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Art is communication 

1/19/2014

8 Comments

 
Picturesource: 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?


PictureRockwell 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.

Picturehttp://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).]


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.

Picture"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."


Picture
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?

8 Comments
Nancy link
1/20/2014 07:48:40 am

Hi Mirka-
I was so pleased to recognize some indigo cottons you used in your SAQA piece. Best of luck with it!
Nancy

Reply
Jenny K. Lyon link
1/20/2014 07:44:27 pm

Mirka I enjoyed this post-I know I am definitely communicating with my work. Your "Breaking Through" is looking like a lovely, evocative piece.

Reply
Mirka Breen link
1/21/2014 01:44:12 am

This post brought to mind a relative who has been working on a novel for many years. She described herself as a "poor communicator." This made me wonder what the purpose of writing, for her, could be.
Art has to communicate where I come from. I talk to myself plenty, and would not embark on the tough journey of getting myself out there if I weren't communicating outside of self.
My four-cents-worth.

Reply
Mirka Knaster link
1/21/2014 01:59:31 am

I agree with you, Mirka Breen. If one is a "poor communicator," then why bother to write? What is the writing for, just yourself? To communicate with myself, I write in my journal, not to be shared. But when I had my articles and books published in the past, it was because I felt they conveyed something useful for others. My hope was that the writing would be of benefit to them. Otherwise, again, why bother? Just to see my name in print? No! In the same way with textile art now, I aspire to transmit something of my own experience, making it public so that it sparks an emotion, engenders an insight, stimulates an understanding, etc.

Reply
Susan Fenerty
1/21/2014 03:47:03 am

Hi Mirka, from an earlier email we shared you likely know how I appreciated your description of how this new piece came to be, how you approached making it and your observations during the process. I also really liked how you included the photo of the ice breakers as illustration, worked for me! If I am to add anything of value, I would add an observation that since I now sleep with a Japanese buckwheat hull pillow - (Google soba gara makura) I awake recalling my dreams. They are vivid and clear and the effect is consistent every day. I believe I dream more since changing sleeping with a regular pillow, and I also believe this effect has been useful not only creatively for working in media but also for change and/or simply understanding what is going on in my life at the moment. Just try sleeping with one and see if you get the same benefit. it really has made a difference in my life, I will no longer sleep without using it, just saying.... As an aside I got my pillow at the Thousand Cranes futon shop in Berkeley on fourth street where I also find nice Japanese fabrics for quilts, and I made ten of them for gifts after experiencing the benefits of using mine. Everybody loves them (from feedback, and not everybody uses them for the same purpose but hey, who is dictating purpose in anything?) and I got to use a lot of large fabric "scraps". Organic buckwheat hulls available at a Santa Rosa coop. Happy dreaming however it works.

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Charis Webb link
1/21/2014 11:01:59 am

I just finished reading your very interesting blog and do agree with you that some artists are attempting visual communication of something deep within with their work, but I'm not sure it is always that way. 'Breaking Through' was certainly a good example of your communication through art. Quite successful! But what about the person that just wakes up one morning and say's …"gee I'd like to go play with some color today"? And lets say that out of that play comes something wonderful but completely unplanned, not thought through. And let us say that this art is pure abstract. Pure happenstance. Is that still communicating and what is it communicating? Perhaps they are just communicating their simple joy of color play??

Then I got to thinking that if "the point of art is to remind us of who we are" then maybe art is simply reminding us that we are all, quite simply, creator beings. That it is not about reminding us of who we are as individuals but as a species. If we had not been creative we would not have survived It is simply in our DNA, we absolutely must create. Since we have evolved we no longer have to find creative ways to keep warm, or to keep the saber tooth tigers from making us dinner, or figure out how to capture our dinner and all that mundane living stuff we can now channel our creative urges into beauty and continued technological advances.

I guess I am now wondering why we feel such a need to define art. And we do…this has been going on for ages. And it is fascinating. Ok… now we are on to "content". My head spins.

Reply
Susan Fenerty
1/21/2014 11:57:46 pm

Charis, thanks for yours, I really liked your observation that who we are is a creative species, makes me like Humans better, previously not my favorite species. Playing with color is a favorite modus operandi of my daughter who creates beautiful paintings, has Down's Syndrome and the best sense of composition since Matisse in my view. Now, what about content?

Reply
Phyllis Dennison
1/25/2014 06:45:13 am

I agree completely with the above. Well said!

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    Mirka Knaster

    I am a fiber/mixed-media artist with a decades-long career as a writer. Working with textiles and handmade paper from around the world and exploring the heart of art evoke my joy daily.

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