Visual Arts, Columbia University, New York

This course examines ways of looking and ways of seeing, both personally & professionally as artists and in a larger cultural context. Through field trips to contemporary art and other cultural sites, conversations with visiting critical thinkers and practicioners, readings, discussions, and visual & written responses, we will examine how we look, think, act, create and respond--critically questioning our own artistic practices and ways of looking at the world.

Monday, April 15, 2013

There is nothing to see, so you look.

When considering this week's prompt, the first thing that came to my mind was Robert Ryman's Versions IV painting (1991-92; oil and graphite on Lumasite with wax paper) at the Met Museum.



Ryman's work got me thinking about Andy Warhol's Rorschach painting (1984; synthetic polymer paint on canvas) at the MoMA.

Andy Warhol. Rorschach. 1984

"Rorschach" directly references the Rorschach Test, or inkblot test, created by Swiss psychiatrist/psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach, circa 1927. Here are the original 10 cards:

Rorschach Test Cards

The most interesting thing to me is not that we look when there is nothing to see, but that we often conjure up the same images from our individual subconscious (for example, popularly, a bat in the 5th card), and that we are frightened when other individuals don't imagine the same thing we project onto the nothingness; we are frightened by the anomalous, as if there could be an objective status quo for the what one looks for in the nothingness.
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