Juan Uslé by Shirley Kaneda

Juan Uslé
by Shirley Kaneda
In many ways, our collective state of being is reflected onto art before it becomes widely acknowledged.
As artists, we are simultaneously social, political,
and economic analysts attempting to define the world
we live in through our art’s criticality. Many of us
uproot ourselves from our homeland in order to develop acuity through the physical distance from our
origins.
Juan Uslé is one such artist. He came to New
York from Spain more than two decades ago, and like
many artists living and working here, has developed a
singular way of working that transcends cultural identities. His work is expansive, while keenly conscious
of the fractured and contradictory aspects of the way
our world is ordered. We’re allowed to experience this
complexity through the prism of his highly sensual
and thoughtful paintings.
Uslé is a humanist who attempts to reconcile
the differences between the poetic and the practical aspects of living in a more and more merciless,
stressful, and non-reflexive world. His paintings call
attention to the experiential, to make us conscious of
time and space; through the touch and mellifluous surface, we’re reminded of the importance of our sensory
capacity.
Juan and I first met in his studio on Broadway,
and then at my studio. In between, we continued our
conversation via email, talking about his student days
in the dawn of post-Franco Spain, his views about
painting, and what it means to paint abstractly today.
Juan is an erudite speaker in Spanish, so he modified
some of his responses in Spanish. Mónica de la Torre
kindly translated them into English.
S H I R L E Y K A N E DA
S H I R L E Y K A N E DA :
I seem to remember
that your first show in New York was at
John Good Gallery in 1988?
J UA N U S L É :
My first solo show was in
1988, yes, but it was at Farideh Cadot
Gallery. For a couple of years, she had a
space in SoHo. I had met her shortly after moving to New York at an opening or
party with other Spanish artists who’d
been living here for a while.
SK:
Yes, I remember her gallery, but the
first show I saw of yours was at John
Good’s. Why did you come to New York
in the first place?
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23ART — JUAN USLÉ
JU:
above:
THE RIVER OF
LOVE, 1998–1999,
vinyl, dispersion
and dry pigment
on canvas, 24 ×18
inches.
opposite:
1987-TOMPKINS
SQUARE, 2012–
2013, 22 ×16 inches.
Images courtesy of
the artist and Cheim
& Read, New York.
I came here for a few days in 1985.
I’d been invited to participate in a show
at the ICA Boston that was part of a
series of exhibitions with emerging
European artists organized by David
Joselit and David Ross. Dan Cameron,
who was very involved in Spanish art at
the time, told me I had to come, because it was a very interesting program.
The other Spanish artist in the show was
the sculptor Evaristo Bellotti.
At first I had trouble getting a visa, because even though we’d happily gotten
over the dictatorship, there were still
“administrative residues” that generated
unpleasant surprises. In the end, I was
able to travel. I passed through New
York and, as it tends to happen, that was
enough for me to decide that this was
the city I’d like to live in. I was able to
return in 1987 thanks to a Fulbright.
SK:
JU:
Where were you living in ’85?
I’ve always lived in the north of
Spain, with the exception of four wonderful years I spent in Valencia studying
fine arts at Polytechnic University there.
Before moving to New York, I split my
time between teaching at the University
of Santander and making art in an old
mill turned into a studio in the valley of
the River Miera.
During my first years as a student,
Spain was a country in gray camouflage—a country with a lot of energy
and potential, but a repressed one trying
to wake up from the heavy slumber of
the dictatorship. The transition from
a degraded Francoist regime to the
establishment of a democracy was
exceedingly intense to experience. As a
student, I remember feeling caught between two powerful forces: my passion
for painting and my ideological duties.
As a citizen and student I felt obligated
ALWAYS FIRST
OF MAY IN LUND,
2010, vinyl,
dispersion and dry
pigment on canvas,
24 ×18 inches.
to actively participate in changing outmoded systems in the school’s programs,
which were alien to avant-garde movements, and in the country’s political
system. We wanted a democracy in sync
with the European context. In the middle
of these was painting, always waiting.
SK:
When was it that Franco died, 1980?
JU:
1975. I laugh because I sometimes
get the decades confused, thinking
that certain things happened yesterday, and not thirty or forty years ago.
