By Colter Ruland
The thing about art is that it is usually silent. In fact, art is often bound to silence. If I were to cancel out every attendee’s voice at the Frieze Art Fair in Los Angeles this past weekend, I would hear only the faint drumming of the air conditioning.
I tried to envision this kind of fair—a completely silent one—while I was caught up in the works of prestigious artists from across the world. As I tuned out everything I was hearing, I was struck by how lonely an experience looking at art can be. One must confront art so personally, so beyond articulation, even beyond language.
When I looked at the work of Tracey Emin, it was as if all sound had vacated at once to make room for what I was experiencing. Between myself and one of her paintings was this invisible charge in the otherwise inarticulate air. The very title, There was only The Truth, with its unusual capitalization, alluded to something deeper than the suggestive, sparse style of the figure I was looking at. The painting seemed so pared back like a fruit totally skinned and exposed. There had to be more.
That charge, I learned later, radiated off Emin’s work because, like all her work, it was rooted in a strong conceit. I learned about Emin’s various controversies, her use of autobiographical details, the fact that she had named her rapist in one piece, how she had famously made an installation out of her own bed and detritus, how she had made another out of a tent lined with the names of everybody she had ever slept with. These were the stories that deepened the experience of looking so that I wasn’t only looking, I was feeling, too. In fact, I had felt these things before they had even been explained to me. Maybe that’s what good art can do: tell a story without words.
There is perhaps a difference between art that acts like a sugary confection and art that gives profound sustenance. Art doesn’t need to explain itself, it simply needs to resonate, to permeate the space between you and the work with its own charge. How one arrives there, at something like true experience, is simply a matter of telling a story that can cut through the noise.
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