Oaks tree in Cumbria

Alain de Botton writes both fiction and nonfiction. His books are engaging, clever and just downright fun. Although I’ve never read any of his three novels (not sure why that is) I have every one of his nonfiction publications. His titles make picking up his books irresistible (IMHO), with names like How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety, and The Architecture of Happiness.

In keeping with this very practical approach to life and its complexities, Alain and some colleagues recently started The School of Life.

From his website:

The School has a passionate belief in making learning relevant – and so runs courses in the important questions of everyday life. Whereas most colleges and universities chop up learning into abstract categories (‘agrarian history’ ‘the 18th century English novel’), The School of Life titles its courses according to things we all tend to care about: careers, relationships, politics, travels, families. An evening or weekend on one of its courses is likely to be spent reflecting on such matters as your moral responsibilities to an ex partner or how to resolve a career crisis.

Life done fun.

His latest book is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Highlighting 10 different professions ranging from care ship spotting to rocket science to biscuit manufacturing, De Botton observes the pleasures and the pains of people doing their jobs. One of his subjects is Stephen Taylor, a representational artist who lives in Colchester U.K. Seen through De Botton’s non-artist eye, Taylor’s process takes on a mystical quality. Although I do not spend long hours pinioned beneath a 250 year old tree (one of Taylor’s favorite subjects to paint) with my canvas and oils, De Botton’s description feels apropos to my work as well as many other artists I know. Whether representational or not, the intention seems to be shared.

As the night wears on, the human world gradually recedes, leaving Taylor alone with insects and the play of moonlight on wheat. He sees his art as born out of, and hoping to inspire, reverence for all that is unlike us and exceeds us. He never wanted to paint the work of people, their factories, streets, or electricity circuit boards. His attention was drawn to that which, because we did not build it, we must make a particular effort of empathy and imagination to understand, to a natural environment that is uniquely unpredictable, for it is literally unforeseen. His devoted look at a tree is an attempt to push the self aside and recognise all that is other and beyond us—starting with this ancient looking hulk in the gloom, with its erratic branches, thousands of stiff little leaves and remarkable lack of any direct connection to the human drama.

To see Stephen Taylor’s work, click here.

For anyone who is susceptible to the energetics of color (my hand is up), reading about it can also be intoxicating. Here are a few great books for those who revel in this inexplicably mysterious and lush bennie of life on this planet:

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Written by a journalist who travels the world exploring the original sources for artist palette colors, Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay is a fascinating and readable account of everything from the ochres to the bone blacks (which originally came from burned human bone remains…I know, eaw.) Finlay makes her search an adventure.

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Amy Butler Greenfield comes from a family of dyers. Combining her family background with an expertise in Renaissance Europe, A Perfect Red traces the rich and varied history of the color in Western culture. I have always loved the story of how the red found in Mexico baffled Europeans for years. Animal or vegetable? As hard as the Spanish tried to keep it a secret, the true source for that highly desirous red—the tiny cochineal insect that thrives as a parasite on the nopal cactus—was eventually exposed.

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Blue does not have the ancient pedigree of the reds and yellows. In fact some historians have posited the possibility that ancient people could not decipher the color at all. Blue: The History of a Color is written by historian Michel Pastoureau who also wrote The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric. (What a title—who knew!)

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These two books, The Primary Colors and The Secondary Colors are written by Alexander Theroux. A literary stylist rather than an artist or historian, Theroux has written an extended poetic meditation on color more than a factual and informative account. I love to just pick up either of these two books and open it at random. Every paragraph is an invitation to a revelry of color.

Salt crystals on the Spiral Jetty, Utah

When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that there is no room for its own nature.

–Christopher Alexander, one of my ideological mentors, as quoted by Edward Hollis in The Secret Lives of Buildings.

A mysterious space exists between the need for control and the need to let go, and navigating that terrain is of interest to every artist. Alexander’s comment about architecture is so succinct and accurate, and it speaks to more undertakings than just buildings.

