“An artist is not paid for his labour but for his vision.”
-James McNeill Whistler (the “her” must, sadly, still be self-inserted)
It must be a rite of passage for anyone who interacts with the idea of art, sooner or later, to write something on the subject of art itself. Forgive me for being so predictable, but here I am. It feels like one of those bardic things, like love or space or death or life, that we have to keep on trying to describe in different words, because part of it’s beauty is that one set simply isn’t enough. And so introduced, my own reflections will be doubtlessly underwhelming: art is a bizarre thing. Partly because among its capacities lies emotional influence. It attracts strong opinions and stronger words, unites and divides in ways that other powers do not. Possibly because, in art, the physical is always coupled with the philosophical, the metaphorical, and/or the psychological. What it is, is never apart from what it means. First of all, my aim here is to complicate simple ideas of art, for which some amount of blame can be put on educational frameworks that from an early stage bundle art into a period-limited subject summed up by paintbrushes, pastels and easels. And in any society that is satisfied with this definition, that is all that the idea of art will ever persist as even into adulthood. Credit where it is due, even in this straightforward artistic concept, one central thing still circulates: the association of art with expression. When looked at this way, all of a sudden a markedly larger, and perhaps much more frightening, possibility falls into the light. That in some capacity or another, to some level, humanity is part art. And each one of us, so long as we can still call ourselves human, are artists. Why is this? Because human beings operate their existence alongside the need to express: when we speak; when we think, even, we are articulating directly to the audience of our own consciousness. When we reason and judge we express the results of our own analysis and reflections; when we smile; when we fidget and even when we keep our distance or hold our tongue. There are prodigies and geniuses in artistic expression as there are in all skills, but far too often we forget the everyday artist, and the expression of simply being alive. To be in the world is an obscure sort of communication with it; we take up space and we consume without being able to help it, we do we say we breathe. Now of course, you could here interject that the artistic form is only one of multiple classes of expression, and in the mundane operation of our prosaic lives it is not guaranteed that it is the one we always choose. And you would be right, but it is not so easy to say with full confidence that it is the one we never choose, or more to the point, that we can always predict which one we will lean towards in the end. And therefore maybe the best way to envisage it all is that it is equal among a series of options between which there is a reasonable chance of its being adopted. And this satisfies the point well enough.
In general, a broad acceptance of art as communication is commonplace. Even a desultory sift through the words of artists (if albeit the traditional paint-wielding type) across time and space repeats that same realisation like a motif. It can almost be relied upon. To Van Gogh ‘the strokes come like speech,’ Georgia O’Keefe ‘found…[she] could say things with colour and shapes that…[she] couldn’t say any other way- that…[she] had no words for,” and to Edward Hopper it is plain. ‘If I could say it in words,’ he states, ‘there would be no reason to paint.’ I think you get the idea. But I’ll go further still, and if you linger a little longer on the turn of phrase, it should be easy to understand just how. When we talk of art we denominalise it, it is “verbed” by us. We speak of the art of conversation, or the art of war, the art of survival or the art of politics. Yet consciously or not, when we say these things we make an admission, that art is not a thing you make but a way of making things. It is immaterial insofar as you could reclassify it from an object, to a method. And there is one particularly tantalising consideration of such a prospect, close to the one Whistler gives us above when he prioritises ‘vision’ as the central facet of art. That no matter the content of a piece of art, its subject can never truly eclipse it’s object. Meaning that what is constructed, the end result, is rivalled in the impression it gives by that of the one who constructed it. That is it's distinction. Were it a case of photography, we could put it this way: that in any one photograph we are being spoken to about what is happening on both sides of the camera, not only the one we can see. We leave our trace in the things we do merely because it is we who have done them. And though it is true to an extent when Piet Mondrian declares the way an artist is ‘essentially a channel’, I would still argue that the peculiar marks left behind by the shape and profile of that channel is as much the art as the concepts and messages that flow through it.
The question then arises. Like other methods, when we cut, when we wash, when we build, could the artistic process not also be pervasive, might it too not also apply to more acts than we would initially assume? And so…once again, we are brought right back round to the haunting suggestion that, at some level or another, art is already something that we all do. It’s a notion that, personally speaking, has interesting consequences. Most strikingly, cultural and social ones of a calibre that square up comfortably against the delicate disdain some attach to art as a subordinate discipline, a dead-weight to the shining march of human progress and intellect. But we may return to that later. There is one final bridge to cross.
Between all these abstractions, the primary message of art’s dialect, (i.e if it is a communication, what precisely is trying to communicate?), can be inferred easily enough, but it saves time for me just to say it straight. In art, the common denominator is the self. That, essentially, is what it expresses to those that experience it in any capacity (meaning production and consumption alike). But more specifically, if we take inspiration from Giacometti who tells us that art tries to produce ‘a reality of it’s own’, we might see how, intertwined within that goal of self-expression, sometimes far less explicit and subterranean than it’s obvious surface characteristics lies the more precise desire to present truth. The desire, be aware, not invariably the capability. When first considering art, it was tempting for me to identify it as the pursuit of beauty. In many ways it is, but in arguably stronger ways this rationale also runs crosswise, intersecting its deeper purposes. One of which, like all things is to find and display, to bear witness, to truth. In practice it is often more accurate to say it attempts to present a proposed truth, or rather a strong and intimate opinion, and not necessarily the truth. And so whether nobler intentions are achieved or not continues to be debatable case by case, but what is important is the ambition, and this remains.
