Research Paper

The Meaning of Artwork is Collaborated between Artist and Viewer

– Research on the Work of Francis Bacon and Juan Muñoz

Abstract

This paper aims at analyzing a collaboration between artist and viewer through the work of two artists in the twentieth century – Francis Bacon and Juan Muñoz.  Both of two masters radically challenged the conventional pictorial and sculptural art in their time, and enabled viewer to become aware of the their own identity in the perception of the work.  To some extent, research on the way artist communicates with viewer could exert beneficial impact on the creation of artwork that contains the viewer rather than drawing the viewer’s attention towards some concrete external objects.

The findings of the research have led to the conclusion that – firstly, the collaboration between artist and viewer bases on the extent of research towards artist, the society and the times in which he/she lives; secondly, the meaning of some artwork is unclear or even non-existent when they are created, but waiting for individuals to find out, so that the uncertainty of artworks’ meaning results in multifarious interpretations from different viewers.

In conclusion, viewers, as appreciators of artwork, receive and interpret the intention of artwork without an authoritative criterion, which depends on the kind of artwork, the extent of acquaintance towards artist and personal artistic accomplishment.  Moreover, art is a process of mind communicating between artist and viewer; in which artist collaborate with viewer intangibly through the artwork.

Key Words:

Aesthetic Experience, Artist and Viewer, Collaboration, Existence, Expression of Meaning

Introduction

It is clearly natural that the development of art is intimately bound up with the advancement of the society.  If artwork, as a special mental production in the society, separates from the public, they will be entirely insignificant.  For example, as Perricone (1990) points out in reference to the relationship between artist and viewer, ‘work of art is like a magnet between creators and appreciators that occurs as a sort of connected relationship with attributes just like the things it links together are more dynamic than they been exhibited in isolation.’  Artists express the thought in their work, from which viewers receive the information by appreciating and thinking by themselves. However, there is no absolute consensus on the issue whether the meaning produced by the viewers as well as the artists.

Since my practical project focuses on theories of communication that deal with functional system between viewer and myself, I have considered the elaboration of these systems a priority.  The research paper mainly focuses on two of the greatest artists of all time – Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) and Juan Muñoz (1953 - 2001), who took a sledgehammer to conventional pictorial and sculptural art, and the work of whom was radically and provocatively new in their time. Their work runs contrary to our usual experiences and expectations and challenges us intellectually and emotionally, in a sense, can tell us about ourselves, about our own obsessions and desires in the past and future. 

But what and how can these magnificent relics possibly have to say to us in our video-saturated and digitally-enhanced age?  Berger stated that in the way of seeing, ‘… we never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.  Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.’ (1972 p. 9)  In other words, the meaning of artwork is intimately bound up with experiences and surroundings of viewer; therefore, to some extent, research on the relationship between artist and viewer could exert beneficial impact on the creation of artwork that contains the viewer rather than drawing the viewer’s attention toward some concrete external objects. 

Chapter One: The Work of Francis Bacon and Viewer

On the one hand, it must be said that the understanding of artworks can depend on the acquaintance of the background of artists or artwork in some cases: that is, the collaboration between artist and viewer bases on the extent of research towards artist, the society and the times in which he/she lives.  Every piece of artwork is not isolated, which is created in a particular circumstance.  Due to the fact that times and social environment exerts intangible impact on the artist, the cultural features of such a particular time period always accompany the personal emotions of artist in the artwork. 

Images were first made to conjure up to the appearances of something that was absent.  Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what is represented.  It then showed how something or somebody had once looked – and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people.  (Berger, 1972 p. 10)

The original purpose of artwork is to record and represent the historical event or experience of artists themselves or other persons on a particular occasion by creators’ extraordinary form of artistic expression.  However, some kinds of overwhelmingly emotional way of expression make it difficult for people who live in the contemporary society to know exactly what is the original meanings of old images, what is worse, the confusion could make the historical evidence totally meaningless.  Undoubtedly, it is the devastating disaster of art, even of human beings.  As a consequence, in order to avoid the mistake, it is very essential for people to do research towards the background of the specific image.  Understanding the meaning requires people to know the artists’ personal and social status when they create the works, and then the transformation between reality and art in the meaning of artwork can be achieved.

