Experience is Work

An artist "ages" when, "by exhaustion of his brain" he decides it is simpler to find directly in life, as though ready-made, what he can express only in his work, what he should have distinguished and repeated by means of his work. The aging artist puts his trust in life, in the "beauty of life," but he gets no more than substitutes for what constitutes art, repetitions that have become mechanical because they are external...In art, substances are spiritualized, media dematerialized.

It is painful and difficult to internalize life to such an extent, and far easier to paint or write merely what one sees, rather than what one experiences. In the quote above, Deleuze is explaining Proust's point, one too easy to forget. How much simpler to choose a drink with X because that is really what life is about...right? For everybody else...certainly. And sometimes that produces something useful. But often it is just an excuse to give up the trouble, as if work really ended at 5PM with a beer at the bar. It doesn't in art...for anyone. Proust makes this point with Swann's failure to produce his work on Vermeer and contrasts it with Marcel's recognition after years of prattering at social gatherings that his great work will only be written if he writes it, about this experience of his, rather than imagining some great work which he never writes for teas, openings, dinners that he attends discussing his writing instead.

It can be helpful to read artists (writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, film makers) sometimes ponderous memoirs and be reminded that the greats suffered to remain young and excited about their work, not to age into the mindless bliss of a simple life.

The Education for a Gallery

Besides the difficulties involved in making art, there are a number of great difficulties in selling it, no less so in a down market with economies constantly on the verge of collapse. One gallerist with whom I am familiar has spent a large part of her spring redesigning the landscape around her gallery, not only to beautify the surrounding area, but also because it provides a good reason to invite her clientele later in the summer to see a new space, drink a glass of wine and discuss the works and new works of her favorite artists. She learned to make the most of a fiscal pinch in order to be invigorated for later.

Who should buy art when pennies are being pinched? Anyone! The fact is if everyone is being careful now is a great time to spend some time that might have been spent in bars with friends or airports for vacations learning about an artist, style or period of art that interests you. You will have the advantage then of going to galleries with better questions that will allow you to better understand what you do like, and how to explain your preferences to a gallerist who is after all only trying to show you pieces that you would like to spend your life knowing. There are some pieces that I would gladly hang in my home forever and by worshipping those pieces in museums I have tried to learn what I am looking for in galleries.

Galleries are similarly trying to re-focus their intentions to help collectors and appreciators admire and understand the value in the works hung. In my experience, large one-time expenses like buying a painting do not break the bank. Rather it is the general daily over-consumption and expenditures that spill from the hand like so much lost time that cause one later to see a dwindling account (okay, that and bad stock market decisions). Don't buy a picture you don't love but do buy one because it does that something which you can't ignore or forget–that will stick with you for life.

And let a gallerist help you understand what you appreciate at the next wine reception for a new re-design, website enhancement or show. Spend the time in the meantime learning what questions you want to ask because it is actually wonderful for them to talk about the works and help you learn the language to describe your own loves.

Cast Court

While in London this time I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I did not have time to see what looked to be a wonderful exhibit on the Aesthetic movement, but enjoyed seeing the Victorian mish-mash of the general collection.

In particular the Cast Court is spectacularly bizarre. During the Victorian period, collecting these casts was a popular activity–as collecting was in general. Both rooms are filled with casts produced to replicate the original item such that it felt as if I were walking around a wax museum. These casts replicate Trojan's column, pulpits from Florentine churches, and other European sites that the English commoner of the 19th century might not otherwise see. I am accustomed to medium-sized casts in white used in art schools to teach students how to draw shadow; these seemingly boring classes are actually wonderful classes in which one can really learn how to bring an object or face to life with the shades of black and white. Walking around this overflowing room of fakes was disorienting. With a friend visiting from Paris, I kept asking both of us how and what I was supposed to admire.

Seeing something she liked, we discovered the original–The Nymph of Fontainebleau by Cellini–is at the Louvre, where she plans to make a point of finding it. A quite interesting trip, I decided, would be to make a list of all the court items and plan a trip around Europe to see the originals. Perhaps one day...In the meantime, it is one of my most favorite, strange things I have recently experienced with exception to the fact that the Brits all seemed surprised by the constant downpour as if it were not an international joke that it rains here constantly. As it has, thereby permitting me to sleep, read, and on the next trip spend even more time inside museums because being outside is nearly impossible.

Pastel Chardin

Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe is on show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until the 14th of August 2011 and though I will discuss later my own impression of the show there was a moment in particular that I want to discuss now.

One Friday, a few weeks ago, I went to the show with three other people, an artist, an art critic, and an economic writer. For fun over dinner the question was posed which pastel we each favored. I knew the moment that I saw Chardin's "Head of a Man" that it was a picture I would never forget. I spent so much time looking at it while there. The pastel presents a older man, with thick, silvery hair asleep with his bearded chin on his chest, his arms folded across his chest. His beard and hair both need cutting so are plenty enough to offer some beautiful line work and colors. Chardin produced this pastel towards the end of his life, when he was himself going blind. It was one of his first pastels.

