Love, faith and art are enigmas that have occupied philosophers, psychologists and ordinary people from the earliest civilisations, and continue to fill pages with inconclusive speculation. Those who are in love, who have strong faith or who create art know what they feel, but words seem to sidestep the essence of their emotions.

The artist Georges Braque said, “There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.” Yet humans are restless for certainty, always looking for the meaning of everything experienced or encountered. Any explanation, simple or complex, keeps a sense of chaos at bay.

Picasso wrote in some frustration, “Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people have to understand.”

The Modern movement in art generated an ever-confusing abundance of artworks that challenge our notions of art based on classical art. There are more and more pressures today on artists to explain themselves.

Art critics and art historians were the intermediary between the artist and the audience, sometimes powerful in making or breaking artists. However, as they grappled with the waywardness of modern art, and artists themselves were in the throes of challenging norms and experimenting, both artists and critics turned to art theorists and philosophers — Derrida, Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, Baudrillard or Lyotard — creating new terminologies, known by sceptics as “art jargon”, which require the viewer to also familiarise themselves with these theories.

Art critics and art historians were the intermediary between the artist and the audience, sometimes powerful in making or breaking artists.

The ordinary viewer, deprived of the intermediary “explainer” of art, is left to wander in art galleries asking the question “what is the artist trying to say?” and forced to make his or her own conclusions.

Artist and art writer Jakob Zaaiman suggests artworks could be better understood if seen through the storytelling associated with art cinema, rather than comparisons with classical art. We should walk out of a gallery having felt something, rather than understood something. The viewer is given the power, as Roland Barthes acknowledges, to make final sense of the work.

This is true also of classical art, which we greatly value, often unaware of the original intentions of the artist. Renaissance art is filled with symbols that would have been known to people of that time, but are lost on us. Colours, flowers, animals, fruit and objects, each had a symbolism that the viewer of the time would have understood.

Vanitas, a genre of Dutch painting, appear to be exquisite still life paintings, but are filled with symbols warning the viewer of the transience of life and the corruption of worldly possessions — flowers whose petals are falling, a violin with broken strings, or a dead fish.

Most artists are not concerned with the viewer knowing their personal reasons for making an artwork, preferring to let the viewer find their own emotional connection. Francis Bacon said, “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” That most enigmatic of artists Marcel Duchamp said, “As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences, everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good — I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it.”

The mathematician George Boole tried to explain the nature of God using algebraic formulae. Scientists try to explain love as the release of endorphins and dopamine, but as Rumi says about love, which applies equally to faith and art:

“Love cannot be explained.
Love can only be experienced.
Love cannot be explained,
Yet love explains everything.”

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist and heads the department of visual studies at the University of Karachi Email: durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 7th, 2021