Finding Meaning in the Complex: A Review of the WSU MFA Thesis Exhibit

Meaning is something that can oftentimes be quite difficult to detect. It generally takes a great deal of effort, imagination, understanding and empathy to fully comprehend all the levels of depth that can exist in art. For this reason, meaning is frequently overlooked. Many people tend to simply look at a work of art and focus only on the surface qualities, deciding if it is aesthetically pleasing or not. However, every once in a while there comes a time when the meaning of a work is absolutely overpowering and cannot be ignored. The Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition proved to be just such an experience.

Of the artists showcased in the exhibit, every one of them added a great deal of depth to each of their works. While this complexity was often very difficult to understand, it was certainly not hard to detect. For example, it was fairly obvious that Brad Dinsmore was saying something quite profound with his work Epistemological Notebooks (2009). Epistemology is a subject that is very challenging to understand in its own right. Attempting to explain the nature of knowledge is guaranteed to be complex, especially when trying to do it through illustrations. Dinsmore’s notebooks, while hard to comprehend, at least succeeded at getting viewers to think about their own definitions of knowledge as they attempted to link the title of the work to the drawings on the screen. Though it seemed a common mistake was to try and find some kind of similarity between each one of the pages in the notebooks. Each notebook was just a jumble of various images, separate from all the others. However, it may be that this was the statement the artist was trying to make. Perhaps the development of knowledge has no pattern or linearity to it; knowledge may be derived solely from a person’s experiences and the random snapshots within their memory. Dinsmore was not the only artist to make a commentary on knowledge and the human experience.

Dustin Price was another artist from the exhibit whose works were steeped in epistemological meaning. The work he constructed in the middle of the exhibit, Untitled (2009), was especially captivating. From a distance it appeared to be just a beautiful, snow-covered tree. Upon looking closer though the viewer immediately notices something else going on in the work. Rather than snowy leaves, Price’s tree was covered in little white Buddhas and surrounded by white pillows on the ground. Now Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) is famous for resting/meditating for a long time under a tree while attempting to reach nirvana. It could be that Price’s tree was just a simple tribute to Buddha and his way of life. However, it may also be that Price was attempting to create a monument to the pursuit of knowledge. Buddha’s way of life was focused on the search for truth and knowledge through meditation. The creation of the Buddha tree surrounded by pillows could just be a way in which to highlight the human desire to achieve knowledge and describe/understand human experience. Another artist who tried to describe human experience was Tobias Walther.

Right away Walther’s work entitled Sailor (2009) appeared to be significant. Most people expect movies to have a plot and follow a logical progression. For this reason, Sailor was quite surprising and unique. The film essentially puts the viewer in the shoes of someone running across the Palouse. There are also random images from around Pullman interjected throughout this search; images of things such as doorways, tunnels, and machinery. It could be that Walther was using this film to emphasize some of the same points that Dinsmore and Price were. Knowledge may not follow a simple linear progression but a jumble of the various snapshots from a person’s memory. It may also be that humans are drawn, like Buddha, to be constantly searching for knowledge and truth in an attempt to explain human experience (i.e. the man searching around the Palouse).

The Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition, while certainly complex in nature, did appear to have a clear theme. The exhibit as a whole was focused around knowledge and describing the human experience. While the pursuit of knowledge is central to human existence it is jumbled and inherently flawed. Being human therefore involves actively trying to sort through the jumbled images of experience in order to develop a more accurate picture of the world.

The Double Meaning: A Freudian/Foucaultian Analysis of Pollock's Chaos

When discussing both Freud and Foucault, I think Jackson Pollock is a perfect example for some of their key points. Pollock is one of those artists who really tested the art world, mostly by letting go and painting something that his inner muse desired. These are two things that both Freud and Foucault touched on. Freud was interested in how the unconscious can influence art. Foucault discussed how the quality of art is affected by the degree to which it challenges the norms at the time. One could argue that Pollock did both of these things.

