Art today is to “wow” its audience. Yet what do the artists have to say about it? Ani DiFranco had no definition (see last month’s post here). Andy Warhol is largely credited with saying “Art is what you can get away with.” Whether it was him who said it, or Marshall McLuhan, or which one said it first, isn’t clear, yet it has become an enduring quote in the last 50 years. Another way of saying the artist has no definition. Anything goes.
The Broad museum in Downtown LA currently has an exhibition – Jasper Johns “Something resembling truth.” I saw it a couple of weeks ago. It is a comprehensive survey of about 60 years of work – wonderful work! (Great exhibition, by the way. Highly recommend it, and the book catalog too.) What greets the visitor first is the artist’s quote: “One hopes for something resembling truth, some sense of life, even of grace, to flicker, at least, in the work.”
In the work. According to its author, something is inside the work. What? “Truth, sense of life, grace.” What are those? I call them invisible things.
Art and the Invisible 