For the Love of Art
Was Jackson Pollack just sprinkling paint?When I look at his works, I see something, and I enjoy it.
I enjoy the play of color. Somehow, there is a composition that connects with me. There is depth, movement, a waltz, a race, a journey; and it seems even more than a landscape of layers of feeling and thoughtfulness which I feel and think gazing upon it. It is a short wordless, internal exploration. And that feels very good.
When I look into Yayoi Kasuma's infinity obliteration rooms, I lose myself in something greater.
And it reminds me that this is a reflection of a higher reality,
well beyond myself, much more interesting...
that I long for.
When I see Gustav Klimt's painting of mother and child
It is so warm, and compassionate.
The colors are so comfortable, natural, connected and inspiring.
The dark of autumn and approaching winter,
But held securely in the arms of my mother...
The light of Spring approaching after...
And the memory of my own child in my arms..
I want to lift that child up into my own arms...
Once again.
And place a hand upon that woman's shoulder.
If art can do this, if it can lift us higher, and deeper within our own selves,
if art can awaken us from complacency and bring something greater from us...
Then it is art, to me, the highest art.
That these artists were also master craftspeople may be part of the reason their works are so effective.
Why does a small white canvas with the black stenciled words...
SELLTHE
HOUSE S
ELLTHEC
AR SELL
THEKIDS
Sell for over $26M ?
It didn't happen overnight. Christopher Wool's stenciled canvas went up and up gradually, then in leaps. Private sales, private arrangements, all around a simple, clever and timely sentiment.
There is something in it. The movie Apocalypse Now? The sentiment of relinquishing everything, even those we love for our happiness; a desperation to rise out of the small canvas box of frame and skin we each live in; shouting the message in all caps because we have become too large in ambition and a bit disjointed in judgement skewed from trying and failing to cram all the pieces of our addictions together nicely into the tiny space of our limited lives? I guess the painter was pretty good at selling!
Art is the most expensive item, pound for pound, on the planet. Some of that is a wall street investor kind of thing. Still, that investment also fuels the creation of art.
It is art's appeal, what it does to us, and the odd ability we have as humans to understand that effect, even if at first we don't get it, that makes a static artwork a living mirror of something important in ourselves.
In time we do get it. That makes art amazing. And modern art, done well, done thoughtfully, without equal. No one will ever put those words together in that way, meaning that message, that notion, ever again.
I've read a bit of critique and while I've chosen simple words here, I challenge art curators to avoid too many insider references and french terminology. I like the French people. But if art is relevant, it is not obscure. If it is that rare, if one must study the history and times to the level of archeology, or if this experience can be owned exclusively by the property owner, then it is meaningless to anyone else. The value is lost.
But the beauty of art is once you get it, it's yours. And you get it by understanding beyond words. If Art was about words, reading texts and descriptions would suffice.
You can buy a picture frame covered in canvas and paint, but the window to the soul is the one inside yourself. The painting only holds that window open for a few moments, while you look and experience, even if at first you don't understand what you are looking at; so that you may peer inside. And that experience becomes a part of you. No one can take it away. In time you understand.
To study the metal that made the Statue of Liberty, to study the harbor, or the weather, or the upbringing of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, or the neoclassic style, is entirely separate from the experience of that remarkable work. If you have to ask "what" or "why" then silence and waiting is the best answer.
Whatever artists do with their full powers of attention, will and passion, will always be new and alive. It's up to us to catch up to it, to get it, to share that experience, if we can learn, in this age of "army of one" to share any experiences again... If anything will bring this exploding diversity together in a common experience it is, and will be art.
Don't miss Yayoi Kusama's exhibit in New York later this month at the Hirschorn:
| 23.feb.2017-14.may.2017 YAYOI KUSAMA: INFINITY MIRRORS Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. |
http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp/e/information/
