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Palpite #1: I write about art. So what?
Palpite is a section about art where I write about art, but not just that. I've learned that there are subjects that are useless to address directly, and questions that find answers in relation to circumstances – in other words, in what they make happen. That's why I write here about attention, language, museums, artists, the public, and other themes that inhabit the space between us and art. These are reflections that are guesses: bodily impressions, transitory translations, essays. Each one constitutes a hypothesis for accessing an idea of what art is, or can be; and from the interweaving of the texts and the observations I make in them, an argument may emerge. So, it will be the fruit of my efforts to get closer, and also an attempt to contribute to art by showing it as it is, not as we would like it to be.
I write about art. Writing is integral to my relationship with the world, and art is no exception. But writing about art has become, beyond spontaneous practice, part of a job, my job. This has led me to ask why I do, and even why we do, this, since I don’t intend to examine only what drives me to write about art, but also what drives us all to do so. The question arose from my own writing exercise, from that continuity and persistence that, at first glance, would seem to stem from the sheer desire to do it; however, since I do it not only for myself but also to share it, I feel it is my duty to reflect on the role that writing plays in (my) relationship with art.
Writing almost always comes afterwards, which already sets a direction for my understanding of what I’m trying to address. Writing is a way of returning: to works of art, to an artistic practice, to an exhibition, to a conversation, to a text, to a problem; it is the result of a desire to stay in touch with things. Writing is a way of thinking about them. Through writing, experience takes shape; impressions are transformed into ideas, hunches, or questions, which, in writing, have the possibility to develop. Therefore, the act of writing has diverse origins and motivations, which, when shared, seem to take on a certain relevance. But what kind of relevance is this? And to whom does it matter?
I believe the most obvious aspect is that art occupies a place in the world—materially, I mean—and so it is more or less inevitable that, when we think about our relationship with things, we also think about works of art. This way of looking at it led me, years ago, to begin studying art through philosophy, specifically in epistemology, where I sought to explore the relationship between art and knowledge. I even think that, since then, even when I veer off into other subjects, I haven’t really strayed from that point of view. However, there are indeed many other topics and many other ways of thinking about the subject, even within the realm of philosophy, for example, the study of aesthetic experience, the relationship between perception and language, the conditions that make a work possible; and still others, less academic and with no pretensions to articulating theories, that circulate there and that equally contribute to the system of ideas surrounding the subject. Exhibition programs, catalogue texts, or even critical essays do not always set out to develop an argument; they are often echoes of the encounter between an author and a work; sometimes essays, other times brief notes, or a poem. This, in fact, is also something interesting about writing on art: the text’s focus is not always on the work itself, but rather on an experience with it.
However it takes form, the fact remains that it is part of the history of ideas. We are heirs to concepts and to the tangled web of things that came before us, things that have been said and thought. Therefore, this is what is at stake: reflection never begins from scratch. To write—that is, to think—is to draw on the memory of those texts, those positions and points of view, those conflicts, and the various attempts at definition that go hand in hand with what we can say today. I view this point with great interest, particularly regarding the attempt to reflect on the importance of writing in general, and of writing about art in particular; that is, if we understand writing as a way of documenting the setbacks and advances in our relationship with things, then we come to realise, as we write, the place we are in. A question may have been posed countless times and remain unresolved. A work of art, a conversation, an experience, or a change in circumstances can reopen a question. What has already been said constitutes a condition of thought—that is certainly true, but it is by no means a full stop.
Given this, we are faced with the following: language shapes how we recognise things and assign value to them, filtering the world through words, images, institutions, laws, habits, beliefs, and other forms of organisation. This tells us that when we encounter a work of art, we are always also confronted with the many conditions that shape our interpretation of it, such as: the place where it appears, the discourses that accompany it, the categories that identify it, and the channels of circulation that make it visible. Therefore, writing about art also means considering these conditions, reflecting on them, and participating in the transformation or preservation of circumstances and ideas. Here, of course, the works themselves play a fundamental role, for although a work does not appear isolated from the world, so to speak, and is therefore not isolated from all the issues mentioned above, it is also not limited to the circumstances that surround it. After all, what a work does—just like writing—is to create a tension between what it receives from the world and what it introduces into it; thus: the work can repeat languages, shift them, contradict them, or produce an unexpected relationship between elements that seemed distant; it can make perceptible an experience for which we did not yet have words; it can alter the distribution of attention, disrupt what is taken for granted, or bring to light a question that the usual forms of understanding had kept at bay.
Let me put it this way: art stimulates thought, since it offers us topics to ponder and alters the conditions under which we think; in other words, its contribution lies in the possibility of transforming what we are capable of perceiving about the world and about the art within it. Writing, therefore, also involves keeping pace with this transformation. But in this case, there is another crucial aspect of writing that I’d like to emphasise: the difference between experience and the text that results from it. A work of art can make an impression on us that language is slow to capture. There are even moments when the best course of action seems to be to remain silent and let form, material, colour, and rhythm act freely without being reduced to discourse, since the urge to explain can distance us from the experience and replace its complexity with an overly hasty interpretive solution. (This has been discussed repeatedly.) Silence, however, need not be understood as the opposite of writing. Rather, writing can emerge from this suspension and seek to preserve something of its openness. Instead of filling in all the gaps and locking the work into a definitive reading, the text can give it form and make visible the conditions and limits of the gaze itself. Writing is a negotiation between what is said and what remains outside of speech, where silence may very well come to articulate many of the unnamed aspects. Writing is observing what words do to that which they seek to accompany and, based on that, deciding. This kind of responsibility strikes me as particularly evident when we write about someone else’s work. Respecting the distance between ourselves and the author whose work is the subject of our reflection requires that we recognise interpretation as a relationship grounded in the writer’s knowledge, experience, and expectations; which does not mean renouncing precision or rigour, nor our own singularity and authorship (after all, it is we who are thinking), but rather that a hypothesis can be productive without becoming a definitive judgment, and that writing finds its strength in taking the risk of thinking without turning that risk into definitive authority—thinking here, essentially, of critical or descriptive texts. The text must approach the work without dominating it. This is especially true because, when it comes to works of art, much has already been said and very little concluded, suggesting that we can only circle them and never definitively say what they are. We are, therefore, collectively—artists, curators, critics, philosophers, the public, readers—active participants in the construction of meaning. Neither the artwork nor the text conveys an experience intact from one person to another. Each is extended beyond the intention and will of its creator, insofar as it offers an encounter capable of giving rise to an experience that is, on a large scale, unpredictable. The intelligence and experience of those who view and read are part of them.
So, writing about art is an act of working with the community; the community of people who observe, discuss, disagree, and return to the same questions through different paths; a community built on those differences, on diverse approaches, on the way an idea encounters resistance, how one interpretation shifts from another, how a question becomes more complex through experience; where no agreement is necessary, neither in the way things are said nor in what is said. The community and its ideas thrive on something else: shared space. Within it, each text is an attempt, a hypothesis for accessing something that art makes it possible to think about. And its validity or relevance may lie in its ability to draw more precise attention, to follow through on a question, or to prolong an experience. Each text holds a certain capacity to illuminate or obscure spaces and arguments, to expand or narrow an ongoing conversation; the conversation that serves to mediate our relationship with the limits of what is understood or not understood, and which, when understood, is understood only in part and is therefore always incomplete. Not least because, as long as there are artists, there will be pressure on the boundaries of art and the world, and, consequently, there will also be those who write on the subject without it ever being resolved.
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01 Oct 2026
10 out of 10 at the PLMJ Foundation: The Practice of the Word
By Guilherme Sota
