Aaron Siskind

I experience only my own conscious mental states directly; I cannot experience those of others in the same way. So do I have any reason to believe that others are conscious like me, or even if they have minds at all? What sort of minds might others have?
An important way we answer these questions for ourselves is by the evidence of language (visual and linguistic systems of signs) which we presume provide access to others’ subjective states of mind.

Our subjectivity is embodied, that is, we inhabit the world physically, interpreting and creating an image of our environment through our senses. Experience is therefore always constrained for us by the limits of our senses to perceive it.

So languages are a limited answer to the problem of other minds, ultimately unreliable in successfully bridging subjectivities, one mind to another, one person to another, since signs are voices in the social domain, left behind when the speaker is gone, subject to change, distortion, corrosion and entropy.

This thesis, consisting of an exegesis and an exhibition of paintings and photographs, is concerned with the limits of vernacular visual language. The aesthetic strategy is to explore that point where understanding edges toward a threshold where meaning might effectively cease; constructing metaphors for the inability of subjectivities to ever completely bridge the gap.

In the Exegesis, I articulate the problem, some of its implications, and examine the relevant aspects of the work of several artists who in one way or another are intent on examining the problem and exploring its potential as an aesthetic strategy: Antoni Tápies, Cy Twombly, Aaron Siskind, Jasper Johns, and Rosalie Gascoigne.