Art & Perception

I do better work when I flow with rather than resist my passions. You are probably the
same. This winter my great passion was skiing.

I needed the exercise, for one. When I get out of shape, I lose my vim. When I lose my vim, I lose everything else. But exercise all by itself is boring, so doing something that is both fun and physically demanding is just the thing. This post asks no important questions. Probably, I should put it on my blog and not here, but I do share some photos for the first time, and I do get to an important theme to all artists at the end.

And yeah, this is a long post. But I’ve been gone. There’s some catching up to do.

 

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Painting From Life vs. From Photos

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Works of art create their own worlds, with their own rules. . . Internal coherence is more important than any resemblance the work might have to something outside of it.

–Arthur Whitman

I think this is one of the most insightful statements about what art is about, or supposed to be about, that we have had on Art & Perception so far. As Arthur points out, it is not so much a definition of art, as a statement of what is most valuable in art.

Arthur’s statement is not so useful for telling us what is art versus what is not (in that respect it is far too broad.) Rather, it is an interesting way to think about what a given artwork is accomplishing. I say “accomplishing” in the present tense, because an artwork, to be perceived, must have a parallel representation in the mind of the viewer (the mind being the greatest world-builder of all). Whatever world the artist has created in their artwork must be rebuilt in the mind of the viewer in order to be seen and felt.

I read something tantalizing in Arthur’s statement about world building, something that suggests to me that art is the externalization of an artist’s inner perceptual world, or a world synthesized through an interaction of the inner world of the mind and the materials and stimuli of the outside world. The problem is that to be more than simply tantalizing, we need to take what Arthur is saying a lot further.

Let me ask then, what are the implications of the statements that I quote at the beginning of this post? How can the concept of art as world-building enhance our appreciation of, and ability to create, art?

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Painting From Life vs. From Photos

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Who are the great, the truly great artists of our times? — let’s say, artists active in the period 1975 to 2000.

I realize that some might say that it is too early to judge. If this is your opinion, I’d like to ask a parallel question: who are the artists active prior to 1975-2000 who came to be recognized as great during that period?

Also, let’s not confuse ‘great’ with ‘important.’ Andy Warhol, was undoubtedly an important artist, but a great one? I don’t know — maybe you do!

The exigencies of life have ever had a way of intruding on art.

Today, for example, I had a really fun post in the works. I got a bunch of pictures from my various ski adventures this season, and I was planning a little art of life exposition.

Grammarians will recognize my use of the pluperfect, for all that is long in the past.

Instead of spending a few hours cooking fine cuisine for wealthy and highly appreciative guests — the usual case at the resort where I chef — I find myself having to serve up a cost effective buffet for a gang of miscreants who’ve grossly underpaid; furthermore, we just lost half our staff.

Grrr…

And so I take this brief moment to apologize once again for a non-post. Many people think artists are not able to deal with real life. To the contrary, I think we are generally as tough as they come. We have to be. The universe does not often agree with our dreams.

It seems I’ve been seeing more and more theme cookbooks these days. I almost never look at them. And I’m not proposing that we create a compilation of “Favorite recipes from Art and Perception.” I am interested not so much in what you cook as in how you cook.

My question: Is there any connection between how you cook and how you do art?

I don’t mean to suppose that my plates have heaping mountains of textures while David’s meals are more flattened shapes like Chinese roadkill, or that Rex dines on charred tidbits while Sunil’s dishes are drenched in ketchup and mustard.

It’s more about approach, about your fundamental relation to your creations. Do your art and your cooking reveal two entirely different yous? Or is your life a seamless whole that reflects your intuitive grasp of the universe?

Are you always trying new dishes? Are they invented by you or from a cookbook? Do you follow recipes precisely? At all? Do you like to use exotic ingredients? Do specialized kitchen tools turn you on? How do you recharge your culinary batteries when you hit a slump?

I’ll provide some of my own answers, but first I have to go and make breakfast.

By the way, got any good recipes?

Here’s a curious tale for you: A week ago I was approached by someone interested in art collecting and in art blogging, and particularly in the interaction of the two. The C, as I shall call this beginning collector, put forward the interesting speculation that blogged artworks acquire “an aura of fame” that potentially makes them more salable. Whether that’s true or not, it probably doesn’t hurt the value of an artwork for it to be blogged.

It happens that A&P had come to the C’s attention, and as a way of getting hirs feet wet, the C is considering buying perhaps half a dozen prints of images that have appeared in my posts. My prints are cheap; I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing this post if your paintings, linoleums, quilts, etc. were the same! (But maybe they’ll be next.) The C had good timing, in that just a few days ago I met with a local gallery owner who was enthusiastic about showing my work in her gallery. If that works out, my prices will have to go up, at least for work being sold by the gallery. (Also, the C didn’t know it, but I currently give an unadvertised 20% discount on purchases after the first.)

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Painting From Life vs. From Photos

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Art dealers are not shop keepers. As Edward Winkleman writes, “Saying a dealer is just a shopkeeper might make someone feel superior, but it hardly accurately describes the job.”

Why do I say dealers are artists? Well, try this: come up with a definition of what artist means today (a serious definition) that will encompass conceptual artists and installation artists and others working in non-traditional media, and I think you will find that it is hard to exclude dealers, at least the better ones, from the category of artist. Dealers can make art from objects that would not be considered art otherwise. Dealers create a program in the medium of art, the program itself is art.

‘Artist’ is generally considered to be an honorable title, for someone who does it well. Why then are the dealers not rushing to claim label? I notice a pretty conspicuous silence, in fact. What’s the deal?

Here is my guess: dealers don’t need to claim the title of artist, because they already have the substance, the power of artists. Calling themselves artists would create some awkwardness — it would put all those other artists in the dealer’s program into an almost assistant-like position, explicitly. Why agitate the artists more than necessary? Also, calling themselves artists would open the dealers up to a whole class of art criticism that is avoided by declining the title, ‘artist’.

If dealers are artists, it poses a challenging question to self-proclaimed artists: Why am I not also using art as a medium? If art dealing is an art form — and a pretty important one — then why are we letting the dealers have all the fun?