Dedication to Silence

When I was nine years old, I presented my parents with an index card on which I had written my first work of critical theory: "Never talk to the artist." This was my way of expressing the idea of the critical fallacy, i.e. that if you want to know what a work of art means, you should just ask the artist to explain it to you. This is not an effective strategy, because a) artists are damn liars, b) they are most eloquent when engaged in art-making, not when talking about it, and c) this strategy ignores the role of the reader in the creation of meaning, and the transformations of meaning over historical time. I was reassured in my views when I first saw Fellini's masterpiece, 8 1/2, as a character declares that "All artists should swear an oath: Dedication to silence!" Nowhere was this more true than at the Lubbock Arts Festival. I attended the opening night gala with some friends, and it was the social event of the season. The main attraction was a display of Lego art - sculptures and portraits made of Lego pieces. The work was quite good, but the difficulty was that each piece was accompanied by interpretive signage written by the artist. For example, the sculpture you see above, entitled "Solar System" is really quite witty, until you read the label, where the artist clarifies that he knows that in reality, the planets in the solar system are not stacked on top of each other in this manner. This made me sigh. I'm sure this label is in response to people making dumb comments about his Lego art, but even in the face of the literal-minded, I wish he had remained dedicated to silence.