quality or value of art works. However, understanding of fine art is not doubtful even if fine art itself is said to be characterised by doubt. I am sure, for example, that Huxley and Painter must have at some stage reached a sureness with regard to their discipline. If they do not understand what they are doing how can they work in fine art. How can they and others like them work together in fine art? Even if traditional narrative says that they do, fine art practitioners do not work in isolation from each other they work consensually and collaboratively. In other words, for fine art to function there must be a certainty--an agreement--as to what it is, even if that agreement says that 'doubt is the discipline'--that the discipline is 'ambiguity'.

Consider 'ambiguity. Consider the words of Douglas Gordon concerning the idea of ambiguity:

'You need to present [people] with ambiguities. But the simple difference between good art and not-so-good art is knowing how much ambiguity you can [use]...You've got to seduce people and if you can't maybe you're being too ambiguous and they won't reflect on anything.'

Consider also the words of William Empson:

'There is a difference...between the fact stated and the circumstance of the statement, but very often you cannot know one without knowing the other, and an apprehension of the sentence involves both without distinguishing between them...An ambiguity...is not satisfying in itself, nor is it, considered as a device on its own...; it must in each case arise from, and be justified by, the peculiar requirements of the situation.'

Concerning art works, as Gordon says, there is the possibility of being too ambiguous. There is the possibility in other words of being too imprecise. 'Bad' art in other words comes from being too vague not only from being too clearly defined or 'closed off'. As Empson says, context or 'framing' matters greatly for meaning. In short, artistic imprecision is made precise by an artistic frame--by, that is, artistic limits.

Thus, whether one is talking about an art work or fine art as a whole ('whole' not only referring to an aesthetic whole but also to a whole that is cultural and social) resolution is not impossible. Rather it is an integral and necessary part of the cultural process and experience, definition and discipline (the precision) that is fine art. The question is therefore, what is fine art?

I suggest that it is not unclear, indistinct, vague or indefinite. Rather, it is definable and defined. It has boundaries that are clear. It is distinct. I am not going to relate the story of the creation of the distinctiveness of art here. Nonetheless, what I do want to recall is only this: that art is a particular cultural creation, resulting from particular historical circumstances. The distinction of art as high culture as opposed to and separated from low culture, as Paul di Maggio reminds us, 'emerged...out of the efforts of urban elites to build organizational forms [such as museums and galleries, and theories] that, first isolated high culture and, second differentiated it from popular culture.' In other words, this distinction (which was destined to become 'high' art) integrated social, aesthetic and ethical superiority. If art was an experience of transcendence and ineffability, if it was an experience that was cerebral and sacred, it was also in the possession of those who had the means and social standing to claim that experience as pure and true (and separate--distinct and precise--from everything that might detract from that purity and truth). Apparently then, art can be described (to use Andrew Patrizio's words) as one of those 'dominant forms of exactitude and fixity on which large parts of our society have been founded.' And today, it seems that fine art both wants and does not want the legacy of this history. For, on the one hand, the 'difference' of art can be preserved by 'misunderstanding' (by 'difficulty' and 'inaccessibility'). On the other hand, calls and policies for greater understanding--greater access to the arts for all are familiar and frequent. Interestingly, in both cases I think the concept of 'what art is'--of what an artwork is--is not imprecise but is very precise indeed.

Let me ponder on this concept of access. What I have been referring to up to now is a concept of an 'ideal setting' that enables art's imprecision. The most obvious ideal setting for fine art is a gallery, for the reason that, as Brian O'Doherty says,'[it] subtracts from the art work all clues that interfere with that fact that it is "art". The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own evaluation of itself'. One might conclude then, that what makes fine art precise is a gallery. But, although a gallery certainly does signal objects and images as art, fine art amounts to more than that which is contained in a gallery. For a gallery is often viewed as being inaccessible to a great number of people and so there are attempts to move art works out of the gallery space. These 'public' art works or 'art in public places', exist not in galleries but instead in streets and in public buildings and institutions. The precision of fine art therefore also exists outwith the gallery space (which means to say that there must be something else either alongside or instead of the gallery that defines the precision of art).

