ART THOUGHTS SEVEN

A premise that runs throughout all of my essays concerns being childlike. We are mistaken if we feel that our quest to become artists lies in adult sophistication and mature worldliness.

In an essay about Leonard Bernstein:

“In childhood, Bernstein was an omnivorous consumer of music, blissfully unaware of the distinctions between high and low, elite and pop. He happily took in Gilbert and Sullivan, Yiddish folk songs, Beethoven symphonies, Chopin nocturnes, jazz, bel-canto opera, dissonant modernism, and more or less everything else. Children tend to listen this way – they solemnly chant commercial jingles, and dance giddily to Bach.”

Alex Ross, December 2008.

To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.

Antony Gormley

ESSAY SEVEN – Cave Shadows

Back in the sixties and seventies, a clever catch phrase of the counterculture was, “Reality is a Crutch”. The underlying idea professed to be that you shouldn’t concern yourself with the real world, whatever that was, but to sort of, “Tune In, Turn on and Drop Out”. Supposedly, the world of your parents, the schools, the bosses or the establishment wasn’t worth considering, (too rigid, too uptight, too boring) and the “only reality” was what you created inside of your own head - a head-trip. Of course, if you partook of a few ingested chemicals, that certainly helped the process.

While the inner world of imagination, dreams, spirituality and memory is a potent and vital source for the artist, it certainly isn’t a “better” place than the world of the everyday, nor is it a place to hide and withdraw from the everyday. Our real life interacts with “reality” in too many ways to view it as a negative or frightening place. In addition, our real life is the source for a great deal of inspiration, as we shall discover in later essays.

It has been my experience, that a fear of reality is also what keeps many potential artists from taking those first few daring steps into expressing themselves artistically, whether visually, through writing, acting, dance or music. While our own inner world certainly holds an allure, many are concerned that “everyone else is so normal” that there is danger in looking inward. The outside world is safe, but people who live in their inner world “are weird.”

Part of this dilemma is in presenting this as “The Real (outside) World” and the “Imaginary (inner) World”. Maybe we would be better served if we referred to the real world as the “commonly familiar world” – the world that we all perceive in a somewhat similar framework. We can all look over there and agree that the object is a tree,

While an artist must be able to inhabit both levels of existence, maybe we ought to first question this whole concept of a reality that is knowable at all.

In the previous essay, I utilized the analogy of the butterfly, but now I would like to present a second analogy; one that is several thousand years old, and is often called Plato’s analogy of the cave. The Greek philosopher Plato presented this narrative to point out the unknowable nature of reality, and it will serve us well as a metaphor for the difficulties artists face in their attempts to give substance to ideas.

Plato imagines a man, sitting in the mouth of a shallow cave, facing inward and looking at the back wall of the cave‘s chamber. Directly behind him, just outside of the cave opening is a ledge, and then a drop-off to the base of the cliff many feet below. At the bottom of the cliff is a very large bonfire, leaping and swirling high in the air, up past the cave opening and illuminating the inside of the cave with its flickering light and no doubt warming the man’s back.

As the man sits with his back to the cave mouth, all that is real in the world passes behind him on the ledge. Trees, dogs, truth, love, humans and every other noun. As these “REAL” objects pass by on the ledge, the shadows of these realities are cast onto the back wall of the cave by the dancing flames. Just as the flames are constantly swirling, the shadows stretch and twist - now large, now small, giving an ever-changing shape to that which is real. Because the man cannot turn around, all that he sees are projected shadows of that which is real, but the shadows are constantly changing, and he is unable to tell which projections are accurate and which are distortions. He can see the shadows, and he knows they are projections, and he even knows that upon occasion, the shadow he sees may well be an accurate representation; he just cannot know which is which.

As an artist, we face a similar frustration when we try to make a representation of that which has no real form - our ideas and our dreams. It is a reversal of the cave analogy, as we are attempting a projection of formlessness (our mind image) into form (a picture, a dance or a poem), but the end result is just as daunting. We know there is something important that we are trying to convey, and we know we have tried hard to convey it, but we often feel we have been unsuccessful. We look at the finished product, and because it is not a complete success, we brand it a failure.

Plato is saying that we cannot know reality. All we will ever be aware of is a flickering, distorted projection, and therefore, we must do the best we can. It is not an excuse for not doing, but rather a catalyst to go forward and to not be stuck trying to know what cannot be known, or to realistically portray that which has no real form. A theologian might point out that just because we cannot achieve the perfection of God, that is not an excuse for giving up and making no effort to live a better and more perfect “God like” life. We will be measured by how hard we strive, not by a comparison to perfection.

A bit more on this subject in the next essay. Please let me know your thoughts.

bobsouvorin@mindspring.com

ARTQUEST ESSAY FIVE – Beginning Mind Reading

Perhaps one of the reasons we feel compelled to do art is because it allows us to tell our stories – the narratives that play out inside of our head, heart and soul.  Not in the traditional, storyteller mode of relating past cultural and societal fables to the entranced audience, but through a more symbolic type of narrative that is focused upon our own ethos.  It is a story drawn from the myth and mist of our mind and presented by means of abstract symbol and analogy, to suggest insight, hint at awareness and help us to be aware of a higher level of understanding.  Often it is a story more intended for the teller than for the listener.  Of course, one might be able to make the same statement about most works of art.

Perhaps one aspect of our need to communicate what we feel and wonder about is the fantastic proliferation of personal blogs.  There seem to be an endless number of websites where people talk about their day, their spouse, their job, their kids, their hopes and fears, their illness or infirmity and any aspect of themselves that is possible to conjure up.  If you want to include programs like Twitter, we also know that they have just lit a cigarette, filed their nails or had a twinge of indigestion.  While these tell-all-tales are posted on the Internet, and theoretically available to the entire connected word, one suspects that the primary audience is the poster and three or four friends or associates.  Perhaps by revealing myself, I can better understand myself.

While most of these blog posting are quite detailed, they well may be motivated by some of the same needs that compel others of us to want to produce art.  Blogs tend to be linear, specific and detailed (even though many choose to partially conceal their identity), while art is abstract, and symbolic, and usually cannot be “read” in a way that give answers (remember, the function of art is to ask, not answer).

For the artist, it is not a direct narrative with a beginning and end, but much more like the non-linear images of our nighttime dreams.  It may well have an obvious message or conclusion, but the path it follows is circuitous and disconnected, there is no map and the trail is not marked or blazed.

These internal myths, fables and sagas that our mind reveals to us in those illuminating bursts of meaning, causation, wonder and insight we can call creative revelation.  Creativity on its own can mean merely unique or clever, as coming up with a “creative” use for old socks or milk jugs, but artistic creativity, born of our inner being and soul, is always anchored in idea and meaning, and its message and impact is far more powerful.  It is the difference between clever and profound.

Surprisingly to most, the problem the prospective artist faces isn’t learning how to have moments of insight or inspiration.  They are there, in everyone.  The difficulty is in being willing to acknowledge them as valuable, and then allowing them to guide and inspire you in your artistic work. 

The above paragraph contains one of the most important concepts that I feel I have to offer.  What we seek as artists is not hidden, it is not lacking in our psyche and it is not lost.  We already own it, but more often than not, we don’t recognize it, and even if we do, we do not place much value upon it.

The next few essays will be a primer on basic mind reading, not to learn the secrets others are concealing, but to learn to find the inspiration and ideas within our own being.  People always ask artists “Where do you get all of your ideas?”  You don’t have to get them, they are already there.

As always, I welcome your comments and thoughts.

bobsouvorin@mindspring.com