GURU OPINIONS make their own meaning. The gallery’s Director, Ralph Rugoff, explains that this interactive exposition “leaves so much to your imagination (...) it’s sort of like the power of radio compared to television – in great radio drama you’re inventing characters in your head.” Art, in this extreme form, is a process not-yetbegun, but which gains meaning through the input of the audience. It has a meaning which will differ from person to person, as each viewer imagines a different product. Of course, there are people who reject this new movement. Some will see it as a waste of time, as there is no ‘product’ to see. They want the ‘artists’ to create the art and its meaning. They want to be passive viewers of products rather than active contributors to the process. So the question remains: is art a product or a process? For me, it has to be both. I paint, draw and write because I love the process. I relish inventing new places and people with my paintbrush; I like seeing my ideas on paper; I can lose myself for hours in a process that lets me order my thoughts. But despite all the benefits – whether painting, drawing or writing – I am keenly aware of a desire to finish an end product. I am always looking forward to having a finished piece – something I have carefully composed and lovingly crafted, which I can ‘present’ to others. From the moment I decide that something is ‘finished’, however, something odd happens. My adventure turns into sadness. Something that has been dynamic and active has been turned into a still-life artefact to scrutinise. There is still enjoyment in reading my work or looking through my sketchbook (or, if I was musical, replaying a composition), but it is a different, passive kind of enjoyment. And so, as soon as I have finished, I feel a longing to begin the process again – to create again, and enter once more into the artistic process of fashioning another ‘product’. Like the age-old question of the chicken and the egg, art will always be both a process and a product. You can’t have one without the other, and I wouldn’t want to.
Leila Wildsmith is an English teacher in a secondary school and, in her spare time, loves writing and reading a wide variety of different books. She occasionally blogs about writing at www.writingonthewall0612. blogspot.co.uk and intensely dislikes misplaced apostrophe’s. PA G E 8 • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 2 • I S S U E 8 • G U R U
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