by Saubin

Reading through some of the ongoing exchange in other posts reminds me of something i wrote for the Galeri Petronas forum ‘Who is an artist ? – issue on artistic production’ March 2001. I was briefly referring to  Wittgenstein’s ‘open concept of art’ and other discussions on production of meanings and context. Have always thought of revising and expanding it, but never get to. So lets see if this internet inferno would give rise to a phoenix or mere prolong death – of the meaningfuls.

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Artist The Meaning Purveyor

In my mind, art is as complex as human, so the idea to construct a perfectly non-controversial, comprehensive definition of art, not necessary a fallacy itself, and subsequently describing who are the art practitioners, can be a promising yet daunting task for a long term career.

I tend to see artistic production as a manifestation of the mental activities of the person. What I mean by mental activities is inclusive of the intellectual, aesthetic, spiritual, expressional and meditative.

All these mental activities are contrastive complements to the mundane yet valuable functioning or instrumental items that we usually produce, for food, shelters, clothing and us to maintain our physical existence, for example. Other words, these mental activities that leads to the production of an artwork (regardless of the form) are activities that concern with the making and consumption of ‘meanings’, or of something ‘meaningful’ in one’s life. I am still contemplating if this is an inevitable psychology need – a need for the production and consumption of meanings.

So I think artists are makers of meaningful artefacts – ‘meaning’ as depending on the particular context it is embedded in; and how accessible is the context to another person. Well, at times, the artefact might just be a non-intentional causal consequence of the practitioner’s process of attaining ‘meanings’, but would it be morally just to stop someone else to appreciate the artefact as artistically meaningful to them? It is a choice of the audience, whether if they find the maker’s intention as a relevant factor for them to identify what is artful to them.

Thus artist can be as idiosyncratic and self-serving as one intended, but as soon as an artwork is shown to a second being other than the artist’s alter-ego, the context whereby the artwork exists as claimed by them will have to face the scrutiny, or the acceptance of this audience as well. Not that it will necessarily rob the artist’s claim of it being an artwork but the solitary artist will have to face the audience, the critics, the art agencies, and the relationship will in turn become a constant negotiation between the artist and the others. So the artist could produce something that is idiosyncratically meaningful, yet as it enters a larger social context, it could acquire more than what the artist might intent.

Art practitioners are purveyors of meanings, through their artwork providing a link to apprehend the self and the society, produced and consumed for both themselves and the society, nothing more nothing less.

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