El Caimán (The Alligator), as we called
him, wouldn’t die. He was intubated
and on life support for many months,
and the period while he was agonizing had became unbearable. Franco’s
supporters thought they had it all under
control, but the youth, leftist militants,
and a substantial portion of the population couldn’t wait any longer to wake up
from that giant nightmare.
He died on November 20th. I remember that day very well; it was a
particularly radiant day in Valencia and
one of the happiest days of my life.
SK:
CADA VEZ MÁS
CERCA , 2006–2007,
vinyl, dispersion
and dry pigment
on canvas, 24 ×18
inches.
Yes, I can imagine. Dictatorship
didn’t survive against populist uprising in Spain, and it was good it got out
from under when it did. Other uprisings
haven’t been as successful recently.
JU:
We all gathered at the university’s
entrance. As accomplices, we wanted
to share our enthusiasm and hope. It
was very special for us to assemble
there. We were relieved and felt lighter
and younger. We even looked different,
though we were all in our usual somewhat dirty, quirky garb. I had a beard
and a very long raincoat, a “socialist
raincoat.” My father had used it on his
wedding or something.
Not to change the subject, but the
history of painting in Spain is very long
and very important, so I can imagine
that at the academy there would be, as
you said, an old-fashioned or very academic way of teaching and learning how
to paint. I wonder for younger artists
such as yourself at the time, especially
coming out of Fascism, how much of
that history were you involved in? It’s
impossible to discredit somebody like,
Velázquez, Zurbarán, or even Miró—
I encounter the English phrases “the
Spanish school of painting” or “the
Spanish Academy.” There’s a popular
saying that warns one, when it comes
to sheep, “not to confuse churras with
merinas.” They’re both sheep, but very
different. (laughter) That’s exactly the
great contradiction we faced as art
students: great Spanish art and the
academy are two very different things.
Was it even worth trying to paint like
Velázquez or Zurbarán in the second
half of the 20th century? What should
schools be teaching? Can you imagine,
Shirley, a science university where they
teach techniques pertaining to practices from the 16th or 17th centuries?
Velázquez’s paintings are magnificent, I
adore Zurbarán, El Greco, etcetera, not
to mention Goya, whose greatness is so
huge it doesn’t fit in this comment. We
wanted to be in the present, but Spain
lay dormant, outside of time. The past
cannot be imposed as the sole truth, the
one and only gaze.
I’m not opposed to any pedagogical
method or painting language, as long
as it’s oriented toward attaining precise
goals and makes it possible for an individual voice to erupt. At the university
in Valencia, professors and programs
in the art department were fixated on
reproducing a completely anodyne
teaching system. Schools and art were
in a kind of limbo then. They were ossified by the system’s own immobility.
Teaching methods and techniques lead
to a bland and meaningless “academic
mimesis” that few were able to avoid.
On the other hand, many of the art students happily identified with a bohemian
and frivolous attitude that was equally
dated—they were in a different limbo, no
doubt.
S K : How did you decide to be an artist in
the first place? What was the impetus?
SK:
JU:
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I’m always slightly confused when
JU:
My relationship to art was always
natural, but it didn’t develop happily.
Some of my earliest happy memories
are of me drawing, sometimes with
my brother, sometimes on my own, in
that humble house in which we grew
up, outside of Santander. It was right
next to an enormous convent where the
Trinitarians of Suesa nuns were cloistered. We grew up in the country, near
the Cubas River, and we often used to
play alone, since my parents were almost always busy, working as gardeners
23ART — JUAN USLÉ
for the nuns. Back home, at night, I remember the magic of seeing my father’s
pencil glide on Kraft paper when tracing
the shapes of different local birds. In
grade school, the few times we officially
set out to draw, my drawings seemed
to garner some recognition. When I
was nine, we moved to the city—to
Santander—and the story kept repeating
itself. The teacher would call my parents in, but he might as well have been
talking to a wall: fine arts, talent were
words that my parents didn’t understand. Due to their very humble origins,
they probably feared that pursuing studies in Madrid, Barcelona, or Valencia
entailed incurring expenses they could
not afford. Since then, and for many
years, drawing became an equally habitual and painful activity for me.
SK:
Painful? Drawing should be pleasurable, especially as a kid. But becoming
an artist before and at that time was
pretty much an option for the upper
class only, so your parents must have
been concerned that you might be heading toward a life of instability.
JU:
Suddenly it became almost forbidden to draw at home. Clandestine too.
