Of Paintings and the Hermeneutical Consciousness

I could draw before I could write the alphabet. The first time my mother allowed me to hold a pencil and  a piece of paper , I had the feeling that they were going to be the most amazing toys.  Barbie dolls just couldn’t  give me the same excitement my doodle works did.  I remember how happy I felt showing my mother my first  portrait of  Little Red Riding Hood. My mother expected a less than perfect drawing by her five year old daughter, but nevertheless, she was always proud every time I turned in a new work.  The relationship I had with my  toys went on.  My love for drawing extended to painting.    

 

         They say a painting is worth a thousand words. I’d say it’s also worth a thousand feelings--happiness, sadness, love, hatred, fury, and excitement—which are better expressed visually when no words could capture them. Every painting has a story to tell, and every artist has a peculiar way of telling it.  An artist could show you just a white speck in the middle of a black canvas, tell you a meaningful story behind it, perhaps one of solitude, and you could either appreciate it or regard it as nothing but a white paint on a black canvas. The feedback an artist gets from his audience is either positive or negative as a painting can attract or repel. Above the layers of paint, some people just cannot always get into the work of art, especially those who find the art form strange, or those who simply couldn’t  connect.  I am not an exception. I once looked at an artwork and I could not tell what the lines and the chiaroscuro intended to convey.  Sometimes paintings don’t speak to me as if in a conscious  effort to alienate me, keep me out.  My own prejudices of how a painting should be are responsible for such alienation.  In Gadamer’s words, “ This alienation into aesthetic judgment always takes place when we have withdrawn ourselves and are no longer open to the immediate claim with that which grasps us.”  My prejudices withdraw me from understanding the painting. 

       But prejudices are not necessarily bad. They actually give me somewhere to begin with. Begin with what? With questions. Gadamer holds that, “The real power of hermeneutical consciousness is  our ability to see what is questionable.”  I have learned that to ask is to understand, not to find fault.  I ask  because I want to understand, not because I want to invoke and keep whatever prejudices I have.  Asking allows me to get into the painting and appreciate it, not just look at it. To appreciate, in this sense, is neither to appraise nor  to undermine,  but to perceive the meaning so that the work becomes a little more familiar and less alienating. I then submit to, neither control nor take hold of,  whatever underlying meaning I get from our familiarization with that which grasps us. It is in questioning therefore that one overcomes  alienation.  Such is the power of our hermeneutical consciousness in  a world of  meanings and interpretations.

         

     A painting can be alienating, especially to anyone who has not been exposed to it or any painting for that matter.  An instructor once told a class in hermeneutics that a real artist is one who is not afraid of what people will say about his work.   Such artist must have truly  believed in the real power of hermeneutical consciousness.

 

Painting: What the Water Gave Me, Frida Kahlo