Word: meaningfully
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As an aspiring critic of art and architecture, I sometimes get nostalgic for the early 19th century. It seems like my job would have been easier then. I can picture myself strolling through the galleries looking at pictures of voluptuous naked ladies and comparing them to socially prevalent norms of...
By the mid-20th century, a slightly more sophisticated approach had come into vogue, whereby critics attempted to locate meaning within the work of art rather than in a set of external conventions. Known as “formalism” because of its emphasis on formal qualities, this approach...
Contemporary critics have long since grasped this problem with the formalist approach, and have begun to focus more on the ways in which the work itself actively constructs meaning rather than falling into the pre-formalist and formalist traps of proposing that meaning exists in abstract externalities foreign to the...
The problem with both of these approaches is that, ironically, their self-awareness about the process of generating meaning has begun to interfere with the art or architecture’s ability to actually have any meaning at all. For example, one could ask, “What is the...
Last summer I visited one of Frank Gehry’s recent buildings, the Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles. Gehry is a superlative example of an architect who has stopped worrying about meaning. His buildings are sculptural and spectacular, meant to be experienced rather than interpreted. Built in the...