Not too long ago I noted that John Perreault is a chucklehead. I said I'd probably stop reading his blog soon. I haven't stopped yet, though, and today's entry taught me something interesting.
As a rule I don't try to research an artist before I go see their show. If I see some of their work online, that's okay. But I want to see art without any distractions. I don't want to know anything personal about the artist. I don't even want to know their gender. I want to know nothing. I like the idea of approaching art entirely openly.
It's not always possible. I can't see Picasso's work without knowing it's Picasso. I can't see Matisse's work anew. Recently in the comments on another post Tim asked me what I'd think about my own work if I saw it in a show (his guess was I'd hate it) -- this is a variant of the same problem. You can't really see art entirely freshly if you know anything about the artist. The more you know, the harder it is to be totally, visually honest.
I went to see Yayoi Kusama in a perfect frame of mind, then. I had absolutely no idea who she was. I had very little idea when I wrote my review, too, aside from her gender, which I had to figure out just to get the pronouns right. (As a writer, I've decided it's within my style guidelines to use "they" as an indefinite singular pronoun, as in "Joyce Kilmer is a bad poet, they write lousy verses", either to hide the gender or because I don't know it. (Joyce is a guy, by the way. Turnpike rest stop named after him. Wrote poetry about trees.) But it's an inelegant construction and not considered proper English by all editors.)
That admission, that I knew nothing about Yayoi, might be ammunition for those who think I'm a complete moron. That's fine. As I said, though, I like knowing nothing about an artist, because then I can be as honest and clear-eyed as possible about their art.
Today I read John Perreault on Yayoi and was quite surprised to learn that she is not, as I expected, under thirty years old. The mental image I'd formed of her through the show was that she was 25, a goofy Japanese kid. It turns out she's actually 80 years old and has OCD. Apparently she's been making much the same art since the days when she was fooling around with Joseph Cornell and Donald Judd.
I find this really interesting. I know you can't work backwards -- you can't look at someone's art and tell what kind of person they are (at least, I can't) -- and yet I'm still surprised when I'm reminded.
Leave a comment