Free Play

There are days when I am at a loss, confused, disoriented, uncertain. If I have any clarity of mind, I try to go to a museum. Not to see a favorite work as that would require too much effort of appreciation in a time of duress, but rather to wander until standing in front of one piece, the stern edges of my discomfort are stilled.

Breton, in his own text Position Politique de la surréalisme, affirms Hegel’s definition of art saying, “l’objet d’art tient le milieu entre le sensible et le rationnel. C’est quelque chose de spirituel qui apparait comme matériel” [the art object holds the middle between the sensible and the rational. It is something of the spiritual which appears as material]. Art is the bridge between the senses and the mind, by moving from one to the other. It permits a moment of communication between the artist and the other, and from the artist to the many, and the one to the many. Art manages the miracle of bridging the self and other, the trappings of the mind and the freedom of thought, without rejecting either.

The surrealists imagined that the strength of the image appeared from the artist’s willingness to paint two seemingly irreconcilable ideas together. The image was thus a creation of the artist’s willingness to reveal the conflict of being. This seems so reasonable that I am occasionally at a loss as to why it required theoretical consideration, discussion, proof, but try to remember that such mental efforts can be fun too. Pierre Reverdy said that "L’image est une création pure de l’esprit. Elle ne peut naître d’une comparaison mais du rapprochement de deux réalités plus ou moins éloignées. Plus les rapports des deux réalités rapprochées seront lointains et justes, plus l’image sera forte–plus elle aura de puissance émotive et de réalité poétique..." [The image is a pure creation of the spirit. It (the image) can not be born of a comparison but rather of a coming-together of two realities more or less apart. The greater distance and just relation between the two things brought together, the greater the force of the image–the more emotional power and poetic reality there will be]. Rather than comparing one state of being to another, the artist brings these states into dynamic engagement, permitting the peculiar parts of a particular moment to participate in a dialogue with the known and accepted. The more removed the two forces at work in the artist are from each other, the more emotional power the image will offer. Though this was stated in relation to surreal art, I do not see how it does not apply to art in general and even see Kant's idea of free play at work.

Unfortunately I do not often remember how easily I can get out of the stagnancy of my mental muck, believing I guess that sitting in it will somehow show me something other than mud. Occasionally, I guess I could sit in it long enough that something starts to grow, but even with Spring beginning to bloom that seems like a long wait. Art jars me, even as it seems familiar, and so moves me on to the next thing, reminding me to play a little, freeing my efforts from frustration.