I saw the play Red over the weekend. It was about the great painter, Mark Rothko. This is not a review of the play. I am not a good critic. I basically love any art preformed right in front of me. But it got me thinking, which is probably the best thing a play could do.
In the play Rothko says (and I believe this is something he actually did say) that representative work asks less of the viewer than abstraction.
This way over simplified, but Representation shows the viewer what it is. Abstraction cloaks its meaning and requires that the viewer look for what it is.
I enjoyed the philosophical discussion of the work which dominated the play. I am not a rigorous academic. I do not work from a place of cool intellect. I work in an organic way. I work from instinct.
My work is meditation. Both on my part making the work, and, I hope, on the part of the viewer contemplating it.
The question is whatever you bring to it. The answer is whatever you think it is. The work itself is merely a focal point.
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