Are all works by an artist relevant? What exactly is an artist’s ‘work’? Write down a few notes in answer to these questions.

Exercise

Once we begin to ask ‘what is relevant for the study of the artist?’, what further questions come to mind? Write a few down that occur to you.

(a)    The question ought to be are “‘all works relevant’ to …” and then nominate an issue in art interpretation, evaluation and / or other area of thought and study. Otherwise there is too much to think about I think. However the second question is more pertinent. We could say that an artist’s work is all of the work that s/he completes but that raises issues about how being ‘finished’ is interpreted and by whom. Can the artist alone decide the answer?  And what of draft work or ‘preliminary studies’ where the earlier question is even more acute in that the work is mainly an object whose meaning lies on the processes that lead to a complete work – which we may consider another work. Yet Leonardo’s greatest work is often represented by ‘cartoons’ (once the name of preliminary studies. transitional to the making of the final work). Moreover, some works – say Louise Bourgeois recovered notes and drawings done (sometimes) on scrap paper during nights in New York in which she was unable to sleep and pushed under her door to be picked by her person who worked with her (http://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/archive/louise-bourgeois/). Was this therapeutic private work or more than this – a portal to other parts of her work? The video on this page claims it gives access to a Louise Bourgeois who is not otherwise ‘well known’.

(b)    Is art only those things that have the potential to be made into a relatively ‘enduring’ record? What then of unrecorded performance? What of the performance thought to make everyday life? Does art need even to be seen by others to be art? Do we distinguish between the ‘works’ of an artist and work done in conditions where they are not in control of the product?