“For my father, the road had to wind uphill both ways and be as difficult as possible. Sadly, this was the sensibility he instilled in me when I set myself to the task of writing fiction. It wasn’t until I brought him a story that was purposely confusing and obfuscating that he seemed at all impressed and pleased. He said, smiling, “You made me work, son.” He once said to me in a museum, when I complained about an illegible signature on a painting, “You don’t sign it because you want people to know you painted it, but because you love it.” He was all wrong of course, but the sentiment was so beautiful that I wish to believe it now. What he might have been trying to say, I suppose, thought he never would have even thought about it in these terms, was that art finds its form and that it is never a mere manifestation of life.”
-Percival Everett-
compliments of:
Polysemic Stupor 
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I think I might like your father. What he said about the signature of the painting rings familiar. I don’t know about in America, but in South Africa there’s a new trend to not sign one’s artwork. The idea is that the content/mark is the signature. And to sign and date on the back. Because where the signature is supposed to go, one has painted or made a mark and the signature would spoil it, or obscure that bit of the artwork.
I certainly like the idea also. That quote was a fictional “father” from Percival Everett’s book, but it is filled with such quips and insights from that character. In museums it seems fun both to find signatures, and also to view untramelled spaces, the markings themselves the signatures as with all we engage. Happy to hear the “new trend” in S Africa, thanks for sharing
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http://madelinescribes.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/most-influential-blogger-award-2013/