Life becoming Art

A wonderful quote from Sir Anthony Caro, the famed British sculptor, was in the 2/9th June 2012 Spectator: "I believe art is about what it is to be alive".  The article was by Ariane Bankes, discussing Caro's current exhibition of sculpture at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.

Ms. Bankes was writing of Caro's huge and unending curiosity about the world around him, and his use of these interests as the source of his creative work. It reminded me how important it is to be curious about everything around one: as an artist, antennae need to be up as much as possible, eyes and ears open, and a questing attitude cultivated.  Not always easy and other things in "life" obtrude, but even then, it seems that later, things not consciously registered at the time come floating back into one's mind.

A Day at Julienton, watercolour, Jeannine Cook artist

I realised, the other day, that a day I had spent drawing on the coast was more rewarding than I had thought.  I was concentrating on what I was trying to do at the time, but indeed, I was "alive" to many more things around me.  The result was a watercolour that came flowing, quite some time after this day's drawing. The different elements of the painting - marshwrack, a contorted dead cedar, eythrinia flowers, a baby alligator, different birds - are those that I was not drawing at the time, but were burned in my memory because of the heightened senses that art was allowing me to have.  A lovely gift.  Capturing the energies and magical forces of life around one is a never-ending quest for an artist and a passport to living life to the full.

Believing in Life

Each year, when I send out the invitations to my Art-Tasting open studio/wine-tasting party, I write a couple of paragraphs about something to do with art. It varies of course according, in a way, to what is going on in my life and thus colouring my optic.

This year, I took Henry Moore's observation, "To be an artist is to believe in life" as the theme.

I wrote : " Henry Moore, best known for his powerful sculptures, saw aspects of life that were grim and depressing during World War II. His drawings of people huddled in the London Underground, sheltering from air raids, are eloquent testimony to life's hardships. Yet his creations are all vigourous and enriching assertions of his belief in life.

Shelterers in the Tube 1941, Graphite, ink, watercolour and crayon on paper, Henry Moore, (Image courtesy of the Tate)

Henry Moore OM, CH. Tube Shelter Perspective. 1941 , Graphite, ink, wax and watercolour on paper (Image courtesy of the Tate)

The label accompanying the drawing, Tube Shelter Perspective. 1941,  said:  " This picture was exhibited at the National Gallery in 1941. It was described in the catalogue as 'a terrifying vista of recumbent shapes, pale as all underground life tends to be pale; regimented, as only fear can regiment; helpless yet tense, safe yet listening, uncouth, uprooted, waiting in the tunnel for the dawn to release them. This is not the descriptive journalism of art. It is imaginative poetry of a high order.' "

"In today's complex world, artists can play many roles, all of which celebrate life. Art can calm and heal, bring joy and stimulation, challenge and widen horizons. Believing in life allows not only the artist, but those who see the art, to remember that our time here is fleeting, potentially beautiful and very precious."

Life Experiences and Art

Pablo Picasso was of the opinion that "a painter should create that which he experiences".

As one goes along in life, there are plenty of experiences that mark one, positively and negatively. As an artist, there are times when you can "digest" an experience fairly quickly and it will show up in your art in a relatively straightforward fashion. Perhaps the most direct way to depict experiences pictorially is plein air painting or drawing. You are filtering through onto paper or canvas your sensory experiences of an area, urban or rural, coastal or upland, whatever.

When an artist's life goes through major ups or downs, those experiences are more complex, but sooner or later, they do seem to show up in a serious artist's work. Perhaps one of the most famous examples of art arising from life experiences is The Scream which Edvard Munch painted when he was 30 years old.

The Scream,Edvard Munch, oil, 1893, (Image courtesy of the National Gallery, Oslo, Norway

He had had a very difficult life from childhood. He wrote about his father, "My father was  temperamentally nervous and religiously obsessive - to the point of psychoneurosis. From him, I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow and death stood by my side since the day I was born." By the time he had moved to Berlin and then to Paris, experimenting with different artistic styles, he was coping with deep anguish and angst. He later said about this painting that, "for several years, I was almost mad. I was stretched to the limit - nature was screaming in my blood. After that, I gave up hope ever of being able to love again."

