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...But here I can't be silent; and by the notes
Of my Commedia, Reader, I do swear,
So that they might not be deprived of lasting fame,
I saw...
Dante:
Inferno, XVI:124-30
... the narrator's assertion for something seen, could offer an awareness
and
although, perhaps {embraced by some level of hubris},
a conviction towards truth.
Edmond Jabes, (From the Desert to the Word, Ecrit,Recit) plays with the meaning of "commentaire" simply by suggesting a reading of {comment taire} and in doing so reveals a much subtler implication, that in offering a commentary one silences previous meaning.
Gerhard Richter`s drawing "tisch" (table) reflects both a presence and a loss, an eliminated conversation, or traces from an unwritten tablet, reminisces of the Rauchenberg-Dekooning exploits into erasure. However, as erasure might play a critical role regarding current perspectives on evidence, objective thought and the authority of voice, and that history is not repeated but restructured, either for expediency or as an attempt at manipulative closure, than grace for wonder, thought and introspective musings will remain suspect or at the least vulnerable.
Certainly humankind's challenge of complicity within a genocide of any kind, whether regional, national or global, and echoed in such events surrounding the Holocaust, Rwanda or national crisis, for example arising from America`s McCarthyism or Canada's own struggle with the aboriginal community regarding reconciliation might govern the vulnerability of reflective thought. One might consider that any such erasure would suggest an agency`s culpability.
Reconsidering Richter's "Tisch" from a more reasonable, gracious and perhaps even altruistic perspective, one can realize that any introduction of gesture within a work offers both an editing of and an extension towards meaning: initially embraced by the artist as a continuing and reflective conversation until the work's completion, and then by the beholder's subsequent recognition, reading and understanding.
It begs the very real question, what is the space of a work?
The boundaries of a work contrary to the motion picture, is finite, complete. Governed by its texture and even though during its production an artist/author may introduce additional subsequent gestures, the final work is a static amalgam of such. Primarily, reflective thought coordinates an artist's realization and as a work progresses its authority and autonomy is realized.
