Respond to Art21 viewings

Vija Celmins's reference of "building a painting" rather than painting a painting appeared quite interesting. She compared this process to one of building a structure. But what caught my intention the most was her comment about the emotional connection to her works. She mentioned that she truly felt connected to most of her works because she had been working on them for too long. She even once said that sometimes the works develop feeling on their own. According to her, they develop a dense feeling and built memories of their own. However, what was kind of surprising for me, was the fact that her objects mostly don't have any kind of symbolic meaning to her.
Elizabeth Murray's work reminded me, as she also stated herself, of actual physical work, as by mixing the colors. Her comparison of her work with one of a safebreaker, who waits for the right combination to make everything work together until all the fragments live together. Nevertheless, For some reason I couldn't connect my idea of art with her. This also happened to me regarding Ann Hamilton's work. Their ideas of art just don't match with my imagination of art. However, this is the way it works, as also Bruce Nauman states. According to him, he doesn't seem to think about large audiences. As soon his work meets a specific aim, it should attract many people automatically. I truly admired him for his patience and courage as he said that his "final results" mostly were products of many "accidents".
The most connected I felt with Matthew Barney's way of making art. His approach somehow reminded me of several movies I really liked that I have seen in my life so far. He furthermore stated that he was attracted to all the things he worked with. In my eyes, this is very important. He also mentioned that a few fragments of his movie were autobiographic. I really would have liked to know which one...