Picasso spoke very accurately of his art being derived from his experiences. His Blue Period paintings were influenced by the suicide of his friend, Carlos Casagemas. His love affairs with his various mistresses were the source of the amazing work that continued to flow from him during his long and productive life. Borrowed experiences are also sometimes the source of great art. Again, Picasso is a prime example, with Guernica, which was created after the Germans bombed the small town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

Guernica, Pablo Picasso (Image courtesy of the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid)

Other artists believe in placing "the visible at the service of the invisible", as 19th century Symbolist  Odilon Redon said. His inner experiences were channeled into strange pastels and paintings which often had an initial appearance of real subjects, but then then veer into the grotesque and ambiguous.

The Cactus Man 1881, Odilon Redon, Charcoal on paper (Image courtesy of  Museum of Modern Art, New York )

The Cyclops, 1914 by Odilon Redon. Symbolism. mythological painting. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.

The Cactus Man (1881) is one of Redon's strange drawings. But there is a consistency that runs through his work, for in 1914, he paints The Cyclops . One can only conjecture at the personal experiences that drive these works of art.

Another type of experience that led to wonderful art is when Henri Matisse was increasingly unwell, towards the end of his life, and was confined to a wheel chair after 1941. So he turned to "painting with scissors" and produced his wonderfully joyous cut outs, his Blue Nudes from 1952 and his limited edition book, Jazz, with its series of colourful cut paper collages, amongst others.

Blue Nude with her Hair in the Wind, 1952, gouache-painted paper cut outs, Henri Matisse (Image courtesy of www,henri-matisse.com)

Today's artists have such a wide array of examples of how artists drew on their personal experiences to inspire their art. It makes a very strong case for each of us to believe in ourselves as artists, to listen to our inner voices and follow their inspiration into creating strongly individual art.

Threading art through life in hospital

As someone who became an artist later in life, it is always a surprise - and delight - when I discover that art is now so entwined with my DNA that it is omnipresent, even in somewhat trying circumstances.

I have just emerged from a sojourn in hospital and as I stay at a nearby hotel with my wonderful husband, I realise, when thinking back over the last three weeks, how art has been quietly sustaining me. As I lay on beds for a MRI or a CAT scan, for instance, I found it easy to lie there quietly and simply design, in my mind's eye, a silverpoint/watercolour piece I keep working on about the Circles of Life, the coincidences and circularities of events as life progresses. I found myself so absorbed in changing the design here and there, or adding new aspects, as I visualised the artwork, that I was always astonished at how fast the time went during the often lengthy tests.

Later, as I lay in bed, overly tethered to tubes and pumps and drips, I again turned to subject matter I want to try and explore in artwork, starting to think of how to depict the subjects and how to design the pieces. It helped greatly to pass the time. Then when I was finally "emancipated" enough to be able to walk a little along the hospital corridors, I studied the art along the walls with great interest.

Since this is the Mayo Clinic and their two-year-old hospital is very much state of the art (with exemplary care, I have to emphasise), I was curious to see what they had selected as artwork for the new facility. In the Clinic proper, there has always been artwork, but often large and more tending to the decorative and local – pleasant but not often such that it stands out. The Hospital is a little different. The entrance hall is graced with a small gallery, showing at present a diversity of works by local and regional artists connected with the Women's Center of Jacksonville. Beyond is a glory of Dale Chihuly's skills: a big and joyous glass chandelier celebrating colour and life. At the end of that entrance corridor, by the elevators, there is the most wonderful wall with a huge, sectioned piece of marble, beautifully striated and stippled in warm golds and browns - Nature at its most wonderful.

Dale Chihuly's chandelier in the hospital foyer at the Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL

Up on the hospital room floors, there are large pieces of art, grouped in threes, some prints, some originals. Here, nature predominated, but in diffuse and almost stylised depictions, in uplifting colour ranges. They were cleverly chosen for they all allow one's own imagination to complement and supplement the images and let one wander and linger in those worlds. Ideal for stressed relatives and half-doped patients, I suspect!

