Some Problems with Meaning and Criticism

As an aspiring critic of art and architecture, I sometimes get nostalgic for the early 19th century. It seems like my job would have been easier then. I can picture myself strolling through the galleries looking at pictures of voluptuous naked ladies and comparing them to socially prevalent norms of beauty. At that time meaning was conventional; hence art or architecture was judged primarily by comparing it to prevailing social standards. This approach made the critic’s job wonderfully easy, but of course it was also problematic because it meant that people were paying more attention to an abstract cultural rubric of meaning than to the individual characteristics of the works themselves.

By the mid-20th century, a slightly more sophisticated approach had come into vogue, whereby critics attempted to locate meaning within the work of art rather than in a set of external conventions. Known as “formalism” because of its emphasis on formal qualities, this approach posited that the more you pay attention to the formal characteristics of a given piece, the harder it becomes for you to simply regard that piece as a transparent vehicle for conventional meaning. The ultimate problem with formalism, however, was that its emphasis on formal qualities did not amount to genuinely granting a work of art autonomy when discussing meaning. True, formalist critics had thrown out social conventions of meaning in favor of formal analysis, but they then proceeded to use their discussion of form as a platform for the construction of abstract interpretations. Consider what happened with one of the classic formalist darlings, the painter Jackson Pollock. Formalist critics raved about his explosively gestural drips and splashes, but only so that they could begin talking about those marks as vehicles of existential self-expression. Likewise, formalists loved the austere combinations of line, plane and primary colors favored by the painter Piet Mondrian, but only because they offered a convenient segue into discussions of absolute harmony and abstract geometric balance.

Contemporary critics have long since grasped this problem with the formalist approach, and have begun to focus more on the ways in which the work itself actively constructs meaning rather than falling into the pre-formalist and formalist traps of proposing that meaning exists in abstract externalities foreign to the work. Artists, too, have begun to create work that explicitly called for this new kind of critical analysis. Minimalist sculpture, for example, took a kind of phenomenological or experiential approach to meaning, attempting to force an examination of the ways in which the viewer’s interaction with the piece—the physical process of viewing—influenced its meaning. Many architects took a more linguistic or structuralist approach, examining the ways in which meaning is generated by the structure or syntax of architecture. Structuralist interpretation is analogous to diagramming a sentence; one focuses not on the semantic meaning of the whole (what the sentence actually “means” in the traditional sense) but on the structural relationships of various parts that allow the whole to mean anything in the first place (the relationship of subject, verb and object, that renders the sentence’s meaning intelligible).

The problem with both of these approaches is that, ironically, their self-awareness about the process of generating meaning has begun to interfere with the art or architecture’s ability to actually have any meaning at all. For example, one could ask, “What is the meaning of minimalist sculpture?” The answer would be, “The meaning is that the meaning of the work resides in the viewer’s experience of it.” Fair enough. But what is this meaning that resides in the viewer’s experience of the work? It is that the meaning resides in the viewer’s experience of the work…And so on in a tautological cycle of self-reflection that eludes all possibility of real meaning. What is perhaps most unfortunate about this dilemma is that it has recently led some artists, architects and even critics to stop talking about meaning all together. When you stop talking about meaning, you are left with only your visceral experience of a work, your gut reaction to it. And at this point criticism becomes nothing more than a dangerously arbitrary game of personal taste: whatever you like, whatever you think is cool.

Last summer I visited one of Frank Gehry’s recent buildings, the Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles. Gehry is a superlative example of an architect who has stopped worrying about meaning. His buildings are sculptural and spectacular, meant to be experienced rather than interpreted. Built in the style that has by now made Gehry famous, the Disney Hall resembles a huge waterfall of dramatically arching and soaring stainless steel forms, each cascading over and into and through the others. I would be the first to admit that the building was both spectacular and titillating; walking around and through it felt like riding on the most beautiful roller coaster ever built. But as exhilarating as my immediate experience of the building may have been, it was also largely meaningless. The building didn’t stay with me. It didn’t leave me with any food for thought. And that’s why I get nostalgic sometimes—because, in a way, me talking about Gehry’s building is even worse than some 19th century critic talking about a naked lady. At least that critic was aspiring to a discussion of meaning, even if he was only applying an a priori cultural norm. The most I can do right now is admit that the Disney Hall looks pretty damn cool and wax poetic about my experience of it. Of course I’m not really planning to retreat into nostalgia for the unproblematic meaning of the past, but I don’t intend to spend my future passing judgments on what’s cool and what’s not, either. We may have a long way to go before we start seeing meaning again in art and architecture, but if we want it at all we’re at least going to have to start talking about it, no matter how hard that may be these days.