In his essay, Thomas McEvilley explores the ways in which we understand an artwork. His presentation of the thirteen different ways of thinking about and appreciating artwork seems to be quite comprehensive and insightful.
McEvilley makes an interesting point that the resemblance between pictures and nature does not result from the fact that art imitates nature, but from the fact that our perception of nature imitates our perception of art. In other words, when we see a pictorial representation, we are mainly recognizing our conventional ways of representing things visually. It makes sense. However, just as we sometimes experience certain feelings and have no way of verbally expressing it, perhaps there are somethings that we do see that do not necessarily fit in to the pictorial traditions.
In consideration to the verbal supplements, McEvilley explains how artists use verbal methods to control interpretation. What this brings me to think about is the difference in the modality of interpretation. Duchamp's remark that the most important thing about a painting is its title suggests the dominating power of linguistic over optical input. Verbal supplements are indeed important in interpretation, but could this be because we are trying to articulate our interpretation in a different modality? We are, in general, trained to think in linguistic terms. When we look an an artwork, we perhaps because of the way we think, we automatically translate an optical stimulus to a linguistic terms. It would make sense that verbal supplement such as a title would be most important to verbal understanding of an image when we think in such a way. But perhaps by providing verbal supplement, artist are discouraging a deep optical conversation with the viewer in a way.
Many of the elements McEvilley mentions relate to how a pictorial representation is a conventional symbolic system that goes through what seems to be unavoidable and continual change from culture to culture across the time. The universe changes one micro second to the next. The content-generating elements such as material, scale, verbal supplements, genre, medium, etc. all have cultural significance. With this said, in order to understand an artwork the way the artist intended it to be understood, one would have to not only understand the culture but also think, see, and feel in the way a person in that culture would. In other words, become the artist. It's impossible, and this makes me wonder how much we actually understand about the artworks around us. More importantly, how much does the meaning of an artwork change because of the way others receive it? And does it matter that the meaning is changing? I suppose it adds yet another meaning to an artwork.
