As a creative person and an artist I am, like, most artists, constantly striving to make work that satisfies both my vision and my compulsion. To create for the purpose of selling and making money is a noteworthy endeavor, but the most grinding of monotonous boredom. It takes a very particular commission to generate any interest or enthusiasm. To create for concept and dialogue is increasingly pointless. Any position you can take has been already taken by any number of other artists, both more and less capable. This ensures that the only way to have your art received well enough to begin that dialogue (outside an academic setting) is to make it "original", which is the third possible point of satisfaction that engages an artist. However, you can ignore the amalgam of art history and pretend that you are being original until you are confronted with the evidence that you are not, or you can fall prey to the notion that "there is nothing new under the sun" (which is quite biblical, but seems limiting to an artist's hopes that he/she can make a truly unique piece), but I don't see the way to escape either conclusion for long.
This promotes a certain despair in the artist's mindset that is typically already besieged with the inadequacies of the world around, and can serve as a damper to many possible projects or concepts.
Fortunately, contemporary art practices provides an idea that supersedes those three formats and allows an artist to make work under the proposition of integrity. I was first introduced to the idea of integrity as an art student. It was immediately appealing in that it seemed to validate that I cold make anything as long as I was "true" to the integrity of my vision. This of course is a misapplied and simplified twist of the whole idea, as integrity is not quite malleable into the relativistic idea that my art must be accepted as such if I can "prove" the validity and integrity of my work and concepts, although a large part of formal art training is the proving of just such an idea.
Personally, I have reached the point where the making of art under that pretense is no more satisfying than making it for money, concept, or originality, which sometimes threatens to derail any project I begin.
There is another way to look at the idea of integrity though that does provide reason and impetus to continue work. This way is sort of the esoteric shibui (beauty with inner implications) of the concept integrity. It is this concept that provides me with an external meaning for integrity with which to work, and I am not long into any piece or idea before I get the sense that I am within this aesthetic integrity or not. It is becoming my basis for achieving, through this integrity, any of the other form/means that come with an artistic expression.
When it works it is an amazing thing. When it falls short it is excruciating.
This type of integrity begins with (though it has become fashionably trite to say) the zen of material- to not necessarily master, but to know and to respect the medium. It is to use the nature of that medium to be what it is, rather than fight against and make it what it is not. *For more on the origins and explanations of this idea see pre-restoration Japanese wooden sculptures and the particular and reverent architecture of Shinto shrines.
This truth to material allows for more manipulation of the material and better control over how it may represent the overall concept.
Working past the material is the tricky part. There are many moments that the concept must be tested and revised and shifted, but there is one moment in particular that is the point where the idea must stand or fall on its own. It is the point where material, concept, and craftsmanship must meet. Failure to do so does not mean a piece can't be successful, but rather that its execution lacks some quality. This is 98% of an artists finished personal work. (which is why we keep making, or fall into making the same thing over and over and over). And that doesn't include those pieces that were doomed from the start but the artist fails to notice...
I wish I could better describe the end of this aesthetic integrity (for me), but it is, unfortunately only 2%, and often seems to conflict in resolution, Sometimes I am satisfied and simply walk away from it, as detached as Greenburg ever could be. This is what I think the exemplar should be; that the piece can be let go, to exist on its own as it were. Other times, I admit, I am too attached, and don't want to let a piece go and this becomes a fetter and an expectation of future work. On rare occasion, this feeling is due to the exceptional success of the piece (though I have seen others wonder how that could be, considering what they are looking at- so in a way it still falls short in some respects of audience) but this only partially ameliorates the problem.
So it is this sense of artistic integrity that demands attention to material, defines the level of craftsmanship, and tests the overall vision or concept. The search for it in my work is exacting and frustrating. It leads to many abandoned or never begun projects, and I hope really that I am not in some way hindering myself with such demands. Many are the times I have struggled through a piece only to bury it so that it may never be seen by mortal eyes (that may be a slight exaggeration). Is it worth it? Will it lead me to that philosophic aesthetic I am looking for? I don't know yet. I may not for a while
But, it keeps me working.
No comments:
Post a Comment