My previous blog seems to have sparked some discussion on gender difference. It followed a crit that I took part in during which the work offered was criticised for being ‘too emotional’.
Intrigued, I have mentioned it at discussions with various artist groups. Each time it seemed to ellicit an immediate response and has sparked some discussion in my comment box here too.
So – following David Minton pointing out he was short of information – here it is.
An image of the work in question is attached.
It is a broken vintage display box with a glass front containing a shoe sole and parts of shoe soles. These were beachcombed and are heavily textured with barnacles, salt crystals and age.
The work is monochrome. It is domestic in size and nature.
It was offered to the crit group with a title – ‘I Let Go your Hand.’
…and yes- the instigator of the original ‘too emotional’ crit discussion WAS a male artist but in my subsequent chats I hadn’t mentioned that; it was always just asssumed – which is interesting.
Listening to some in the crit group I got the feeling that clean, clear concepts and work were felt to be ‘correct’ and anything entering the realms of the poetic or dealing with the personal emotional [unless political or dark] was somehow suspect.
Relating this story has lead to other artists linking this to a patriarchcal overview they blamed on a currently male dominated art scene.
Personally I think the title may have something to do with it. Without the ’emotional’ title attached maybe the feedback would have been different?
My work is always linked to memory and memorial and often to a family history of loss in the Holocaust. I tend to work in museological formats; curating archivings of loss.
Titles are always a minefield.
In this case I felt very strongly that it had to be titled – although I wouldn’t go as far as revealing what drove me to make the work. I believe an audience needs the space to project on to a work. Probably my title has already stolen some of that space…..
So – that’s the work.
Can a work be too emotional? I guess eventually it becomes a form of Kitsch.
Maybe it just means that the viewer has had an emotional response to it and dislikes the fact – maybe even feeling tricked into it in some way?
Are we as artists being set up to feel that ’emotion’ in work will in some way fail at the last hurdle of greatness and should therefore be avoided? That it is a weakness and not a strength in a contemporary piece of art.
If so – is this coming through the curators, funders, arts officers?
I doubt it comes through the gallerists. Emotion always sells.
