about making art? And last night, sitting at a table in another
friend's backyard, the conversation picked up again.
My friend said that the best reason he's heard yet for making art, or
music, is that it's a messy, crowded world, and the only way to live
in it, to coexist, is to practice an understanding for what is foreign
and uncomfortable to you. Art asks for that understanding. I think
what he was saying is that to practice making art or to practice
looking at it is a kind of learning that asks you to exist in what is
uncomfortable, to be able to stand on ground that is unfamiliar, or to
be able to exist without any ground to stand on at all. This kind of
learning practices floating.
Or, learning at all practices floating. This makes sense to me as a
reason to learn, and as a reason to care about art in that it's one
way of learning. At some point in addressing the question of why I
should care about making art there has to be, it seems to me, a moment
where I ascribe a value to making art. That's a tricky moment, though,
and underlies the difficulty of the question. Each justification slips
away when I go to claim it, leaving me with the tautology, it's
important because it's important. My friend's reason to care about art
is nice in one way because it ascribes value not necessarily to art
but to learning, which by its definition is something that is moving,
growing, changing.
It's important because it's important betrays what I really want to
say, though, and what I feel, however much it seems to dodge the
question. It seems to me that I call art important and it has to be
important or else it is nothing. I've heard people say, "I think
making art is important," or "I think painting matters," as though
these were the reasons why it's important or why it matters. This
feels like a moral to me, and I've accepted it that way recently. It
matters and so it matters to do it well, to do it a lot, to practice
at it.
Henry
4 comments:
Having almost finished Eros: The Bittersweet, it seems to perfectly describe why I make art, and why I care to make art. In painting I am perpetually reaching for something, what I have been calling my "perfection". A nonexistent, imagined thing, built up and embellished like an absent lover, I know I'll never grasp it and also that if I did there would be no reason to continue painting.
But why to even want to reach? The same reason one wishes to gain knowledge, I suppose, or wishes to think about things. There is an element of wanting to create beauty, because I am affected by beauty, and also of wanting to say something, say something exactly with no extra expression.
Will.
Last summer a conversation that came up frequently centered on-- or at least had in its periphery--the Richard Serra retrospective at MoMA, particularly his very large, "Torque" pieces. Your (Mason) description of standing up close to Starry Night reminds me of how one of my friends often described walking through "Torque, Spirals, Spheres"-- I think that's the one-- where often one's entire field of vision was eclipsed by just a chunk of the piece. My friend would describe the experiential nature of walking through it, the experience of the work's texture and it's scale, arguing for it because it achieved what he considers art, or "good" art, should achieve: an unnamable, or primal attraction.
As my other friend would likely argue, emphasizing this unnamable experience is more of an argument for religion than it is for art. I think that's right, and I think that kind of understanding of art allows it to be a religious experience called under a different name, or substitutes an invisible, unknowable power in art for an invisible, unknowable power in god. I'm not averse to that way of seeing things, or trying to dismiss that perspective, but I think it's more accurate to call it a religious argument than an argument for why art is important.
Will, your thoughts on reaching and grasping make a lot of sense to me and relate a lot, I think, to seeing art in the context of something like learning. Hopefully this isn't too off topic, but what you wrote reminded me of Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech he gave on race a couple of months ago. (I forget if we talked about this already, but it's worth YouTubing if you haven't seen it). It seemed to me that he was trying to place himself in an American narrative of slow and not entirely linear progress to fulfill ideals that can never be completely fulfilled. "Perfection," the word he used, too, seems to open the door to a religious understanding though I don't want to get off the road too much here. I only say that because the common ground again, for me at least, seems to be in the necessity for a constant practicing. Fulfilling something you might call for yourself perfection is not only a reach for it but a practicing for it.
Henry
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