The thing about beauty is that it is ethereal – familiarity with joy soon translates into the placidity of the mundane. For something to be truly beautiful, it must excite, and at the same time, destroy.
A work of art is born in fire. Have you heard that before? I have a dim memory of a poem I read sometime in school – it was something to do with the god Pan making a flute out of a reed; the underlying message, or so I was informed by my teacher, was that for an artist to be born, or for the creative spirit to be unleashed, the channel must first understand the nature of pain.
It’s an odd thing, creativity. Mostly it comes and goes, in flashes and sparks, which hold the promise of incredible beauty, and at the same time, are heavy with the darkness of shared pain. Occasionally, though, there is the brief moment of utter possession, the madness of true creation. That’s the key to it, though, madness.
An artist – and by that I mean one who is possessed by the creative spirit from time to time – understands the basic, most fundamental fact about art, and emotions. Every yin must have its yang, and in the same way, every work of art – that which gives us joy – there must be a corresponding level of sadness. Usually, this comes directly from the artist himself – the torment of his soul is what allows him to see true beauty long enough to capture a faint ghost of it.
To truly appreciate a good meal, you must be hungry first. To develop a passion about something – be it a sport, or a book, or a profession, or a way of life – you must first feel the emptiness of its absence. In the same way, for someone to truly appreciate beauty – for him to be able to call on it at will – he must first go through the agony of not having it.
In the words of George DeChirico – “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits; logic and commonsense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realm of childhood visions and dreams.”
A work of art is born in fire. Have you heard that before? I have a dim memory of a poem I read sometime in school – it was something to do with the god Pan making a flute out of a reed; the underlying message, or so I was informed by my teacher, was that for an artist to be born, or for the creative spirit to be unleashed, the channel must first understand the nature of pain.
It’s an odd thing, creativity. Mostly it comes and goes, in flashes and sparks, which hold the promise of incredible beauty, and at the same time, are heavy with the darkness of shared pain. Occasionally, though, there is the brief moment of utter possession, the madness of true creation. That’s the key to it, though, madness.
An artist – and by that I mean one who is possessed by the creative spirit from time to time – understands the basic, most fundamental fact about art, and emotions. Every yin must have its yang, and in the same way, every work of art – that which gives us joy – there must be a corresponding level of sadness. Usually, this comes directly from the artist himself – the torment of his soul is what allows him to see true beauty long enough to capture a faint ghost of it.
To truly appreciate a good meal, you must be hungry first. To develop a passion about something – be it a sport, or a book, or a profession, or a way of life – you must first feel the emptiness of its absence. In the same way, for someone to truly appreciate beauty – for him to be able to call on it at will – he must first go through the agony of not having it.
In the words of George DeChirico – “To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits; logic and commonsense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realm of childhood visions and dreams.”
Beautiful. I wonder what price he paid for that understanding.
7 comments:
yea i remember in school we studied this deadly boring chapter on this king and how, only afer he spent days in the desert culd he then savour the true joy of pure sweet water..it also mentioned how one can only enjoy the warmth of summer nights breeze after sweating your guts out in a cellar without a fan. something along those lines..but that undermines the whole artists being geniuses thing doesn't it? people say that there's a thin line between genius and madness. i beg to differ..genius is only born out of madness..you can't be one or the other. another thing..art is everywhere isn't it? you don't have to be an artist to notice it..the more you look the more your mind wanders, the more you learn, and thus you can find certain other ways to express yourself. art is in itself, not what you see, but how you see it. and the genius behind that lies not in the artist..no that is the madness, or creativity, whatever you may call it.. the true genius is in the person who sees and interprets it. so what im saying is..artists draw inspiration from all kinds of things, dreams, emotions or experiences,..whatever..but the kind of genius you're talking about comes from the "emptiness" in the mind of the viewer. not necessarily the creator himself.
George DeCherico's comment reminded me of the following quote by Sigmund Freud(1856- 1939), "What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult."
Btw, there is no 'g' in "Yin". :D
Artists aren't geniuses. Geniuses are just people who can think really, really fast, nothing more. An artist is someone who can look at something and see something that very few people in the world would be able to understand. The ability to put it down on paper, or in rock, or in paint is just a secondary bonus, that's all.
On the madness - genius thing, I wont say anything, cause I'm working on a post on a very similar line as that one, and I'll only wind up repeating myself.
My point was this.
Inspiration comes from wherever. The creation itself doesn't have to based on any one thing - it could be an amalgamation of a thousand different things. Nonetheless, it was put together in the head of the artist - which most likely went through some trauma at some time.
See, an artist is just sharper when it comes to recognizing beauty. Humans are emotional creatures - we recognise beauty by the joy it brings us. The artist has had a lack of joy in his life - or the presence of an extreme amount of pain - which you could rougly say is the ugliness in oposition of the beauty.
Since he recognises it better, he can see the beauty in a creation better that someone else. Madness would be able to do this too, since since it doesn't follow the everyday rules of the game.
The emptiness I was talking about may well be in the mind of the viewer - but it had to be there in the mind of the creator first, for that concept to become reality. Recognition is the point here, yeah, but it was the artist who saw it first.
The thing about, both, art & genius (to sound extremely cliche)is that they both lie in the eye of the beholder.
Take Einstein. At one point he was just a crazy guy... today a genuis.
Da Vinci - crazy guy. Genius!
Somebody had to see the beauty and genius in the works of these people. A stamp of approval had to be given by "normal" regular people for these guys to be recognised as artist/genius. Their pain had to be the recognised by people who, probably, have no idea or interest in the artist's pain.
Irony.
I think the problem there is that artists/geniuses always wind you looking like something the cat dragged in a few weeks ago and hid under the sofa.
When you see a naked man dripping bathwater running down the street shouting "Eureka, I have it!", you tend to assume that he's lightly tethered above the mundane world...
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