Take paintings of Francis Bacon as an example.  When people look at his work, they encounter depictions of human bodies twisting, melting away and in some cases dissolving. ‘Basically, all his pictures are metaphors of life in which the dialectics of coming into being and perishing, life and death are inscribed.’ (Zweite, 2006 p. 9)  So if people do not know that he experienced the Second World War and witnessed the bloodiness of the war, they cannot understand the meaning of the twisted faces of lonely, brutal, horrible, angry and excited figures.

One of Bacon’s work Painting 1978 (Fig. 1) that is untitled shows a male figure turning a key with his foot.  When you first see this work, you would be confused – who are two persons, why do the naked man turn the door with his foot?  Actually, this work is to memorize George Dyer (1934 - 1971) who is Bacon’s most intimate lover and model, and to express Bacon’s long shadow of the suicide of Dyer.  Because of his death, Bacon fell into a longtime sadness and could not stop to miss him, even through Bacon experienced the darkest time of the world.  Also, he believed the sadness cannot be healed by time, which only by painting to relieve the feeling. 

In painting an individual, in the interview with David Sylvester in the 1960s and 1970s, he mentioned, he is ‘trying to get near not only to their appearance but also to the way they have affected you, because every shape has an implication’.  Indeed, when you research his paintings, you can find out his paintings continues to push the boundaries of form and colour by portraying an emotional response to reality rather than merely replicating the external world, which means the implication of some objects in his works is beyond the appearance to the inner complicated emotion.  The locked domestic door, which is used in some of his works, as a symbol of existential imprisonment, in a sense, could be transformed to an ineffaceable memory or a huge sadness in this picture. 

Compared with Painting 1978, the door, as an abstractly symbolic object, in Triptych – In Memory of George Dyer (Fig. 2), which is created in the year of Dyer’s suicide, is the key connection of three images and seems easier to understand the inner meaning.  Thus it can be seen, the meaning of the door is gradually changing over the seven years, from a visibly connected object to an intangibly abstract symbol of the brutal reality.  If people do not pay attention to the original meaning of it, how can they exactly know the further meaning of the latter one and the relationship between them?

The brutality in his paintings reveals not only the sadness of his own but the chaos of society to some degree. Indeed, in its own way his work is close to the world that people see every day and is the reflection of the society in that time by transforming the way people felt and thought and visualizing different emotions. Just as Bacon said ‘I would like my pictures to look as if a human being had passed between them, like a snail, leaving a trail of the human presence and memory trace of past events.’  (1955/56 p. 63) 

It is universally acknowledged that Bacon likes to take deformity and morbidity as his theme, and he is good at using different painting skills and powerful brushes to represent loneliness, brutality, ghastfulness, indignation and excitement of human appearance.  What is more, he bases on his inner mirage and suffering to express the ruined mentality of twisting and crush by maniac brush.  It can be seen clearly from the Painting 1946 (Fig. 3), the representation of human appearance is odd, in some cases, aggressive and terrified.  Compared with the Jean Dubuffet (1901 - 1985) who depicted the existence sense of isolation and sadness after the 2^nd World War, his distress is more spiritual and profound.

 ‘In Sylvester’s eyes Bacon is a tragic painter who succeeded in a unique way in distorting forms to just such an extent that they did not lose their connection with reality, thus heightening the viewer’s attention.’ (Zweite, 2006 p. 79)  Indeed, as far as impact force is concerned, the mental panic in his paintings is dramatic, which comes from disastrous reportage and the visual description of concentration camp and bloodbath after the 2^nd World War, which is accompanied with a kind of crisis awareness of surrealism and unapparent innervation of imagination.  He describes the despair of the postwar Europe by different transformed scenes based on a large number of photographs, which consist of some elements of entirely different types, such as photographs of newspapers, stage and moving animals.

