Understanding

This isn’t going to become a lesson in epistemology, I’m not that smart or well read.

Today, I caught an excerpt of a Sam Gilliam (RIP) interview that Hyperallergic reposted on their IG feed (youtube.com/watch). The full interview is available on Louisiana Channel (along with a lot of other good ones by a range of artists). The truth nuggets, paraphrased, are that a) abstract painting can be political because it asserts by its existence that there are things which we might not understand and that b) just recognizing something isn’t tantamount to understanding.

I also really got a lot from an Artforum interview with Jordan Nasser (FYI, there may be a pay wall, depending on how many free articles you’ve viewed this month) about the contradictions (hey-oh) of diasporic identity, the nuances of his relation to traditional craftmaking, and the role of artists in continuing cultural legacies. There’s an effort in Nassar’s practice to create understanding as well, I think of a similar kind to what Sam probably envisioned. I think they both refer not to “understanding” the noun which is the ability to perceive intended meaning in a specific way (so, decipher or interpret); instead they intend us to think about understanding the adjective– “sympathetically aware of other people’s feelings; tolerant.”

BTW, “yes” I do definitively think it is important right now for many more of us to make an effort to understand the lived reality of the peoples of the Palestinian state, not just over the last 6 months, and, certainly because of that context (and in general, to reconsider the tenants of Modernism and the idea of shared humanity).

PS, if you want to expand your understanding of other cultures by doing something here, locally, in the Triangle, go check out To Take Shape and Meaning.