The first thing I ever noticed about Jackson Pollock’s work was how chaotic it appeared. There are splotches and streaks going in just about every possible direction. This chaos, that Pollock so effectively illustrates, could quite easily be related to Freud’s unconscious. Freud’s unconscious is very chaotic. It is constantly being influenced by various drives (such as sex and aggression) as well as being suppressed and controlled by the consciousness at the same time. In other words, there is a perpetual struggle going on in our minds. I feel that Pollock’s art truly displays this conflict. I mean, the impulsiveness of his strokes really signify unconscious influences. Yet at the same time, the edge of the canvas puts a control on just how much impulsivity is to be allowed.

One could also see the chaotic nature of Pollock’s work to be very Foucaultian in nature. Pollock was really one of the first painters to paint in that crazy way of his. For this reason he was really testing the art world to see what it would or would not accept as art. Some might say Pollock’s paintings are childish garbage. Others might say that they are masterpieces. Regardless, they certainly made an impact, and that is because they called to question the norms of art at the time. The average painter just simply did not paint in such a ridiculous, abstract way. Foucault would commend Pollock for doing this. His paintings are physical manifestations of the intermediary region described by Foucault in The Order of Things. That is the region of knowledge where people analyze and critique the orders of their society; regardless of whether or not the current orders are best. While people can have mixed opinions about whether or not Pollock’s works are any good, Foucault would argue that because they questioned the art norms of the day, they are an example of art in its purest form.

Gender: How much does it influence art?

Loosely defined, art is a communication of thoughts, experiences and emotions. Art is therefore, very personal. Two artists will never be able to truly paint two pictures that are identical in everyway. Each person’s existence is just so different and unique from the next person that their artwork can’t help but be affected. That said, one could argue that gender does in fact determine art. The two different renditions of Judith Beheading Holofernes by artists Artemesia Gentileschi and Caravaggio support this. However, as we all saw in the play The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein, gender doesn’t necessarily determine everything.

You don’t need to be an expert to see the stark differences in Gentileschi’s and Caravaggio’s versions of Judith Beheading Holofernes. Caravaggio, a male artist, painted a very timid and weak Judith. She appears out of place and very unskilled with a blade. She seems unsure of herself and her actions. Gentileschi, a female artist, decided to go with a very different direction with her Judith. Her Judith has a much more powerful appearance and appears to be fairly familiar with a blade. She certainly knows what she’s doing and has no misgivings about getting the job done. More importantly, her female companion plays a much more active role in the murder (compared to Caravaggio’s more passive onlooker), possibly suggesting the necessity for women to stick together. The thoughts, experiences and emotions of these artists were certainly influenced by their genders. However, gender may not have acted alone in this situation; something else might have ultimately led to the differences in the paintings. Wasserstein portrays this in her play.

Heidi and her various female companions from the play The Heidi Chronicles were originally defined by their gender. At first, they felt the social pressures to conform based on being female. Women were supposed to marry, have kids, and be the homemakers. Unsatisfied with this, they joined the feminist movement, but even then, it seemed that gender differences were the focal point of everything; both society’s norms and the norms of the feminist movement were centered around gender differences. She wasn’t expected to be a homemaker anymore but now she was suppose to be a single business women without children. Heidi’s other friends however, become less influenced by gender as the play goes on. Susan, for instance, comes to define herself by materialism more than anything else; wealth and power become central to all of her thoughts, experiences and emotions. In other words, if Susan had been a painter her paintings would have stopped being quite as influenced by her gender. The different personality traits of Heidi and Susan are what ultimately led the two women to go different directions. Heidi was much more independent (and stubborn) than Susan throughout the play, and consequently felt more comfortable defining herself based on differences. Susan simply followed the crowd. As soon as feminism was no longer popular, she moved on to materialism.

This difference in the characters is relevant to art as well. Each and every one of us is a human first and everything else second. Yes, an artist’s gender can affect their work. But it doesn’t necessarily have to. A person’s personality characteristics are what really determine his or her thoughts, experiences, and emotions.