In fact we live in a culture where the proclivity to masterminding in everything from architecture to film making is almost encouraged. And yet the primary thesis of Hollis’ book is that buildings will, over time, take on a life of their own in spite of all our efforts to control destiny:

At the heart of architectural theory is a paradox: buildings are designed to last, and therefore they outlast the insubstantial pageants that made them. Then, liberated from the shackles of immediate utility and the intentions of their masters, they are free to do as they will. Buildings long outlive the purposes for which they were built, the technologies by which they were constructed, and the aesthetics that determined their form; they suffer numberless subtractions, additions, divisions, and multiplications; and soon enough their form and their function have little to do with one another.

Hollis uncovers the checkered past of a number of emblematic buildings including the Parthenon, The Basilica of San Marco in Venice, Gloucester Cathedral, The Alhambra, among many others. In so many cases these structures survived because they were adapted, reinvented and transmogrified.

This exploration reminds me of a quote by Robert Smithson (of Spiral Jetty fame), one that suggests a metaphysical realm for this idea as well: “The artist must go into places where remote futures meet remote pasts”.

I know buildings that feel as if they embody that kind of crossroads of consciousness, spaces that have taken on a life that is so far from what was originally intended. A similar transubstantiation can happen with other art forms as well. Smithson wrote about how he built the Spiral Jetty but then released it into the hands of nature to do with it what it will. For many years it was submerged beneath the surface of the Great Salt Lake. When it re-emerged it was encased in white salt crystals, a very different state from the black, hard-edge basalt rock at its core. And of course the next 50 years will alter its structure even further. Smithson did not mastermind so much as set an energetic gyre into motion.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Bodies. Language. Expression. Metaphors. Meaning. That’s a list of issues that most people who make things think about. A lot.

A recent article from the Boston Globe written by Drake Bennett touches on a lot of these themes, particularly how metaphor both comes from and impacts the way we think.

Here’s a sampling:

Philosophers have long wondered about the connection between metaphor and thought, in ways that occasionally presaged current-day research. Friedrich Nietzsche scornfully described human understanding as nothing more than a web of expedient metaphors, stitched together from our shallow impressions of the world. In their ignorance, he charged, people mistake these familiar metaphors, deadened from overuse, for truths. “We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers,” he wrote, “and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things–metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.”

Rather than so much clutter standing in the way of true understanding, to Lakoff and Johnson these metaphors are markers of the roots of thought itself. Lakoff and Johnson’s larger argument is that abstract thought would be meaningless without bodily experience. And primary metaphors, in their ubiquity (in English and other languages) and their physicality, are some of their most powerful evidence for this.

I am left with a sense of the inescapable and blindingly transparent nature of these deep connections between language, thinking, concepts, perception. What is easier to trace in the realm of spoken language has its parallels in visual language as well. It’s just harder to track. But that is all part of the mystery and the endlessly provocative nature of making.

Large Reclining Nude, by Henri Matisse. Baltimore Museum of Art, Cone Collection

When I first came to the east coast from California all those many years ago, there were two museums outside of New York City I was determined to see right away. The Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania was at the top of the list. The second was the Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The experience of seeing the work at both of these venues was as monumental and memorable as I had hoped. For fin de siècle art lovers, these two collections are a feast of extraordinary proportions.

So it was with nostalgia that I again sat in the world’s largest collection of works by Matisse in this, the least likely of cities. Or so it seems to me, since I have now come to equate Baltimore, Maryland primarily and foremost as the setting for the greatest TV drama every produced, The Wire. But in spite of its struggle with rampant inner city poverty and problems, it is city that was once lucky enough to have been the home town of the infamous Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta. Their compulsive collecting, at times brilliant and at times just downright odd, resulted in the largest donation of art the Baltimore Museum had ever received, and ever will. Some of my all-time favorite Matisse paintings—like The Blue Nude and Large Reclining Nude—were purchased by these two passionately devoted, self-styled collectors.

