Some artists are just trying to communicate with people like them and some just seem to be going for a high score in Scrabble, says Alistair Gentry.
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“Going for the high score in a game of Scrabble instead of communicating ideas“ (Interpretation matters)
The primary means of engaging with art is– and should be– experiencing it first hand.
Most of the artists I know tend to feel this way, and they squirm, procrastinate and fret when they’re asked to talk or write about their work. It’s actually quite rare for an artist to be as gifted verbally as they are visually, if only for the fairly obvious reason that their chosen means of expression is images, not words.
Look at it the other way around: novelists are rarely called upon to paint the covers of their own books. The fundamentally non-verbal nature of many art makers is one of the reasons that good writing about art can sometimes be so helpful; it can act as the little key to unlock the greatest treasures inside the art work it describes. That’s also why I find it so disappointing when so much writing about art wastes this opportunity by excluding and confusing rather than including and illuminating.