Digital Delights - Images & Design

Do I have a right to look at any work of art as intimately as I can - without being censured by the artist or the presentation?

I've always thought so.

I think it's fascinating to look close-up at art work whenever I can. I want to  SEE the brushstrokes or stitches and discover how the artist used them to further the purpose of the work.

I find it hilarious that Brueghel "liked to hide things in his paintings - including a man "doing his business..." in the painting The Harvesters.

I don't like Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte any less because the Google Art Project allows me to see that the figures are actually smears of many-colored paint. I like it more. I respect Seurat's creative defiance in the face of traditonal painting of his day.

James Elkins proposes that somehow the microscopic seeing that the Google Art Project makes possible is unnatural - allows veiwers to peer into an artist's private world somehow. As an artist, I disagree. Viewers who want to see detail will seek detail and relish it. Others will observe, perhaps have an opinion or two, and move on. Those who practice the fine art of making as I do, may agree that part of the joy of appreciating work includes analyzing how it was done. It's the whole package.

I may never be able to lift a Joseph Cornell box in my hands and tilt it - in order to see the parts move (as he intended) - but I love the possiblity of seeing his work at an unprecedentedly intimate range. Will I see imperfections? Probably. Will I still love it? Absolutely. Perhaps even more than I do now. 

Knowing full well the reclusive nature of Cornell's life, is my desire to see his work up close an intrusion? He might have seen it that way. Or he might have loved my flattering interest.

The thing about making is - it's an act that is inevitably about not being in control. What artists do is create. What I do is create. What the audience, the critics, the gallery or those who walk the planet after I die, have to say about the work is out of my control. I could destroy everything right after I make it; that's one solution. But making it, loving it, and letting it go is less of a time waster. And ultimately more satisfying.