Although they never radically said,
“Never draw again!” I could sense discomfort and rejection in their glances
and comments. I’d secretly draw, but if I
heard someone approaching, I’d hastily
hide the drawing.
SK:
But you somehow found a way
to persist and got into art school in
Valencia.
JU:
Yes. Valencia was a much larger
city; it had many more possibilities than
Santander, more flavor. Its presence
and historical weight were breathable.
When I moved there, I had traded the
North of Spain for the South, and I
felt charged with a great energy and
liberated from my family’s shadow.
Everything seemed new and stimulating; I could breathe better and deeper.
Many years later, when visiting New
York for the first time, I had that sensation again. Walking down streets felt
like a déjà vu—it wasn’t because of the
buildings or the landscape, but because
of that sense of relief and freedom to
use time for something different than
imprisoning routines. Moving altered my
imagination; it disrupted it. I recognize
that in me, the idea of beauty—deep,
mysterious, ingrained—follows the trail
of the North. In the southeast I discovered another one, more pleasurable and
sensorial: the idea of the South.
The four years I spent in Valencia
were thrilling and full of activity. It
was easy to get by there, since it was
very inexpensive. There still is a great
artisanal tradition there too. I wanted to
learn and know everything. There was
lots to do besides the multiple jobs I
juggled to get by and cover my tuition.
To go to a screening at a film club or to
a political lecture was much more important than eating. I kept my expenses
as low as possible. There were great
cultural programs and film series featuring experimental and classic films, and
this was no small thing, compared to
the mediocrity of the art school. Cage,
Penderecki, Warhol, Jonas Mekas were
now part of my imagination, alongside
Godard, Resnais, Pasolini, Antonioni, or
Herzog.
On my second year, thanks to a fellowship, I was able to rent a small studio
that I shared with Vicky [Victoria Civera]
in a ruin of a building at the intersection
of Fabián y Fuero streets. A lot of gatherings and debate sessions—concerning
both politics and art—took place there.
It was 1974 and 1975 and the universities, and Spanish society at large, were
in a state of ebullience. We were trying
to make art in a nonacademic, nonofficial way. We were constantly going to
demonstrations and organizing performances and interventions in the city’s
streets and plazas, and sometimes
within the university’s walls. We spent
much more time doing this than attending boring classes. After extremely long
days, I would find consolation when
coming back home: I’d find myself again
in my studio and would paint. My best
memories go hand-in-hand with my effort to immerse myself in the language
of painting.
SK:
Do all your paintings start with a
general premise? For example, you’ve
said that your paintings address the
notion of “silence” and that your body
acted as a way to be conscious of the
temporal, which was an impetus for
you.
JU:
I can’t generalize; I make different
types of paintings. For many years I’ve
tried to remain open and be as free as
I begin listening and recognizing silence, meditating until I hear the blood circulating,
and then start following the beats, making marks, one by one, line by line, emptying
myself until the entire surface of the canvas is covered.
possible when it comes to a work’s
premise, the process of making it, and
my own encounter with images. There’s
a recurring notion in all my work: the
wish not to force things but instead to
wait and “listen,” to be on alert so I can
become attuned with and understand
what I’m making.
As for the second part of your question, yes, I see silence in relation to a
wide group of dark, almost black paintings whose generic title is Soñé que
revelabas (I Dreamt that You Revealed)
[S.Q.R.]. I usually paint these at night. I
intentionally seek silence, because it’s a
fundamental part of the process and execution of the paintings. When making
them, I follow my heartbeat’s rhythm,
synchronizing the brushstrokes with it.
I experience a sort of cleansing, as well
as an identification and projection, since
there’s a bit of self-portraiture in the
works, which are cartographies of sorts,
mapping the psychological, the organic,
and the scientific.
At first I worked on these paintings
once in a while only, since to make
them I need to be in a special mood,
as well as have a particular attitude
to and relationship with my surroundings. The process is emotional and
physical; silence and the body are the
protagonists, but what I do is far from
being informal or loose. I begin listening and recognizing silence, meditating
until I hear the blood circulating, and
then start following the beats, making
marks, one by one, line by line, emptying myself until the entire surface of the
canvas is covered. It doesn’t matter how
long I work; there’s a passage from the
initial silence to its physical recognition
and the performance of a ritual reaching for a deeper silence, where time just
disappears.
