How do we receive a work of art when it first appears? There is the context that frames it—often imperfectly—affording viewers comparison to what else is shown at the time, as well as historical precedence. Certainly what an artist has done previously factors in to the equation, unless they are only being introduced in that moment. When an artist is already known to us, does new work appear as continuity (measured progression) or as repetition (more of same), or as a necessary leap taken to evade a creative stalemate, and if so, might it register as rupture, a break that potentially divides an audience, or invites a new one? (Think of Guston in 1969, leaving abstraction behind to become the great artist we know today, and would we if he hadn’t? Or Dylan four years prior, at the Newport Folk Festival, plugging in an electric guitar, rather than an acoustic, shocking the crowd who booed in disbelief? Or the chameleon-like career of Francis Picabia?) And how do we receive works of art we are familiar…
Read more