Lesson 29

I used to ask students whether their painting was optimistic or pessimistic. They usually looked at me a bit bemused; nobody had ever asked them that question before and they had never considered that thought.

The best answer is both, that the work is both optimistic and pessimistic. The best paintings are ambivalent.

Art is ambivalent and can ‘hold’ contradictions; paradox is the dialectic of life. See Lesson 16.

This is a list of ‘ambivalent descriptives’ that I made in 2005 (the word couples are not strictly opposites).

This list suggests various ways of ‘reading’ the work which is both:

Serious – Comic

Beautiful – Ugly

Innocent – Tendentious

Celebrating – Insulting

Profound – Trivial

Wonderful – Ridiculous

Glorious – Foolish

Awe – Awful

High – Popular

Mundane – Bizarre

Embryonic – Cosmic

Matter – Cosmic

Pleasing – Disquieting

Intriguing-Threatening

Familiar – Surprising

Sacred – Profane

Totemic – Taboo