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Lesson Plans


Re: Evidence

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
KP RS (KPRS)
Tue, 01 Jun 1999 20:58:23 -0400

Art by its very nature cannot tell the 'truth', I mean didn't didn't Magritte
say "this is not a pipe"?

San D

R. Moore wrote:

> Carla has raised a very nice point about the ways in which artworks
> distort the truth. Sometimes the distortion is more-or-less
> intentional--shading or shaping the truth to make an ideological or
> political point, say. Sometimes it is unintentional, as when our
> unconscious prejudices and predilections surface in the selection of
> subjects and their components (Erik Erickson thinks this can be
> demonstrated in Leonard's works). I wonder how much of what artists
> actually create lies in a grey area between outright conscious distortion
> like propagandizing and unconscious intrusion. The root question, of
> course, is whether what we call truth is every purely accessible, or
> whether it must inevitably be seen through this or that distortive lens.
> If artists distort, do they distort more than do our everyday mechanisms
> for interpreting the vast, muddled panorama of life? Any reflections out
> there?
> Ron