Despite the intention of violence and disaster in Bacon’s work with which people are bombarded, the turbulent and overwhelmingly emotional works make people feel them and get under our skin, which exactly is what they intend to say to contemporary people in the video-saturated, digitally-enhanced age.  It is, I think, as Schama mentioned in the television series Power of Art – Picasso (2006, 60 mins.), ‘the ultimate backhanded compliment to the power of art’.

‘Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence – a reconcentration, ’ said Bacon in an interview in 1973.   Naturally, the meaning of the work for people nowadays is to evoke them to reconcentrate the fact of their old time, as well as Bacon’s life in that time.  Thus, only by understanding the information of background above, can people truly interpret the relationship among the twisted shape in paintings, Bacon himself and the society of such a particular period and the meaning of his paintings.  Also, it is the fundamental requirement to achieve the meaning of great art, which means the meaning of Bacon’s work should be collaborated between Bacon and viewer.

Chapter Two: The Work of Juan Muñoz and Viewer

On the other hand, the meaning of some artwork is unclear or even non-existent when they are created, but waiting for individuals to find out, so that the uncertainty of artworks’ meaning results in multifarious interpretations from different viewers.  Such kind of work mainly focuses on the interaction between the artwork and appreciators, which makes the work full of mystery and promotes viewers to think critically, to some extent.  Thus, the feeling of viewers plays a vital and essential role in the work, which means that although artist creates the work without definite meaning, the public can create a wide variety of meanings: that is, a part of ‘Relational Aesthetics’ (Bourriaud, 1998), to discuss the relationship between individual and community, interaction between individual and individual, and transaction of aesthetic experience among different individuals. 

Under this circumstance, the artist enables viewers to become aware of their own present status in the perception of the artwork.  For instance, Juan Muñoz (1996) claimed that his work is about waiting, waiting for something to happen that might never happen. Thus, it can be seen, that, essentially, the meaning of Muñoz’s work is pure potentiality and the uncertainty of the future. When people asked Muñoz’s occupation, he would respond simply that he was a ‘storyteller’.  Actually, in some cases, he just creates or reforms a scene of unsettled story, in which the viewer is half part of ‘storyteller’ together with Muñoz.

In the work Double Bind (Fig. 4), Muñoz creates a space – a given room for the public, in which viewers can receive a given experience at a specific given time instead of ultimately trying to transcend the physicality of experience.  In Susan May (2001) ’s opinion, the viewer becomes part of the space and the space becomes part of the viewer, and the physical sense of being is enhanced to such a degree as to almost become an ‘out of body’ experience.  Thus, in a sense, the viewer acts as an integral supplement to the space and every objects of stillness in the room are to highlight the viewer of movement. In a given time when a viewer sees the exhibition, the process of which exactly fulfils the uncertainty of the meaning, so that each and every one of the viewers can achieve his/her individual value in the given room, and then the meaning of the work is accomplished between Muñoz and viewers.

We are confronted in modern times with the task of placing and displacing objects in a given environment.  It requires an understanding of the physical framework, but also of the spectator’s arrival into the room.  You have to make this person trust for a second that what he wishes to believe is true.  And maybe you can spin that into another reality and make him wonder.  (Muñoz, 2001 p. 74)

In this day and age – a media-saturated age, high technology has become prevalent.  With the wide application of computers, some people claim that public exhibitions will not be needed because people can have a look at artistic objects works online.  However, the work of Muñoz can overwhelmingly refute the claim – when people stand in the given space, they can feast their eyes on all kinds of objects there and experience the exquisite layout and the wonder of another reality with their own eyes in an active way instead of in a passive manner by looking at what are being displayed to us by others on the boring, inactive and static screen.  Consequently, what we see from a computer screen is, after all, not exactly the same as what we see and feel with our own eyes on site, not to mention that, for Double Bind, the viewer is intimately bound up with it.

