Barthes, Samaras, & Warhol

 When does an artist’s persona and individual history become unwarranted within others interpretations of his or her own artwork? Gathering from this week’s readings of Roland Barthes, Lucas Samaras, and Andy Warhol, an artist’s vision and connection to his art can be exaggerated, twisted, and/or lost in translation.

             Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author explicates the literary ideas of a “special voice” and an author’s relationship to his work. From this text, one might realize the similarities between writer and artist and thus construct parallels between the two creative disciplines. Death of the Author addresses topics such as the identity and generalization of a work and the creative mind behind its conception.   In relation to our current class discussions, an artist may relate to the identity Barthes’ writes of that a writer must loose. Barthes’ examples of character becoming a component in generalizing an artist’s work such as “Van Gogh’s madness” can be said of many other noteworthy people in literature and art. For example, Artemisia Gentileschi, a member of the Caravaggisti, not only embraced the grittiness of Caravaggio, but also had the ability to transform the conventions of seventeenth-century painting and give new content to the imagery of the female figure. Gentileschi’s work depicting either innocent and victimized (Susanna and the Elders) or strong vindictive females (Judith Decapitating Holofernes) is often coupled to her personal experiences of being raped. This association can be seen as an additional layer to the psychological underpinnings of Gentileschi’s work, or as detraction from the craftsmanship, content, and skill put into her art as a whole.

            Barthes’ postmodern perspective of a successful form of literature requires an author’s identity to be completely erased from his work leaving only language itself behind. Is this belief applicable to an artist and his/her work? Lucas Samara’s “auto interview” and Andy Warhol’s quotable quotes are snippets inside an artist’s mind, or at least that’s what they want you to think. Gathering from these excerpts, one can see how easily an artist’s thoughts and words can be interpreted different ways all depending on the language in which it’s described. In Samara’s auto interview he asks himself, “Why are you conducting this interview?” over seven times, and for each question, he responds with a different answer. Andy Warhol’s commentary on the press quoting him: “ I’ve been quoted a lot as saying, “ I like boring things.” Well, I said it and I meant it”, is accompanied with an elaboration: “…But that doesn’t mean I’m not bored by them.” A work of art can gain meaning by an artist explaining it, but an explanation has the possibility of also devaluing or failing to provide substantial backing to a piece of art. Should a work of art stand separate from its creator? If so, how does internal sourcing relate to this perspective? In the words of Barthe:

            “The author is supposed to feed the book. He pre-exists it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, he  maintains with his work the same relation of antecedence a father maintains with is child.  Quite the contrary the modern writer is born simultaneously with is text; he is in not way  supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the  subject of which his book is the predicate…”

A work of art or literature cannot exist without a creator (be it concept, or manual work). I believe the voice or identity of an author or artist has the ability to live on within the work he or she produces. Creative vision and character can be linked together, but according to Barthe, a writer or artist should be capable to step back and disconnect his personal-self. Through this, an artist concurrently reinvents himself/herself alongside his/her work.  This work becomes no longer defined by a character or persona, but purely by the words and/or images that exist before the viewer.