For, even in the streets artists and curators are usually decided that they are dealing with 'art' and about what constitutes the art they are dealing with. They make, that is, a decision as to what art is (and what it is not). Thus, what they produce and select for the public domain (for existence in and alongside, if you like, popular culture) are works of art that will continue to be works of art even outwith a gallery. And (in this 'institutional sense) art is not just anything. It is not for example a pipe band, or a rock festival, or a film, or a village fete or other such community ritual. It is not a statue or a monument, or a billboard or a neon sign. It is not a postcard taped to a wall of a kitchen, living room, bedroom or bathroom, or an ornament or a trophy on a mantelpiece. It is not an arrangement of flowers or a print or a poster or a family photograph. It is not any of these types of things that exist 'publicly' already unless of course these are made or chosen by artists (or possibly curators--or artists working as curators) who judge that the creativity of these things are on a par with those things found in a gallery . And for an art critic to write about any of these, or the Scottish Arts Council to award any of these funds, would depend I suppose on the right (artistic) circumstances. In short, art is what some people say it is and what some people say other people should have. If this is not the case, why is it not assumed that the experience of art is to be had in these other experiences, activities, objects and images, but without being touched by the artist's hand or looked at by the artist's eye? Perhaps Painter puts this more succinctly when he explains thus:

'...some paintings and sculptures earn the status of art and some do not. The status of "art" is bestowed upon artefacts by groups of people, it is not there in the making. There is a real sense in which art is what particular groups and societies say it is. What counts as art can be different in different societies and can change for particular societies over time. If we want to know what British art looks like we can go to the Tate Gallery and see the official collection which has been accumulated on our behalf. In that regard the term "art" is distinctly different from such terms as "painting" or "sculpture" which refer to specific activities and the objects that result from those activities. All paintings are paintings. Only some of them will be deemed to be art.'

What becomes clear then is that the issue is not so much value as authority: the question, as Simon Frith points out, is not whether Lowry and Beryl Cook (or Turner and Douglas Gordon) are any good or not, but who has the authority to say so .

Perhaps then, the precision of fine art is in an artist's intention. Except, as Painter points out, the status of art is not in the making. Rather, as he implies, it has to be recognised and appreciated: the status of art is there in the seeing. Perhaps, more probably therefore, art is what (and when) an audience sees. Which means to say that artefacts--objects and images--must be recognised as art works. It is this recognition that enables art works 'to be rendered visible as precisely "art"'. And even if our 'invisible realities' (our thoughts, feelings, imaginations, memories, hopes and dreams) float free, moot and equivocal, unanchored and unrestrained by definition, clarity, or meaning, they are nonetheless enabled, rooted in and indeed mediated by a reality of art that comprises settings and theory that is limited, defined, clear, meaningful, purposeful and precise.

To read images and objects as art then is always to put them within an artistic frame--to recognise them as art. The same images or objects may be described as art or tat, good or bad, brilliant or crap, masterpiece or con; 'we refer here not to what we see but to what we infer' (because of where it is shown, who has chosen it, who has made it). To develop this point made by Frith:

'The [artistic] text, that is to say, is always the [artistic] context. Andin the end the essential instability of [fine art]is always in practice, momentarily, necessarily, fixed - ideologically, by agreement as a matter of social concern[W]hile it may be all but impossible to capture this interpretative moment academically - to hold it still for analysis - in everyday life we make such meanings all the time.'

Which means to say, that although critically scrutinising the definition of art may be like attempting to grasp shadows or write on water, this is not to say that in our daily lives we do not grasp shadows and write on water all the time.

See Rita Felski, 'The Invention of Everyday Life', New Formations, no. 39, pp. 15-31.
Paul Huxley, 'Confronting the Canvas - in the studio and in the tutorial room', in Paul Hetherington (ed.), Artists in the 1990s: Their Education and Values, Tate Publishing, 1994, pp. 71-75.
Colin Painter, 'Introduction: A productive uncertainty', in Paul Hetherington (ed.), Artists in the 1990s: Their Education and Values, p. 16.
Beatrice Colin, 'The man they couldn't hang', The Scotsman: Weekend, Saturday 17 August, 1996, pp. 20-23.
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity: A Study of Its Effects in English Verse Chatto and Windus, 1977, 3rd, ed., rev., [1930], pp. 1-2 and p. 235.
See Richard Bauman, 'Verbal Art as Performance, American Anthropologist, no. 77, 1975.
Paul Di Maggio, 'Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America', Media, Culture and Society, vol. 4, no. 1, 1982, p. 33.
Andrew Patrizio, 'Editorial', Two Nine Two: Essays in Visual Culture, no. 1, 1999.
Brian O'Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space The Lapis Press, 1976, p.14.
See for example, Jeremy Deller's and Alan Kane's project Folk archive 2000, shown at Tate Britain from 6 July to 24 September 2000 as part of the exhibition Intelligence: New British Art 2000.
Colin Painter, The Uses of An Artist: Constable in Constable Country, Ipswich Borough Council Museums and Galleries, 1998, p. 12.
See Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 9.
Simon Frith, 'Editorial', New Formations, no. 27, p xii.