catapult magazine

The end of the tunnel

by Dayton Castleman

There are many schools of thought regarding how much an artist
should talk about his or her artwork. Here's my school: A work of
visual art, created for the purpose of contemplation, may offer
suggestions or clues to the world of ideas that have given birth to it,
but once complete it can no longer fully encompass or articulate those
ideas. When the final touches are made, a work of art takes on a life
more or less independent of the concepts that incubated and nourished
it. Good work will allude to its creative lineage, while inviting new
ideas and suggesting new meanings through the imagination of the
viewer. I'm offering only what gave birth to this work of art, not a
definitive interpretation of it.