RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,168
(art, pt. 2)
"It seems that the fundamental
experience of being alive is a
gothic and grotesque experience.
It really is a frightening place.
None of us feels that we are
entirely normal." I guess that
summation is one for the record
books, and I know that when I
read it it scored deeply. Certain
things do. One time I had two
friends, in a relationship for a
really long time. Motorcycle
people. (I'm trying to tie this
all in, and maybe I'll succeed,
maybe not, shortly, with the
same 'Art' theme as the previous
chapter. Also, let me point out
that, even though it's in quotes,
I altered that quotation by
leaving out 'on Earth' - as in
"...the fundamental experience
of being alive on Earth." It
struck me as being needlessly
redundant). They had finally
decided to get married, and
went on a motorcycle trip to
Las Vegas, to be married there.
While there, on the motorcycle,
they had a road accident wherein
they ran broadside into a screaming
ambulance that was crossing their
path. She was killed. He was banged
up, but fine. Who was at fault, if
alcohol or speeding was involved,
I never found out, but the tragic
aspects remained and it was all
eventually taken care of too.
-
My point is, (I think), artfully if
that episode was the premise of a
book or an adventure film or an
episode of some cop show or
somesuch, it could possible have
been construed as 'artfully' perfect.
Art and creativity have always had a
way of subsuming the human aspects
of sadness or tragedy into the more
vast premises which they deal with
in relating or telling tales. In the
late 1700's, I guess, many a widow
or survivor was able to (perhaps)
recognize their husband or family
member in those tableauxs of
battle, shipwreck, or disaster?
-
As the turtle who had been
attacked by a gang of snails said,
'It all happened so fast.' Once the
triumphal vale of psychology and
self-awareness took over - as I see
it - Art lost all those old designations.
It was no longer necessary at all to be
able to see, say, any Heinrich Bloch
in a battle scene, or the grimace of
Amelia Avellina in the approaching
storm - photography and all the
new ways of visual messaging had
taken all that over. Art went inside.
The great maw of the individual
psyche surpassed, for a 'modern'
man, any necessity for true, accurate,
and detail-oriented representation.
Even things recognizable had changed
their appearances and somehow all
doors had opened to the artful play
and flow of a sort of interpretative
dance within the world of color and
line and space. I've often believed
that sort of joyousness was why
Humankind was created anyway,
in Eden, a total Republic of Creation.
In the Blakean sense (William Blake,
1757-1827) it was all again lost
at the Fall and replaced by his
imposing Gods 'Nobodaddy' and
'Urizen' ('Your Reason') who then
shackled Mankind within the pearly
limit of guilt, doubt, repetition,
rules, order, measurement and
limitation. Art was the escape.
-
Wars and rumors of war, of course,
by day and night frittered away the
'good' inherent in all recouping of
those old possibilities, and the world
was encased by the same systems and
logic we have to day. 'Scrabble players
don't suppose that spelling words is
significant; what's significant is the
assembling of words from a limited
array of letters. Chess players don't
think about capturing kings and rooks;
they think about strategies for capturing
kings and rooks.' No painter, on the
same level, imagined that eliminating
perspective, instead of re-telling the
story of a battle or flood, was inherently
virtuous. No one really thought the
picture plane was a prime place in
itself. They were, instead, drawn to
the game of eliminating everything
else and then finding out what was
left and how to communicate it. The
'dignity' of an abstracted art lies in
the intersection of the obviousness
of its motifs and the complexity of
its motives. What I here call the
'psychology;' of the art - which
brings out the endless possibilities
of the truer Humanity of the artist,
who punches now his or her way
outward from the encroaching
shroud of dark reason and negative
expectation by which the rest of
life has been overtaken.
-
We are everywhere else locked in
place. Art becomes both the key
AND the exiting. Past a certain
point - a a difficult point to achieve,
yes - it hardly matters what is done,
as long as 'something' is done.
No comments:
Post a Comment