SK:
It’s interesting that your process is
very performative. It’s different from
how Pollock “danced” around his paintings, but you are obviously conscious
of your body and it’s relationship to
the painting. I can imagine that you
will need to do this when there is the
least amount of outside stimuli. Your
brushstrokes don’t seem random, but
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they’re not completely controlled either.
They are rhythmic in that your paintings employ repetition and consist of
continuous marks that seem to start and
stop, that function as a pattern. What do
these marks represent to you, or what
would you like the viewer to experience
through these marks?
JU:
The marks are just a residue of the
process of making, of the repetitive motion of advancing and stopping. It’s the
constant rhythm following my heartbeat. This is quite literal, specifically in
the large dark paintings in the series
S.Q.R., where the marks are ordered
in rows. They also become a pattern, a
guide, even in the smaller works. They
function like chain links or bricks—
they’re connected, unitary elements
that make the trajectory of a proposition
readable, triggering a pictorial experience. In contrast, when the paintings
become more complex, more rhizomatic, it becomes difficult to know if they’re
finished or not; the chain links there
function as echoes, as murmurs emitted
from a process-based plane inviting the
viewer to plunge into the image’s different temporalities.
SK:
Is space important for you?
Sometimes your works seem to have
a figure-ground relationship in which
there are forms on top of a space that
functions clearly as ground and then
there are more complex spaces where
locating certain elements becomes
difficult.
JU:
Of course, space is very important
and, in general, functions as an active
and complex ingredient—both perceptually and psychologically. In some of
my works, layers are superimposed
with images that are the almost central
protagonists. But you could also say
that some works have an atmospheric
quality, a certain ambiguity, even though
they might start with grids and almost
geometrically divided space. In general, my use of geometry “trembles,”
this makes the space in the paintings
become increasingly mutable. I seek
density and surprise, but sometimes I
arrive at density or complexity through
different paths, through the processbased simplicity of black or gray marks,
as in the S.Q.R. paintings, or through the
complex grids, spaces, and juxtaposed
gestural marks of my interminable
Rhizomes.
I have no interest in seeing the surface as antagonistic to the idea of virtual
space. I also don’t reject plurality and
the presence of illusory spaces. I titled
a 1995 painting A Años Luz (Light Years
Away) because its space seemed to multiply indefinitely, and Digital Blue a small
Namaste painting. Overall, I try to interpret space as a part of a whole in a state
of metamorphosis. It’s usually challenging to identify fixed spaces in my
paintings, partly due to the fragmentary
use of multiple spaces within the same
surface. I like that this quality might
manifest itself syntactically when the
viewer approaches certain works that
look one way from afar, but then morph
when the viewer contemplates them
slowly, unraveling their morphology.
S K : I’ve always been interested in this
idea of the relationship of parts to the
whole and not sacrificing the parts for
the sake of unity. It seems that many
abstract painters today are dealing
with this in different ways. The idea of
a non-specific space in which so many
types of relationships could coexist.
Metaphorically speaking, I’ve always
thought that this is what constitutes
the real, in the sense that this is life,
as opposed to the ideal of unification or singularity. More and more, we
are aware of this reality, as the world
reveals itself. Arbitrary borders are
challenged as we seek to empower
ourselves in so many different ways—
not always successfully, but we are
designed not to give up. What are your
influences?
JU:
The influences are many: the building across the street, literature, music,
stories, movies, poetry . . . Film has
always motivated me. It helped open
my vision and think of other images.
The same goes for poetry and dreams.
Painting and the history of the image
VANGUARD
MANTIS, 2011,
vinyl, dispersion
and dry pigment
on canvas,
107 × 80 inches.
are always there. My temperament is
somewhat Whitmanian, and my thinking is empirical—lived experience is very
important. In fact, powerful childhood
events continue to churn and move images inside me. One of the things that
impressed me the most as a child was
the experience of finding myself, unexpectedly, before an actual painting of a
bald nun holding her heart in her hands.
This was at the convent next door,
where my parents worked as gardeners.
It was tremendous. Even now, so many
years later, when looking at a painting, I
try to access that enigmatic and powerful gaze.
A list of my influences would be long
and very unfair too, since painting in
23ART — JUAN USLÉ
itself is already a planet, a world that
is turning, revealing to us what we’d
overlooked before. Even though this
might seem like a difficult combination,
I was always seduced by the Morandi
plus Picabia equation. Once I moved
to New York, the paintings of Albert
Pinkham Ryder and Forrest Bess were
some of the most special discoveries.
