First impressions are fascinating to me, but so are fleeting impressions. Folks of the scientific persuasion and the business schools have done a studies to show the effect of a good first impression and the consequences of making a bad impression, but I haven’t seen anything related to the partial impression, or what I’m calling the “fleeting” impression.
This kind of impression would be a partial or quick viewing of something that quickly passes and you are left without it, possibly when you are interested in it. Examples might be 5-second commercials that have no resolution, or a person you almost recognize zooming past you on a bus. These types of encounters leave us curious, befuddled, or sometimes frustrated with the quick exposure to something we didn’t have time to sort out in our minds. I had an impression like this, and I’m choosing to write about it because I enjoy writing about peer artwork, not just the “good” art exhibits my professor requires.
I had a quick encounter with the Visual Communication exhibition that left me wanting more and at the same time it left me with so much to think about. Having a limited amount of time, I had to move through the exhibit rather quickly, which is never a good thing, but I would rather have seen some of the works in a limited fashion than miss out on the entire show!
There were a large number of pieces shown, many from illustration students and some on the same topics or from the same assignment. There was a miniature book which showed in each spread, something relating to a blackbird. The overall tone and feeling of the piece was very dark but at the same time rather quaint, as a children’s story. I really enjoyed it, and I wanted to spend more time with it, but I moved on because I was excited to see a friend’s work which I was hoping made it into the juried exhibition (it did – yay!). I saw some works by folks whose names I recognized from other student shows throughout the year, some portrait styles I really loved and some slick designs for corporate branding I wanted to hang around and admire.
This can’t be too much of a review because I couldn’t stick around to take notes – but I promised myself I would return as soon as I had an opportunity. Well, I sheepishly admit that I didn’t pay attention to how long the exhibit would stay – it seems like the norm is at a minimum of two weeks around that area – and when I came back, the work was gone. I was so depressed that I was stuck viewing the MFA Exhibition, recommended by my prof. because her peers are showing work, instead of viewing the work of my peers in the adjacent gallery!
This is not to say that the MFA show wasn’t desirable, in fact, it was fantastic! But there was a larger quantity of work in the Viscom exhibit, and more of it interested me because it showed outcomes from the very same classes I will be taking in the future. The MFA exhibit seemed a bit random in topic and media, and it seemed there was less work to see, though some of the work was very very large.
So my curiosity is in my impression of the Viscom show, which I had to see more quickly then I would have liked. Does my imagination add more to the exhibit than was actually there? Is my opinion of work changed by the fact that I didn’t stare at it for very long, and is that for better or worse?
Sometimes I think that people – especially people of the artistic persuasion – can inject meanings and ideas into a work that were never there before nor intended to be there by the artist, simply by staring at a piece for a long time. Sometimes what’s there, is what’s there, and it doesn’t have to be a long and detailed comment on anything at all. I think that detailed analysis of work sometimes adds really unnecessary weight, and to me that gets in the way of simply enjoying the experience of the piece itself. Actually, I often enjoy my own work until unnecessary meaning is injected by way of critique or my prof.’s input.
Work that hasn’t been given so much content WEIGHT seems to be the only work that I continue enjoy, no matter how many times I view it. An abstract piece may be something that the artist is trying to portray that’s not actually something in existence, or something that’s meant to be felt or understood rather than explained. Giving concrete meaning to individual elements of the abstract work brings the piece into the real world. It makes us imagine real concrete things and ideas in place of the original, abstract shapes.
So, those are my light and airy impressions of the Viscom show. It must not have lasted more than a week, but it certainly did make a good first impression!