Indeed, this kind of confused meaning promotes people to think intellectually and emotionally on the grounds that his installations are contrary to people’s usual experiences and expectations in terms of aesthetic experience.  Unlike Bacon, whose aim of paintings is to record memory trace of past events, Muñoz’s installations are about the future – cannot completely be forecast, which means he leads viewers to think of their life and things happening in the world, either happy or sad.  According to Chunchen, ‘Just as our age is more and more globalized, art becomes more synthesized.  In this new tendency, art imperceptibly becomes more closely associated with audience, which results in collaboration and participation forms of art.’ (2009, p. 89)  As a consequence, the collaboration between such kind of artists and viewers is more intimate, complicated and diversified, which is beneficial for viewers to think more about the meaning based more on themselves and realize the importance of themselves in the process of appreciating artwork.

Nevertheless, in some cases, artists express the meaning of artwork hiddenly and potentially, which seems they merely express their personal emotions or viewpoints rather than focusing on the interaction between the public and artists themselves.  It is clearly natural that such kind of work is difficult to entirely be interpreted and the collaboration between artist and viewer seems non-existent.  However, it is, I think, an indisputable fact that all artwork has the meaning of existence, so that the expression of meaning in such work and the relationship between creators and appreciators is much more subtle. 

Towards the metaphorical function of two elevators in Double Bind (Fig. 5), in the conversation with James Lingwood in May 2001, Muñoz pointed out, ‘They aren’t metaphors for anything.  They are elevators going up and down.’  By researching most of his work, I am convinced that the medium of metaphor is the moment of elevators’ movement in the space of stillness instead of the objects themselves that are placed artificially.  In addition, the elevator and the movement of the elevator reflect the stillness and the movement, in which Muñoz creates a new space – an instant wonder moment, which is exactly the ‘another reality’ he mentions and the medium of metaphor he unintentionally hides.  In the metaphorical space, the viewer is the leading role of creating different unsettled stories.

According to Willats, ‘The artist directs the audience’s attention towards a given view, and provides them with the means to examine it in a particular way, but does not prescribe specific meaning that should be brought to bear on it.’ (1976 p. 3)  Though Muñoz called his work ‘sculpture’, it was more concerned with the movement of the object than with its presence.  Rather than showing us how objects look from one vantage point at one moment in time, he tends to be more interested in making viewers aware of the system of interaction, communicate everything they know and feel about a special space created by objects which, like visionary architecture, contains the viewer, thus encouraging them to question rather than passively accepting the ‘official’ version of things.  The process of questioning is exactly the process of collaboration between artist and viewer.  Naturally, it will result in multifarious outcomes.

Indeed, ‘the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe’ (Berger, 1972 p. 8).  That is, what people can gain from the artwork depends on their artistic accomplishment and aesthetic experience, and naturally, the meaning produced by the viewers is different from the artists because nobody can truly speculate on the original intention of the work.  But the process of guessing and research is already meaningful, which is exactly a part of meaning of appreciating a piece of artwork no matter what the intention of the artwork is.

Conclusion

Based on the above elaboration, whether people appreciate oil paintings of Bacon or explore installations of Muñoz, what they get requires they get involved with the work by different ways.  The meaning of the work does not exist isolatedly, but is collaborated between viewer and artist.  Viewers come across the uncommon and intangible in both Bacon and Muñoz, and they, to some extent, as narrators, intangibly encouraged people to help them present the passing brutal reality and diverse stories of future, so that the audience occupy a dual role as both spectators of, and participants in, the narration.  This duality of viewer is a key determinant of formation of meaning together with artist.

Through art, what is temporary and ineffable is expressed in terms that are permanent (even eternal), vivid, and beautiful.  What is common becomes sublime.  What is incomplete becomes whole. This is crucial to our understanding of creativity: The artist does not simply express feeling; rather, feeling must be expressed in an ideal form.  It is the accomplishment of an idealized formal organization that gives cohesion, vitality, and continuity to the aesthetic experience, and thus to the self-experience of the artist, and by extension to the experience of his or her audience.  (Hagman, 2005 p. 71)

It can be seen, then, that, viewers, as appreciators of artwork, receive and interpret the intention of artwork without an authoritative criterion.  Indeed, each person has different interpretations of different pieces of artwork, which depends on the kind of artwork, the extent of acquaintance towards artist and personal artistic accomplishment.  Furthermore, art is a process of mind communicating between artist and viewer; in which artist collaborate with viewer intangibly through the artwork.