source: amazon.com As I brought up in the last post, art is so many things that it’s challenging to pinpoint only one word that encompasses all its aspects. Or so I thought. Then I started reading American Images: The SBC Collection of Twentieth-Century American Art. The one word that now stands out as the best possible contender is communication. No matter how many different terms we use to explain art, I can’t help but come back to this one. It strikes me as the foundation upon which all the others are standing. Don’t the countless descriptive words add up to mean that art is communication?
Rockwell Kent, Snow Fields (Winter in the Berkshires). source: Google Art Project. wikimedia.org
Through the colors, lines, shapes, textures, patterns, designs, and space, a work of art offers the viewer something far greater than its basic components. American Images describes Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) as an artist who “treated art as a language with which to communicate feelings and experience, a vehicle to establish and maintain community.” For Georgia O’Keeffe and others, painting landscapes “provided a way to communicate spiritual presence as well as celebrate place.” O'Keeffe said, "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way--things I had no words for." Art also communicates a culture’s perspective of the world and reflects a particular time. Andy Warhol’s soup cans couldn’t have appeared in 1675.
Art can communicate an intellectual concept, a spiritual belief, a political idea, a personal or historical narrative, a simple sensation or strong emotion. I can picture this as the trajectory of an arrow. An arrow from, let’s say, nature or politics, penetrates the artist, moves around inside him or her, then emerges to the outside. The arrow, no longer exactly as it first entered the artist, now passes into the viewer. And so on. The arrow also could begin by migrating from one area of the artist's inner being to another, and then move out and reach a viewer.
Whether the artist, at the outset, is conscious about transmitting a particular communication depends on the painter, sculptor, weaver, ceramicist, or collagist.
Whether the artist, at the outset, is conscious about transmitting a particular communication depends on the painter, sculptor, weaver, ceramicist, or collagist.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/25/artist-piet-mondrian-london-years. Tate Collection.
From the books and articles I’ve read and DVD I recently watched, the Dutch painter Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (Piet Mondrian) comes across as fully conscious of what he aspired to achieve in and communicate through his work. In a 1914 letter to Dutch artist Hendricus Peter Bremmer, he wrote:
I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things…
I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true. [Quoted in "Van Doesburg at Tate Modern," by Jackie Wullschlager, www.ft.com (6 Feb. 2010).]
I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things…
I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true. [Quoted in "Van Doesburg at Tate Modern," by Jackie Wullschlager, www.ft.com (6 Feb. 2010).]
Mondrian was so clear about his intentions that he cultivated utter simplicity in his life. He deliberately reduced things to a minimum—ascetic lifestyle, no wife or children--so that he could have maximum concentration in his studio. Mondrian’s way of living matched his conscious goal in art, which, according to the DVD, was “to discern an underlying structure in the world” and to communicate this, “as a mathematician might, by means of the fewest, cleanest elements available, removing all clutter, paring away everything inessential to reveal the barest, most essential solution.”
I’ve always admired people who are that crystal clear, who seem able to see the long and distant way ahead. And then there’s how I operate, seeing only so far, maybe a foot in front of me, as I take each step.
I’ve always admired people who are that crystal clear, who seem able to see the long and distant way ahead. And then there’s how I operate, seeing only so far, maybe a foot in front of me, as I take each step.
"Breaking Through" starting to reveal itself. In response to a call for entries in an upcoming SAQA Trunk Show, I didn’t have a clue what to create. I wasn’t aware of a specific idea I wished to make public through textiles. Since there was no theme restriction, only a size limitation of 7x10, what to do? I did my usual—I improvised. First step: I picked up some pieces left over from another project and tentatively pinned them on the design wall. Another step: I shifted them a bit here, a bit there. I moved things around some more. Gradually, like a baby chick cracking its shell, something was emerging. I looked at the fabrics and realized what I had unconsciously picked up from the pile: a dark blue tight and enclosed pattern with rigid white lines and a white open pattern in which the indigo organic shapes of the yukata fabric float, as though the dark blue were coming apart and dispersing. When I set the triangular shapes inside, what came to mind were ships forcing their way through frozen water by cleaving the ice. Much to my surprise, the title spontaneously popped out: "Breaking Through."
Ships breaking icea 97 miles south of Nome, Alaska. Source: commons.wikimedia.org
It shouldn't have been such a surprise. Last year, for months, I was dealing with a deep internal issue. I was groping in the dark, working things out in my dreams at night, until the light broke through enough for me to become conscious of what was going on. I hadn’t realized that my inner breakthrough was surfacing from the unconscious and seeking a material presence. It wanted me to fully acknowledge the transformation I’d experienced.
When I stood back and looked at the simple piece I had created, I was in awe of how it had evolved. I thought I didn’t know what I wanted to express. Yet, some part of me did know what to communicate. Otherwise, what’s the point of making art? As Susan Fenerty commented in response to my first post, her husband once told her, “The point of Art is to remind us of who we are.”
Questions:
What do you, or want to, communicate through your artwork?
Do you have a complete vision or partial idea as you embark on a project?
Is your process clear and direct or does it unfold bit by bit and surprise you?
When I stood back and looked at the simple piece I had created, I was in awe of how it had evolved. I thought I didn’t know what I wanted to express. Yet, some part of me did know what to communicate. Otherwise, what’s the point of making art? As Susan Fenerty commented in response to my first post, her husband once told her, “The point of Art is to remind us of who we are.”
Questions:
What do you, or want to, communicate through your artwork?
Do you have a complete vision or partial idea as you embark on a project?
Is your process clear and direct or does it unfold bit by bit and surprise you?
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