It is possible that I have told this story before in my blog, but it does follow nicely from yesterdays posting. I was reflecting upon the possibly unrealistic expectations we artists appear to cherish about the responses of viewers of our work. As I did so I remembered an experience I had several years ago, offering my work in a local exhibition.
I put up one of my pictures with a sign underneath reading “Give this picture a title”. There were pieces of paper next to it, and a box in which to post responses. I had some really interesting results from that, which did show that people were responding, and often very thoughtfully, to the work in question. The question required that they approached the task of appreciation from a very different direction than that which is implied either in “What do you think about my work?” or “Please comment.”
Encouraged by this experience, the next year I put up one of my pictures with a similar notice underneath, reading, “Is this picture finished?” and the same box available for responses. That too produced some good material. Some of the replies were just jokey, but others suggested that some serious thought had gone into it. By providing this kind of focus for thought it was possible to break out (to some extent) of the inhibiting framework imposed by a conventional comment book, and to liberate people to think about pictures in their own terms.
Incidentally, if you ask why I didn’t do something similar at my Cathedral exhibition, my answer would be that the Cathedral provides its own comment book, and wants to keep it as a standard record of responses to all their exhibitions. Even so, I’m looking for opportunities to continue my series of experiments in eliciting visitor response.