I came across this morning a fascinating review of a book by Rita Felski, which addresses the question of the varied nature of our attachment to works of literature.* Although I understand that her primary concern is with writing, I was intrigued immediately by the possibilities of applying her questions to painting. Not having read her book, and only a review of it, it is not possible to treat her ideas as more than suggestive.
It seems that Felski differentiates between four different ways in which we might be “hooked” by a work: attachment, attunement, identification and interpretation. These distinctions are possibly helpful in answering the question of why we respond (or fail to respond) to paintings in different ways. They are also potentially valuable to artists in thinking about our own work, and trying to get clear in our own minds about the kind of response we might expect from the viewer. My wife has commented on several occasions, for example, in connection with my work, that in many cases she believes that I am expecting the viewer to reflect on its symbolic meaning, which I suppose would fall under Felski’s category of “interpretation”. I can see that this is certainly the case with my Four Quartets series, for example. What about my numerous studies of Almscliff Crag? Perhaps I am hoping that the viewer will share a sense of my “attachment” to the place. The difficulty lies in the fact that when we confront a work it is by no means always clear to us what the artist might expect from us, and how we might adjust our expectations accordingly. If we are demanding the wrong kind of attachment then the chances of our becoming “hooked” are reduced.
Given the circumstances of a review, rather than a reading of the book itself, it is not easy to explore in any detail the possible fertility of these ideas. Nevertheless, I do think that it can only be helpful, both to painters and to viewers of our work, if we can become more self-aware about the way in which we do reach judgements about what we see, and why we respond to this material in the way we do.
*Rita Felski, Hooked: art and attachment, Chicago, 2020.