I'd like to believe, like Plato, in absolute beauty, absolute truth, but I'm constantly reminded that it's only a concept. It just doesn't work that way. The other day a friend came into my studio and saw a painting I was working on—and saw it very differently than I had. It was going to be a triptych—three panels, the middle one being five feet by three feet, the two end ones, five feet by two feet. I had been trying to have the five by two panel exist as a single painting but that shape does not feel right to me. So I was making it a part of the other two panels. My friend saw the newer panels as one and the original five by two as a separate painting. I took another look and agreed: it looked right as a diptych. Later I continued to work on the newer panels and now the piece has come together as a triptych. But the thought of a diptych in that particular pattern lingers as a future possibility. Because someone else saw it for me.
A few years ago I was asked if I would sell a triptych (a Naples yellow painting I really loved) but the buyer wanted the first five by two panel turned on its side to put over the coffee table and the middle five by three panel to be beside the couch (or vice versa—I don’t really care to remember). That would leave one panel lonely. I said no. That painting is now back in my studio, all three pieces.
The recent exhibition of my paintings in Switzerland looked good. Evelyne’s sculpture in the gallery worked well in the space with my paintings. It all looked very elegant. This has been a very fruitful relationship. Evelyne is a superb gallery owner, honest, forthright, good with sales, a excellent business woman. I have great respect for her.
I did, however, want the five panel piece to have each panel touching the one next to it. It makes the painting much stronger—with the pieces being more intimate, being able to talk to each other. That is the way it was conceived. I couldn’t convince Eveyne to hang it the way I would have preferred. I had sent her a photograph, I wrote, I wrote again and when I got there, she had hung it with about an inch between each panel. It didn’t look bad but it wasn’t the same. What it did, in my mind, was make the piece more decorative. And that is not how I feel about my work.
When I came home I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Felt indignant, not in control. I decided to write her and state my needs (again) regarding my work. Yet once I realized I could tell her that as much as I appreciated all she did for me, and it is a lot, I need to have my wishes regarding my work respected, then, at that point, I stopped thinking about it. Just let it go. In the greater scheme of things, it just isn’t that important. She has her way of seeing my work, I have mine. I cannot control how people see.
I just finished reading Still Life by A.S. Byatt. She writes: “We all remake the world as we see it. . . We always put something of ourselves—however passive we are as observers, however we believe in the impersonality of the poet, into our descriptions of our world, our mapping of our vision.” I can only offer you my vision and hope, as well, to see what you see.
Very well said, thank you. I have had such similar issues with my own work--a consequence of painting abstractly I guess. Sometimes my vertical pieces have been hung horizontally by purchasers. And in a somewhat opposite issue to the one you describe, gallery people sometimes hang separate paintings almost touching each other, to read as diptychs or triptychs (hoping they will sell as a unit, I guess.) Once I went to pick up my work from a university gallery and discovered that one of my paintings had been hanging upside down the whole time. Though I expect that one was a mistake rather than a decision..it's when someone intentionally overrides your own decisions that it is disturbing.
Yet I've come to a similar conclusion as you. It's hard to acknowledge that a painting could "work" in any way but as I conceived it, but yes, once it leaves me it is out of my control. Like you I have stated my feelings to gallery people about how my work is hung, to no avail. And like you I have to allow for the idea that everyone sees a bit differently and perhaps, at times that has even been useful.
Posted by: Rebecca at December 10, 2007 01:23 PM