On art: the greeting Bill Viola

Goals of these series of comments on artworks and textworks is to make visible how and why knowledge is essential in understanding and appreciating art. This attempt springs from discontent with current truisms about art and appreciation in general. The basic problem arises from the somehow unquestioned principle of freedom in taste. In Dutch there is the phrase: 'over smaak valt niet te twisten', which translates as 'something as: ' there is no point in discussing taste' exactly because the only standard for the free individual is his own personal norm. Although personal taste is of course of the utmost importance it cannot be the starting point. It presupposes some Cartesian super Ego that is the seat of all knowledge as if everything is already available in the ' Ich'. This is not true. We live in a culture, are made and formed by people around us, through us speak voices from the other. To give an example: a student in my philosophy class questioned if i was not given merely my opinion and i reciprocated: but i have been reading from Plato and i tried to explain you what Plato might have meant, albeit from my point of view adapted to our world by using contemporary examples form tv shows and movies. So is this me speaking or are these voices from the past and the now speaking through me? To me the phrase ' i find', ' i think', 'i appreciate' is always the point during a journey that took note of the journey that brought the 'X' into being (X might be an artwork, a person, a phenomenon). The ' I find' is not the starting point, nor the basis of judgement. Of course it is claimed to be the basis of judgement in our area of freedom of taste but it leads to senseless utterances. I do not deny people's freedom of appreciation but i do insist that we first have to take a journey. To sit still and judge is a pity. Accept the invitation, become knowledgeable, understand the criteria for you judgement, explore the boundaries wherein meaning comes into being.

* Other concerns are to make explicit the criteria wherein meaning can function. Art is an excellent laboratium for this because it functions at the boundaries (and breaks through them) of how we perceive. Reflecting on art is therefore also reflecting on meaning per se.
* This explicitation of criteria is also a critique on contemporary practices of exhibiting art. There seems to be a tendancy to show artworks as if they exist within themselves. They are presented as a substance, a thing that can exist by itself without any need of an other. Therefore in a museumspace the things just hang there on the wall, without context, without explanations, without explication of the goals of the artist. The idea behind this seems to be: a) the artwork speaks for itself because it is self-evident b) The viewer knows the context (how?) and therefore can figure out the complex meaning of the work) c) The viewer has to be totally free in his interpretation. An artwork can be anything according to the freedom of taste. d) Art functions in a domain that is in principle irrational. Therefore any textual attempt to explain destroys the autonomy of the artwork.e) Although context and explanation can enhance to appreciation af an artwork there is still an indestructible core in the work that can be appreciated without any context. This core speaks directly to you (how beautiful). This first encounter may be an invitation to explore more into the artwork after seeing it for the first time. f) There is only one criteria for appreciatiing an artwork namely: do i find it beautiful? What is beautiful is taken as a purely personal taste. Therefore no context is needed.

Main question: What can art make visible? (collect utterances from art critiques, text in museum that supports the artwork)