In an art class... (Patreon)

Someone used a sampling of images from my portfolio to present to an art class at University of Montreal on photographing the nude form, and this is what a woman had to say:

"A woman said that your tones are mostly cold, and the bodies as if they were embalmed, giving a distance of a scientist observing the situation, or maybe doing it s own introspection."

And this is why I like this quote by Tarkovsky:

“My objective is to create my own world and these images which we create mean nothing more than the images which they are. We have forgotten how to relate emotionally to art: we treat it like editors, searching in it for that which the artist has supposedly hidden. It is actually much simpler than that, otherwise art would have no meaning. You have to be a child—incidentally children understand my pictures very well, and I haven’t met a serious critic who could stand knee-high to those children. We think that art demands special knowledge; we demand some higher meaning from an author, but the work must act directly on our hearts or it has no meaning at all.” 

I think there's some happy medium between the two at times, and I'd be interested in hearing everyone else's thoughts on this. But, sometimes, when I hear what some people think about art, and it's some strange interpretation that I'd never have thought of in a million years, I don't know how to even respond. Everyone can, of course, have their own interpretation of a thing, and I tend to hold the opinion that an artist doesn't necessarily have any bearing on a viewer's interpretation even when it is that artist's work. But, at the same time, I remember art classes slowly subtracting joy for me from doing art when they stressed the interpretation and "meaning" of the art more than the creative process and the art itself. As if everything must have some deep and powerful meaning that can be explained in essay form - or in one of those horrible artist statements that drones on and on and on for 2,000 words. And then you catch yourself looking at every piece of art following it as a mere extension of that statement - or, even worse, relying entirely on the statement in order to be vaguely interesting at all. "Yes, I came to this gallery to read essays on the wall," you think, and then you exit as quickly as possible and go have a beer and forget about everything you just looked at. 

When I read the above thing about my own photos, I'd never thought about it. And now, I'm wondering if everyone looks like a corpse? And then I thought...maybe they do? So I went through them and thought..."I'm pretty sure these do not look like corpses?" And now I'm sort of amused but very confused. My biggest takeaway is, I am so glad I am not forced into taking art classes entirely focused on interpretation any longer, because good grief...