so many artists, so many explanations. there is the artist statement, sigh. there is the gallery press, yawn. there is the army of magazine critics blathering on and on and on, zzzzzzzzz. after all the conceptual paragraphs what is left to say? well, the scientists get their say of course, unravelling the “mystery” of an artworks true context.

read this little diatribe which made me laugh. the author takes issue with the “findings” concerning munch’s the scream, the diagnosis of turner as vision impaired, and the recent explanation of the starry night in astronomical terms. i liked the article. i’m not sure if i totally agree with the author though. yes the scientific eye applied to these artworks is beside the point, but then, and this is the point she misses, most of the words surrounding an artwork are. at least the scientific view offers a few compelling things to ponder, in a historical sense, more than can be said for most that’s written about artworks and their oh so complex profundities. in reality she seems mostly interested in defending her type of investigations into art, she is an art columnist after all. for her to think that these scientific viewpoints somehow diminish the artworks shows a pretty hilarious self importance, as well as a very condescending opinion of viewers. what she implies is, in effect, people do need art explained to them, just not in this cold, empirical, way. i contend that the viewers of art no more need the scientific viewpoint than they need the critics two cents to enjoy art. really, nothing needs to be said. art speaks for itself. weather viewers take anything away, think it’s good, bad, ugly, important, meaningful, or pointless should have very little to do with the mountains of words seeking to frame and explain. so really what the scientists or the critics have to say about it, is utterly superfluous.