I was particularly struck by a display documenting the creation of Large Reclining Nude. Matisse sent photographs to Etta Cone as this painting progressed, and the over 10 very different renderings are an insightful study in the way a painting works its way into its final form. Clearly Matisse had a marketer’s mind since Etta bought the painting when it was finally finished, deeply invested as she was in its creation. (This “buy in” approach of endearing one’s children to non-family members has a history of success as well.)

As effortlessly as Matisse’s paintings can look to the viewer’s eye, this graphic evolution demonstrates how much hard work is actually involved in getting to what appears effortless and easy. It is frequently necessary, says Matisse, to “put your work back on the anvil twenty times.”

And more specifically, in Matisse’s words:

Each picture as I finish it, seems like the best thing I have ever done…and yet after a while I am not so sure. It is like taking a train to Marseille. One knows where one wants to go. Each painting completed is like a station—just so much nearer the goal. The time comes when the painter is apt to feel he has at last arrived. Then, if he is honest, he realizes one of two things—either than he has not arrived after all or that Marseille…is not where he wanted to go anyway, and he must push farther on.

Destinations that, as soon as they are reached, are no longer The Destination. That might sound like a portrait of hell on earth to anyone who is goal oriented, measuring results through arrivals, completions and column checks. But for makers like me, that’s just the way it works. I think we like to be on a journey with the destination TBD.

Richard Tuttle, artist and wisdom worker

From time to time I have observed how protracted, focused work in the studio can leave me feeling a particular kind of tightness. It could be described as a slow motion contraction that has moved me away from that elemental sense of expansion and playfulness that should always be present.

This proclivity can be remedied by a number of techniques, and here’s one to add to my list: The San Francisco MOMA has assembled a cache of video interviews with or about Richard Tuttle, any of which take me right back to the reason I started making art in the first place. Whether he is talking about his small work or his use of language, Tuttle is the best human reminder of what is magical, enchanting and beguiling about making something out of nothing. In one of these short video clips he says, “Art is a kind of food, a food for the spirit”. Just hearing him say that, with no pretension, artifice or posturing, moved my set point higher, wider, lighter.

And referencing my post from two days ago, I think of Tuttle as an episodic narrativist–his is a wild adventuresomeness with an overarching connection to meaning. And yes, happy endings.

BTW, I’ve written about Tuttle a lot on this blog over the years since he is one of my all time favorite artists. For a listing of those postings, go here.

Photo: Richard Tuttle

Thanks to my friend David Novak for alerting me to this link.

Howard Zinn

Some of my favorite advice for living came through Howard Zinn by way of The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a collection of essays about and by people who did not give up even though the deck was stacked against them. To paraphrase the outspoken, truth-wielding Zinn, he says you have to wake up in the morning with hope because if you aren’t hopeful, then there isn’t any. Zinn is pragmatic as well. He advises that if you have friends who are depressed and discouraged, then you just better get some new ones.

In the spirit of Zinn’s advice, It is refreshing to read about something positive in the arts, which is exactly what the blog Creative Destruction did with its coverage of a recent meeting of arts leaders held in Michigan. Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center and the turnaround artist behind Alvin Ailey Dance Theater’s resuscitation was the keynote speaker. In spite of the economy and draconian budget cuts for the arts, the meeting attendees seemed upbeat and hopeful.

This is from Creative Destruction’s report:

Kaiser, known for his book, “The Art of the Turnaround”, offered three primary ideas to stave off disaster: Don’t cut funding for the artistic product, don’t cut marketing, and plan really INTERESTING projects which might take several years to accomplish. Donors will support bigger, interesting ideas more than little, boring ones, but big ideas need time to get funding in place and to capture the public imagination. His four-word mantra: great art, well marketed…Have the courage to be creative, daring and interesting because tepid art isn’t worth the price of admission, and in a down market no one will spend money to come to something that isn’t compelling. For all your budget woes, continue to market aggressively and innovatively because potential audiences won’t come if they don’t know about your art and potential donors won’t give if they don’t care about your institution. Even in times like these it’s ok to think big, but give yourself time to succeed.

Advice well suited for organizations as well as individuals.

