It’s killing the frog. Instead of letting the audience experience the work and the emotional journey therein. The artist is introducing the piece with with the very blatant context of ‘this painting looks pretty but is actually really deep, can you find what I mean?’
It’s not bad, per se, but it cheapens the experience and comes off as pretentious.
on social though it’s so easy to scroll by. It’s different in an art gallery.
Thank you.
I’m not giving deeper meaning glances to a random pic in my feed. I have a few minutes here and there to scroll and I’m not devoting this-might-be-thought-provoking levels of time to random nonsense.
Hell the second highest rated top-level comment on this post is someone asking for help seeing the story.
People who are so high on their own farts that they get irritated that other, less intelligent or less attention capable people are getting a hint and that they should have to (gasp!) see that is ridiculous. That’s where the real pretention is.
I agree. It shows lack of faith in your work and your audience. It also takes away the audiences’ sense of “getting it” when they look and notice, which makes your audience feel smart and in conversation with you.
Reminds me of those little panels beside paintings in a gallery that sometimes tell you way too much about what the artist was thinking. The work itself is supposed to be communicating, if you need supplemental material then you may have failed somewhat in the original work.
Those little panels are there to prevent from offending the well-educated and the ignorant both from the abominable curse of critical thinking and inconclusive analysis, but I suspect you know or intuit that.
There have always been two art audiences: Those partaking and intaking the artist’s works, and those doing the same out of the social spectacle they engender.