Answering the question was thus easy, but when I was asked why I added simply, "Because, I love it." That was not a sufficient answer but the conversation went elsewhere and the answer remained with me uncomfortably. A few weeks later when I was in conversation with the artist again, he asked me to explain more why I liked it so and I gave him a much longer and complicated answer. I did, however, feel as if I were rationalizing an appreciation that was better served by my obscure earlier response.

Some pictures I find that I do appreciate for a particular reason. But there are a very few, and in my mind they are the most special, for which "Because, I love it" is actually the best explanation. Some part of me wants to say, "Look, I will show you what I love." And simply draw the picture exactly as it is. A friend from some years past found it impossible to write a paper on Butler's The Way of All Flesh, explaining that the only thing to say about the book was the book itself. He couldn't simply hand the professor the book. So he never wrote the paper. Certainly for academic purposes such a response will not suffice. And I could never write about a book or a painting by duplicating it, which is why I rarely write about my most favorite things.

But it does seem to me that there ought to be some level of recognition in general conversation for appreciating a work of art so completely that any analysis is a distortion of the picture that is so admired. Certainly being able to discuss the markings, materials, and craft of the work is important to moving beyond infatuation, and sometimes these conversations allow me to develop a long list of what is special about a special work. But at the end of it, given the fact that art is non-linguistic, shouldn't there be some acknowledgment that "just because" is not always a bad answer?

Alone is not Always Lonely

Each artist seems then like the citizen of an unknown country, a fatherland he himself has forgotten, different from the one from which will come, heading for the Earth, another great artist.

Proust knew that it takes time away to see what you might want to do. Feeling unfamiliar somewhere unfamiliar can feel easier than feeling unfamiliar somewhere very familiar, which is why great ideas often come while traveling. Because you can not explain yourself among these strangers, the ideas have an opportunity to develop enough strength to fly on their own and perch comfortably on the side of your mind to be addressed when ready, or fall from the sky dead like Icarus to their own vanity.

Arp

We may compare artists and the arts to one another but the effort to try to see them independently, objectively, also permits a glimpse at an internal world that does not feel like someone else's. This ability to introduce someone else to what you feel, while allowing them to remain feeling themselves on some level, is what great art offers the world. And sometimes that does indeed feel alien, to the artist, the viewer, the lunatic and the lover.

Plagiarism

There are some pictures that I do not understand. This work in the Tate Britain is a vast canvas on which the artist has written the opening scene to Top Gun. The movie.

 See?

Even less do I understand the art teacher who having brought students to the museum to sketch from the works deemed this an appropriate work from which this young man might try his hand. I can only imagine the talent and opportunities he will gain from learning to imitate another's hand writing!

Storms

The skies opened up and poured water, releasing some tension from the sky if none of the heat or humidity. I sit at my desk most days which faces a window of trees, the sky more or less visible depending on the season and the lushness of the folliage. When the gray overcast caught my attention, I checked the weather and looked forward to the downfall predicted. I enjoy that kind of sudden, thundering but short-lived tempest.

All this reminded me of one of my very favorite pictures. It is a study by Turner at the Tate. This picture is from my time there last winter and I include here unmodified because the wall and the frame parallel my experience here at my desk where my peripheral vision is filled as I stare through the window at the shape shifting clouds.

I keep a postcard of this on my bookcase to the right of where I sit in front of my window and stare at it sometimes instead of my view. Some pictures do that. I shouldn't be too surprised as Turner is endlessly known for his skies, but I like the idea of lounging in these clouds as much as I enjoy imagining them from different locations around the world where I fantasize that I might live to step outside and see the skies come rolling in.

Not at Work

Gwen John, Corner of the Artist's Room, circa 1907

I have not been writing much here because I was finishing up one of the most challenging semesters of my educational history and exhaustingly, enlighteningly so. My room is hardly this neat and tidy, nor do I believe that the rest of the room in the image is as kept as this picture shows, but the tranquility is how I feel as I laze about reading irrelevent fiction and recover from the flu that is long overdue.

Gwen John was a Welsh artist who paints quiet pictures, largely known for her still lifes and anonymous women. I could mention her time as August Rodin's lover and his eventual distancing, or her time learning from Whistler, but the reason I pick this picture is because rather than learn, know, express, and recount more, I am going to go sit in a chair by a window and stare at the space between me and the sky.

Bushwick Open Studios

The Bushwick Open Studios are this upcoming weekend, June 4 & 5, as a part of the Bushwick Open Studio Tour 2011.

The Open Studio Tour is a fun opportunity to wield your critical eye. There are so many different artists showing (350 locations) that I recommend you check out the website to get some bearings. Bring yourself, friends, walk around, see what else is happening, meet a stranger, search for fun, etc...