On the Matter of Didacticism and a Proposal for “Complexity”
A critique of one-dimensional, 'didactic' art and a proposal to embrace complexity as a more intellectually honest and engaging approach for artists and viewers.
“…a given sign need not always lead to the same behaviors; it is possible for it to lead to different behaviors under different environmental conditions.”
— Teo Grünberg, 1999
Anyone involved in the art world has encountered this critique: “It’s too didactic!” Yet, despite how often we deploy or receive this judgment, the line between didactic and non-didactic art remains blurry, revealing a shared confusion on the matter. On the one hand, we are told to avoid didacticism at all costs. On the other, much of the art produced, especially in Turkey since the 1990s, shouts its message from the rooftops, presumably so that “everyone can understand.” You are admonished for being didactic, yet the art world is saturated with advertising aesthetics, parody, one-liners, and craft-based works.
Today, common strategies for avoiding the didactic label involve either retreating into abstraction—shrouding the work in ambiguity, mystery, or vagueness—or producing pleasant, decorative objects, images designed merely to be looked at and felt.
In its general sense, didacticism describes an approach that aims to teach the viewer, to convey a singular message, and to uphold a specific ethic. The paintings of the Church, for example, operated on this level: “Behold what Christ endured for you; do not commit these sins.” Much of representational political art follows the same strategy, merely updating the content: “Learn that violence against minorities is wrong,” “Understand that democracy is good,” “See how politicians deceive us.” The irony is that this often involves people preaching to their own choir, teaching values to those who already hold them.
In didactic art, the image is always layered with a “subtext” or a “super-text,” a structure that mirrors the messaging strategies of advertisers and traditional cartoonists.
The immediate rebuttals, often from art students with whom I’ve had these conversations, are predictable: “So, should we just paint flowers and bugs?” or “Must we only make work that is intentionally obscure?” But art is inherently critical; it constantly proposes alternative worlds. Past attempts to strip art of its critical function resulted in the dead end of a sterile formalism. The problem isn't the presence of a message or a political concern; it is how those elements are integrated into the work.
What we truly mean by “didacticism” is the one-dimensionality of these ethical or pedagogical approaches. It is the conviction that a work possesses a single, fixed meaning that must be received, a conviction that leads the artist to select signifiers with the sole purpose of delivering that meaning. In such cases, if you strip away the intended code, the work collapses, because its foundation was nothing more than a crude punchline. The creative process becomes a hunt for a clever concept, followed by a search for a clever way to illustrate it. There is no room in this model for misunderstanding or interference. Whatever the subject, its nuances are ignored in favor of a single axis of evaluation. The ideal viewer must get the message.
This approach is not inherently good or bad. However, art and design are generally expected to open up rich possibilities for thought. To simply repeat familiar ways of thinking in order to appeal to everyone is a valid choice, but the very nature of intellectual and creative activity is to question, remodel, and analyze our perception of the world. We should therefore have the right to criticize work that settles for one-dimensionality and shallowness. An artist can, of course, intentionally use direct messaging or humor, but this does not always result in a one-dimensional work—as in the case of something being “so bad, it’s good.” Yet, removing the punchline or the message from such works does not erase the artist’s formal language or their specific intervention within a cultural context.
In an interview, Heinz-Peter Schwerfel, curator of a Julian Rosefeldt exhibition, spoke of a prevailing one-dimensionality and “childishness” in major biennials like Venice. What I found striking was his call for “complexity.” He insisted, “It’s not that simple.”
The world is a complex place. But complex does not mean complicated, ambiguous, or mysterious. Complexity describes the very limits of our analysis. It is a state where countless elements produce countless interconnected relationships, all influencing each other simultaneously. It is a state that cannot be resolved with a simple input-output model. While there can be simple representations of a complex world—something science and philosophy achieve with great elegance—there is a vast difference between being simple and being shallow. When we symbolize identity politics with lace or urban renewal with images of ruined buildings, we are not simplifying complexity; we are reducing it to a superficial cliché. Worse, we are treating our audience, most of whom are artists and critics themselves, as if they are ignorant of the world.
A focus on complexity, for artists and critics alike, can steer us away from one-dimensionality. This requires abandoning the comfort of fixed ideologies and the static worldviews they produce. It means examining more elements, grasping interwoven relationships, and accounting for the multitude of forces that shape any structure. It requires us to understand ourselves not as transcendent subjects observing the world from without, but as localized, temporary agents interacting directly with what we see.
Artists often work intuitively; few begin by making a list. But intuition is profoundly shaped by one's environment, and human history is littered with the failures of "reliable" intuition. It will be difficult to escape this shallowness without rigorously questioning the methods of thinking and making we hold most dear. This is likely one of the most exhausting aspects of being an artist. It is incredibly hard to take risks, to disappoint ourselves and others, to make radical breaks, and to reject our own past ideas. Of course, one can always choose the path of least resistance and still build a career.
By its very nature, grasping complex ideas is not easy. Nor should it be. Why do we expect everything to be immediately understandable? Why do we demand from artists a simplicity we would never expect from professionals in other fields? Art has a long, branching history, producing immense theory and a staggering diversity of work across different geographies and cultures. It is a field where each artist’s individual life and social conditions are brought to bear on their practice. How can we possibly expect such a field to be easy?
Is the world itself simple? Is it an art fair we can smile at, find pleasant, and casually walk past? Why should the things we believe represent the world be any simpler? The texts, interviews, and discourses that accompany artworks are not peripheral supplements; they are constituent elements of the work itself. A painting is never just an arrangement of pigments on a surface. Furthermore, every work holds the potential to be connected to different situations across time and space. There is no single, absolute meaning. This does not, however, imply that a work can mean anything at all. No matter how vast the network of potential meanings, there are always points of concentration, directions toward which interpretation is pulled.
If, as viewers, our goal is to approach artworks without any context or effort, we might as well scroll through Instagram for a more instantly gratifying experience. An object or an image cannot mean something on its own. The larger our vocabulary—visual, historical, theoretical—the more connections we can make. The acts of researching, questioning, reading, looking intently, discussing, and creating associations are what open new doors. Is this not true for anything we wish to understand, not just art? And isn't our engagement with these very actions the reason we are interested in art in the first place?
"What does it mean?" is the wrong question. A better approach is to ask, "How can I, here and now, with everything I know and feel, engage with this work? What questions can I ask of it? What can I learn from it?" The viewer is not a passive receiver, and the artwork is not an active transmitter of meaning. The interaction is reciprocal. Misunderstanding, seeing something differently, or even failing to understand at all are also valid parts of this communication. To be able to stay with what remains, without craving a singular, complete meaning… this, too, is an approach we must give a chance.
June 2018