I’m on my way to New York City for a weekend full of the best kind of distractions—a book reading of The Enthusiast by college chum Charlie Haas (a very funny and endearing book that both my partner David and I loved, something that doesn’t happen often), tea at Lady Mendl’s in Gramercy Park, the Francis Bacon show at the Met, a Bill T. Jones/Jason Moran performance in Harlem and spending time with lots of old friends from back in the day. Full circling, to be sure.

And in that spirit, here’s yet another great passage from Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes the World:

One of Picasso’s favorite assignments for a young artist was to have him or her try to draw a perfect circle. It can’t be done; everyone draws a circle with some particular distortion, and that distorted circle is “your” circle, an insight into “your” style. “Try to make the circle as best you can. And since nobody before you has made a perfect circle, you can be sure that your circle will be completely your own. Only then will you have a chance to be original.” The deviations from the idea give an insight into the style, and thus, Picasso says, “from errors one gets to know the personality.”

A few more thoughts gleaned from the Guggenheim show, The Third Mind. This show was as closely aligned to my view of artmaking as any other exhibit I’ve ever seen. The experience is still reverberating for me several days later.

Here are some provocative words from two giants, John Cage and Philip Guston.

We learned from Oriental thought that those divine influences are, in fact, the environment in which we are. A sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego does not obstruct the fluency of things that come in through the senses and up through one’s dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.

–John Cage

Art is not self expression but self alteration.

–John Cage

Look at any inspired painting. It’s like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

–Philip Guston

To will a new form is unacceptable, because will builds distortion. Clear the way for something else—a condition which…resists analysis—and probably this is as it should be.

–Philip Guston

Balancing intuition against sensory information, and sensitivity to one’s self against pragmatic knowledge of the world, is not a stance unique to artists. The specialness of artists is the degree to which these precarious balances are crucial backups for their real endeavor. Their essential effort is to catapult themselves wholly, without holding back one bit, into a course of action without having any idea where they will end up. They are like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse’s neck, peering into a blinding rain. And they have to do it over and over again. When they find that they have ridden and ridden – maybe for years, full tilt – in what is for them a mistaken direction, they must unearth within themselves some readiness to turn direction and gallop off again. They may spend a little time scraping off the mud, resting the horse, having a hot bath, laughing and sitting in candlelight with friends. But in the back of their minds they never forget that the dark, driving run is theirs to make again. They need their balances in order to support their risks. The more they develop an understanding of all their experiences – the more it is at their command – the more they carry with them into the whistling wind.

–Anne Truitt, from Daybook

This has been a quote I have paraphrased to others so many times that it became a litany. It struck me deeply the first time I read Truitt’s book 25 years ago. But you know how a story or a memory takes on a life of its own over time, and I recently realized I needed to reconnect with her original words to make sure I was remembering it properly.

So I began looking for my copy, lovingly marked and highlighted, amid the chaos of books that have been waiting in stacks for over 2 years to be properly ensconced in the new library we have been hoping to build. Using the space that was once the children’s playroom, the plan was to build floor to ceiling shelves designed by my son and arrange the volumes by topic, from art to poetry, ancient megaliths to mythology, fiction to food.

For a series of complex reasons, it has not yet happened. Meanwhile the only access to my books is the randomness of choosing a card from a deck. Sometimes it’s the two of clubs, sometimes a King. But rarely the book you really want or need.

So Whiskey River came to my rescue (once again) and posted the very passage I was looking to reread. Bless you WR for picking up my longing, something you have demonstrated an uncanny ability to do time and time again.

That little tirade of a detour aside (is my frustration too obvious?), I want to return to the passage by Truitt. Her image, “like riders who gallop into the night, eagerly leaning on their horse’s neck, peering into a blinding rain” cuts right into the piercing vulnerability of the lonely ride anyone who does their making all alone knows well.

And this line—”the more they develop an understanding of all their experiences – the more it is at their command – the more they carry with them into the whistling wind”—means more to me now than it ever did when I was younger and significantly less seasoned by the acidic marinade bath that is life. Whistling wind, indeed.