I didn’t know their work before, even
though their names had been mentioned in reviews of my work. When I
see their paintings, I felt close to my
first encounter with art. Not to mention
Velázquez, whom I refer to repeatedly in the titles of some of my works:
Fragmentos de Felipe IV, Lazos de la
infanta. Or Vermeer, Rembrandt, Giotto,
Mantegna, Tintoretto, Titian, Goya,
Guston, Zurbarán, or de Kooning—painting is permanently reinventing itself! I
want to go see the Polke retrospective
at MoMA. His paintings always seemed
very generous to me. He himself was
too when he saw my paintings at
Documenta 9. He had that magnificent
show at the Brooklyn Museum.
SK:
The Morandi and Picabia combination certainly does sound weird. They
almost seem contradictory, as one is so
quietly intense and the other is full of
irony, particularly with his late works.
I like them both myself though I would
not put them together, but it makes
sense in relation to your work. Your
work has both a quiet intensity and
a playfulness. I can’t wait to see the
Polke retrospective at MoMA too. About
your black paintings, what does black
represent to you? Are they nocturnal?
Or more specifically emotional, like
melancholy?
Black is a color itself and the sum of
all colors. To me, even the most opaque
of blacks is transparent. Like night or
dreams, black in paintings always hides
a memory, mystery, depth. It’s the
other side, the hidden dimension, and a
certain light. My first images were black
and white, and so were the television
and films I saw at seven or eight. The
nun painting I saw at the convent was
also black and white. There is not one
black but three thousand—as many
as there are whites—in the cultures of
Alaska and Japan. I always feel good at
dusk, when daylight starts fading and
the most visible reality gives way to
another one in which colors start to lose
intensity and become closely linked to
the imagination.
In the Kunstmuseum Bonn I was able
to see thirty-two of my black paintings—the S.Q.R. series—again. Even
though when making them, essentially
I thought I was doing the same painting
over and over, in Bonn I’ve been able
to reread their differences and subtleties. But most important, I have been
forced to acknowledge the impossibility of black. The show is titled Dunkles
Licht, and it deals with the idea of night,
sleep, dreams, and the transition of
blacks—from their utmost depth to their
becoming light. With this exhibition
I’ve also had emotional re-encounters
with my interior delights and traumas.
Painting is a very important medium in
this sense. It helps me to understand
and interiorize; it allows me to see
things grow with both distance and the
intensity of immersion.
S K : How has your work changed or
evolved in the last twenty years?
JUGADORES
DEL PAÍS DEL
QUESO, 1996, vinyl,
dispersion and dry
pigment on canvas,
107 × 80 inches.
JU:
JU:
A lot has happened in the last
twenty years. My language opened up a
lot when I moved here. It has expanded,
it’s become more mixed, but it also has
gone backward in order to charge and
influence themes and obsessions that
have always been there.
I came to New York because I always
admired American art’s insouciance and
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SOÑÉ QUE
RE VEL ABAS X V,
2002, vinyl,
dispersion and dry
pigment on canvas,
107 × 80 inches.
the lack of prejudices. Spain weighed
on me a lot at the time. I was becoming
visible and was starting to show abroad,
and I felt a lot of pressure. There were
a lot of expectations as to what was
happening in Spain—too much buzz
and enthusiasm. To be more focused,
I needed some distance. At the beginning, I tried to protect myself from New
York City’s dazzle by cowering under the
issues that I’d been dealing with before
coming. That first phase was one of
deep darkness that some of my critics
saw as “amnesic” and as the “oblivion
of images.” Afterward, I immersed
myself in a more liquid and adventurous
approach to painting. I progressively got
rid of references to my childhood and
personal myths.
After a critical period, in the summer
of 1989, in which I had back problems
and made a trip to Nepal, I began painting again, rehearsing new strategies.
That’s how the Namaste paintings came
into being. The new plan was to start
each small, identically sized painting,
from scratch. I was trying to learn to
listen, and to treat each work with the
utmost respect, as if each one had an
individual soul. I was following the
words of a young Nepalese man. I’d
asked him if the word namaste meant
the same for them as our generic hello!
Smilingly, he’d corrected me and said,
“No, it’s exactly the opposite. When I
say ‘Namaste,’ I am addressing what is,
in essence, different in you from everyone else.”
