Placing Pebbles Exactly:
Art and Ambiguity
Dr. Judith Findlay
• Art is a modern invention.
• Art is modern.
• It is made ‘distinct’.
• The term ART as we understand it
began to take on its modern meaning in
the late eighteenth century: an original
creation, produced by an individual
gifted with genius.
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The ‘distinction’ of Art was created
By museums
By galleries
By theory
• Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum
(London: Routledge, 1995)
• Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The
Ideology of the Gallery Space (San Francisco:
The Lapis Press, 1976)
• Mary Anne Staniszewski, Believing is Seeing:
Creating the Culture of Art (New York, London:
Penguin, 1995)
• But alongside this purifying practice
that defines modernity, we might
become aware of another, seemingly
contrary, one: a way of seeing, of
perceiving, of considering that mixes
rather than separates…
• If we were to let go of our fond
conviction regarding modernity what,
Bruno Latour asks, would the world look
like?
• What, we might ask, would art look
like?
• ‘In the eyes of our critics the ozone hole
above our heads, the moral law in our
hearts, the autonomous text, may each
be of interest, but only separately. That
a delicate shuttle should have woven
together the heavens, industry, texts,
souls and moral law - this remains
uncanny, unthinkable, unseemly.’ Bruno
Latour
• Art as ‘quasi-object’…
• Keywords:
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Interdisciplinarity
Hybridity
Ecology (relationship, connections)
Followabilty
Narrative
Imagination
Identity
Ambiguity
• Ambiguity: 1. The possibility of
interpreting something in two or
more distinct ways. 2. An instance
of this….3. Vagueness or
uncertainty of meaning…
• Embodied ideas
– Nature/culture
– Local/global
– Inappropriate
– Home
– Here/there
– North East of Scotland
• Can art ‘exist’ like this?
• What is Art?
• Art is a puzzle…
• ‘The experience of grappling with the
puzzle might be integral to the
experience.’ Paul Huxley
• Art is ‘ambivalence’
• ‘Doubt is the discipline’ (Colin Painter)
• Ambiguity is key
• ‘You need to present [people] with
ambiguities. But the simple difference
between good art and not-so-good art
is knowing how much ambiguity you
can [use]…You’ve got to seduce people
and if you can’t maybe your being too
ambiguous and they won’t reflect on
anything.’ Douglas Gordon
• ‘There is a difference…between the fact stated
and the circumstances of the statement, but
very often you cannot know one without
knowing the other, and an apprehension of the
sentence involves both without distinguishing
between them…An ambiguity…is not satisfying
in itself, nor is it, considered as a device on its
own…;it must in each case arise from, and be
justified by, the peculiar requirements of the
situation.’ William Empson
• In other words:
• There is a difference between an
artwork and context, but you can’t know
one without knowing the other.
• Ambiguity - artistic ambiguity - depends
on context.
• ‘Horizon of expectation’ - Hans Robert Jauss
• ‘Versimilitude’ (truth-real life) - Tzvetan Todorov
• …the secret of the pleasure you
feel is two-fold: the relatedness of
everything to everything else, and
the creation of proper spaces in
which to see each work, each
stone, each flower in its own right.
• ‘It is salutary, that in
a world rocked by
greed,
misunderstanding
and fear, it is still
possible and
justifiable to find
important the exact
placing of two
pebbles.’ Jim Ede
Tomorrow - Tuesday 13 Feb:
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Seminars, A34m, Gray’s School of Art:
Group 1 - 9.30 am
Group 2 - 10.30 am
Group 3 - 12.00 pm
• The Significance of Objects/ReMembering Places (Fact and Fiction):
Bring along a personal object (not a photo) or
think of a place from your past.