The distinction, however, is significant, and when painted in these terms of individuality the inconsistencies are easier to reconcile. An artwork’s statement may even be a momentary one, merely a passing conviction, but crucially, it is a personal one. It seeks to snapshot and subsequently showcase the understanding of a single person, their perception in time of a certain thing or group of things, their comprehension of the things they heard or saw. Their apparent, (sometimes ephemeral, maybe constructed) reality. And I call it reality not to confirm it as such, only to highlight the level of persuasion it holds over its executor at the time of it's production. Thus it is rooted in the individual, and importantly, it arises, it does not appear. As such it would not be just to call it transcendent, nor to claim that it exists beyond the contours and constraints of the society in which it arises. I caution, in other words, against allowing discussions of decency to be stamped as either inappropriate or irrelevant where art is concerned, an end all too easily arrived at when we forget the profound influence of vogue, mores and contemporary public attitude in shaping that which claims to rebel just as much as that which appears to comply.
Exceptions, naturally, are inescapable, and there will be art that pays homage to truth in it's purest form. There are sacred things whose sancrosanctity is as we have seen incontrovertible though continually denied, but consider the next point as addressing that which is less inviolable. Art that pretends to objectivity is already misled, and deeply misleading in turn, but it might be fair to comment that some art in its presentation aspires not to an objective truth, but a collective one. A partial consensus. And herein lies both its power and its keen danger: whilst it does not always seek support it will never refuse it. If given the chance to lead it will garner followers, and so in art is a power just as prolific as politics, just as poignant as scholasticism, and just as valid as empiricism. Many examples of artistic effort contort themselves paradoxically, attempting to both challenge and yet become (if not entirely) the system, through a persuasion of the majority. Splashed across the walls and stony planes of occupied Palestine, for example, the street artist has displayed their rebellion in unapologetic shades, to confront and convince at once. And so just as other forms of education stretch our mental muscles and teach us mobile thought, art holds the same potential for choice, impact and consequence. This is not a call for its undeserved curtailment, nor for it's unthinking preferment, but only asks, just as the observations above do, for a recognition of the capability of art, and it’s treatment with due respect, be it cautionary or appreciative. It is necessarily personal, placed and impressionistic, and should thus neither be unreservedly trusted nor lightly underestimated for either good or ill. What it does do, however, regardless of its defiance, and simply because of its intrinsic identity as the covert representative of the person who produced it, is operate within codes, just as they do. Human, and both as possibly problematic, as possibly praiseworthy as that implies.
So now we arrive at our final supposition, one which makes an effort to fuse all that has preceded it. In a lay understanding of art there can sometimes persist the resilient insistence of a duality between the two pillars of art and science, running as perpetually parallel paragons of mutual antithesis. And yet, having considered art as both a permeating style of daily execution broadly applicable across the board, and as a potent and dynamic force of influence equal to other more conventionally recognised pathways of power, it is no longer feasible to submit to an uncomplicated demarcation of the two “areas of expertise”. The overlap is difficult to ignore, but their relationship invites a multiplicity that defies simple taxonomies.
In one way the case for their connection is logical: if we can recognise the ability for both art and science to assume the form of methodologies, why can they then not become methodologies of performing each other? The ingenuity of a bridge whose function relies on the systematic calculation of various meticulous thresholds is inconceivable without first the imagination to identify even it’s possibility, and later the vision to achieve its practical implementation and construction. Science is inspired, as art is. Likewise, the ability of poetry to lead language’s rules on a chase is dependent on the systematic and exact formulation of such rules in the first place, science offers the apparatus with which art can work. Between motive and method, the two fluctuate, one may direct the other’s efforts. In a second way they betray themselves by their pivotal wish: the need to find meaning, if not always order. The same stars that are mapped and charted have a dozen different names and stories trailing in their living and their death. Both search for context as a means of understanding. In their two distinct ways, they are yet united in their quest to find the worth of the world by allowing the human capacity for reasoning to know the universe. Science may search for rules to offer definition, but at the end of the day they both seek to find something more in the known.
And in a third-assuming we classify successful research not as that which is completed for its own sake (though even here creative thought cannot be wholly excluded), but as that which is able to serve a purpose in the reality in which it was conducted-even the most conventionally scientific work falls short without the ability to relate to the lived experience. And to generate a lived impact. Generally because in order to do so it must leave the safety of the laboratory and enter the dangerous territory of the sociological milieu, where the sterility of the controlled environment cannot sustain itself, and where the human being and all its warring factors, a creature in which art as we have seen already exists to some degree, can send a hypothesis in unexpected directions. And so the two collide once again.
And all of this is really to a very specific end, one which multiple times over the course of this post I have explicitly arrived at. It is an argument for the awarding of art a proper place, without glorification or exaltation beyond the basic constraints of the society it must necessarily be born of; but too without the belittlement and dismissal of those who consider it an unnecessary misuse of resources. It is not a law unto itself, and it is not an aside. It does not exist alone, but it does exist in its own right. It does not tell the truth undoubtedly, but it is not removed from reality. It teaches a new slant on success, it’s motives can be distinct, but it is not utterly isolated from other notions of success, neither does it’s denial elevate them. With a little respect, its contradictions can be reconciled, and its possibilities used without abuse.
The world, without it, would be a dysfunctional place.
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Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed this post, make your way back to the Wilderness for more thoughts, stories, and strangenesses.
And always, stay curious.