When I returned to New York I understood the depth of his answer. The
phrase accompanied me insistently. I
decided then to try out a new adventure,
attempting to listen to each painting’s
distinct, unique voice. Each painting
I started had to be different from to
the one I’d just finished. I’d change the
palette and the approach, being careful
not to force things and favor freshness, allowing the canvas to guide me.
That’s how my ongoing conversation
with painting began. Then I started to
apply this basic idea of seeking difference, as opposed to a recognizable
style, to works in other formats. That’s
when other series, all non-chronological—Celibataires, Urban Grammar,
Aeolus, S.Q.R., Rhizomes, Mantis,
etcetera—emerged.
SK:
What do you think about the role of
the viewer?
23ART — JUAN USLÉ
JU:
The power of painting and the
strange is enormous, but the role of
the spectator’s attitude and disposition is equally important. It’s not easy
to look at a painting. Our minds and
bodies need to actively participate in
the experience of contemplating a work,
it demands your total attention and a
particular kind of effort—it’s almost a
commitment. I don’t think too many
people are willing or prepared to try
to empty themselves out in order to
dissect a painting. It’s certainly easier
to get swayed by the pull and banality of the mass media’s images, or to
read didactic wall texts designed to
help us “understand” things. You read
about something and fall for it, which
is another form of consumption. And to
consume is the easiest option.
SK:
American critics such as Dave
Hickey have, since the ’60s, embraced
populism, i.e. Warhol and Pop Art, and
aesthetics is more about taste than
beauty now. This might have to do
with how the taste of the masses or
the ascending middle class in a sense
dominates what gets made and shown.
How do you feel about taste and/or
aesthetics?
JU:
Taste and aesthetics are adjustable,
changeable notions—they’re bound to
be manipulated. But the very notion of
art is in crisis too, and it is constantly
shifting. It has gone through serious critiques and periods of redefinition, from
the historic avant-gardes in the early
20th century, to the ideological debates
and social crises of the ’60s and ’70s,
and the more recent pulverization of
socialist and communist utopias.
More and more, contemporary art
resembles a many-headed monster. It
has at least two very prominent heads
threatening each other constantly: the
cultural market (museums and institutions, mainly) and the commercial
market. Fortunately, besides the art
that’s being promoted, there’s also the
art that’s being made, which sometimes
contributes to art’s regeneration and
growth, not only in the direction everyone expects. Who would have thought,
back in the days of the minimalist
hegemony of the late ’60s and ’70s, that
thirty years later a building like Frank
Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
would become the utmost aesthetic
icon of the 20th century? A phrase by
Peter Schjeldahl comes to mind. It’s
something like, “Willem de Kooning
was the best pure painter of the 20th
century. We don’t know if that will mean
anything in the 21st century.”
S K : What matters in painting, I think,
is how any craft or a way of painting,
conventionally good or bad, achieves a
point of view or an aesthetic that is particular. Now, since there is no dominant
discourse or formalist theory, whatever
a painter makes is judged on whether
there is something unusual—even if it
uses known historical trends and modes
but does so in a way that breathes new
life into them or makes us see them in
a different light. I think painting, unlike
other mediums, has a tremendous history that can’t be ignored. The painter
always has to work with this history
even if it’s about emptying out that history. Would you agree?
JU:
I understand that your question
refers to what I call a voice, or an invitation to a peculiar view—some works
have that, and it seems timeless. No
matter how many times you might see
that work, you always find the thread
that you’re never done unraveling. For
me, painting’s legitimacy depends on
that voice, that prevailing, inexhaustible
quality, much more than on its circumstantial use value, technical factors,
material conditions, its social or historical context, and those sorts of attributes
which are so important to those who
need to organize things. For me a pictorial gaze avoids those eschatologies.
Why are there works that are so difficult to define and pin down, works that
every time we approach seem unrepeatable and different? Painting is difficult
because it implies a whole experience.
We can’t enjoy the adventure of entering a painting through an unexpected
fissure, of perceiving its subtleties, if
we approach it with the sad intention
to illustrate an idea or justify a thesis.
Unfortunately this is a very contemporary attitude—it’s the collecting baseball
cards mentality. We’ve fallen into the
corrupt notion of consuming art easily
and fast, and our experience of art lacks
contemplation.