Lots of ideas formulating but it seems perhaps from an alchemical standpoint that may get in the way...
Harry and I walked around the Art Gallery of Ontario today visiting with the work of Basquiat who had this to say, "The more I paint, the more I like everything." Zing...last night's session, and talk of blue as a paint and blue as a natural colour.
Question: isn't art an abstraction? As much as we love the work of Cezanne, or Chagall, or Kandinsky isn't using the blue paint an abstraction from the sensual blue in nature? I understand writing to be the least sensual of all arts and therefore arguably the most difficult because no sense is directly accessed but only through the door of imagination does a reader recreate a sensual world. Painting uses a physical medium to describe a physical world but is yet an abstraction from that world.
More Basquiat, "I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life." Again, sounds alchemical to me.
He was a heroin addict, quite mad, and insightful, gifted, profound at once.
His dear friend Andy Warhol leaves me behind. Warhol's surface treatment of everything is just too deep for me.
Bye for now...
Replies
I'm delighted you have responded. Just lovely to chat a bit about some notions, even if, as you say, as soon as we make sound we are abstracting. Then is the alchemical approach only through silence?
You seem to have come to some comforting conclusions. I'm not sure what art is or where it comes from. I'm not even sure artists do "get in touch with the primary field." How would we know that unless we already know the primary field? Maybe we just as a species like colours and shapes.
I have no idea about the prima materia for the soul and matter to converge. I like that you seem to be so certain, but I confess to you I'm usually mostly confusion and chaos.
Thanks for the talk...more tonight!
Thanks for your response. Great, confusion and chaos serve us as the primary fuel. Yet we can't stay confused. We observe ourselves, and others, make hypotheses and move forward. and yes it is risky business, and we may be barking the wrong tree, but if we stay open to revision of thoughts then let's go on the journey of the soul--you may respose, you don't soul journey, well the journey of life then. Oh, the libido has a source of energy that is the primal field. Every time we engage in creating something tangilble, soul and matter have convereged, but learned person you are, I am cetain at times too certain so I don't get lost in the chaos, but you know all that. Good to converse with you and much regards.
Oh, it is good to be confused and lost. Who is lost shall find, who thinks has the answers is in for a rude awakening. I don't believe I have the answers. I can just speak from my own faith and experience as a creative thinker and a painter for last 45 years.
Yes, there is a field that we pull things from it is called collective unconscious--for lack of better terms. I pull color and form and ideas to respond to your reply. The fact that we are species who like color and shapes indicative that such a field exists. Semantics just muddy the water, but by the some instinct that a bird finds its direction home, call it navigation by poles magnetic field or any other cause, we find the color and form that answers heart's desire.
I am comfortable with some comforting thoughts that has taken a lifetime to amass. Am I going to defend them? No way, ideas are fluid they like tree leaves pale and drop.
One last thought: Alchemy is a mix of several including two. Neve abstraction alone but with nature of nature and nature of man.
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