Nonetheless, this presence of art allowed me to feel sustained and "still an artist" - something that I know helps me heal faster and in a more serene fashion. Hurray for art!

Art and Oxygen

Yesterday, I was listening to a doctor talk about the value of oxygen for someone who is suffering from heart problems and resultant breathing difficulties, even if it is just creating a "bubble" of enriched oxygen around the mouth and nose of the patient. Better breathing, a heart that feels more functional and thus an increased feeling of well-being – a simple, but important path to an improved quality of life. But of course, in order to have the supply of this extra oxygen, you have to set up either a tank or machine, and take the time to get the oxygen treatment.

Today, I was reading the December edition of ARTNews, with a feature article on Marina Abramovic and her upcoming presence at MOMA, New York. She was quoted as saying, "Artists have to serve as oxygen to society." Her objective is to get people to stop and gain a sense of time through her performance art, and thereby alter their perspective and perception of their surroundings, world and life in general. In essence, she becomes the oxygen tank.

Marina Abramovic

I think that just about every form of art - visual, performance, musical, whatever - can have this intrinsic value of causing people to stop, even momentarily, and thus alter their perception of the world around them. Perhaps that is why people have created "cabinets de curiosités" and then museums full of wonders – they provide the oxygen to allow societies to breathe deeply, reflect, learn and enrich life. A beautiful photograph, a wonderful painting, a drawing, a piece of music - I know that my life has been made rich beyond belief by seeing or hearing such art, and that frequently the image or the sound has stayed with me long after.

No wonder Ms. Abramovic used such a metaphor of how to maintain or engender a healthy life or a healthy society.

Art as a Mirror on the World

In El Pais of 1st August, there was a long review of two books which had previously appeared in English - Julian Bell's Mirror of the World and 30,000 years of Art by various authors and published by Phaidon. These weighty reviews and compendiums of what, today, is deemed the most important, the best art, started me thinking about art as a general mirror of the world.

What each of us does as an artist is mostly work that comes to us as an expression of individual passion and concern, sometimes steered in one direction or another because the work is commissioned. Generally, however, the work reflects firstly each artist and secondly, the world around that artist. So in a way, each of us mirrors our own world, for good or bad. Artists who are more tuned in to the natural world will tend more to emphasise natural subject matter, urban artists often find their inspiration elsewhere. Today's world, however, becomes much more mixed up as more and more artists tap into the "world's contents, mingled in a vast collective potlach available by Internet, cell phone, TV, satellite and an ever-expanding inventory of connective gadgetry." (Art in America, March 2009) We can all avail ourselves of situations, sights, sounds, whatever, that we have never personally physically experienced. So the art-as-mirror idea potentially gets changed, perhaps distorted, potentially homogenised, worldwide.

Of course, you still have many, many artists quietly continuing to follow a personal vision and passion. Catherine Spaeth, art historian and art critic, in one of her pieces, talked of "the meanings generated by a work of art extend into the larger context of the world at large, and it is here as well that you are becoming art historical" Those meanings of the art generated reverberate out and speak to an audience willing to listen, to look, to ponder and evaluate. I am not sure artists set out always to address meanings/content to this end, but it happens nonetheless. As Emil Cadoo, the photographer working in the Sixties in Paris, once observed, "Only when an artist in any field touches universals can it last through time, can it survive the destruction of things."

Double Exposure, Emil Cadoo, c. 1960, (Image courtesy of phtographer)

Ultimately, it is for us artists simply to go on trying to work seriously, follow one's passion in creating the art that is important to us, as best we can. We will, even today in our ultra-connected world, be mirrors on our worlds, willy-nilly. And it will fall to those, like Julian Bell (artist and critic himself), or those at Phaidon who have selected the best works to represent artists for the last 30,000 years (quite a job!), to tell the next generations who (perhaps) are the best artists mirroring the world in which we all live. One does however have to season the selections a little, mindful of "Chacun à son goût"!

"Treat Life like Art"

Maya Angelou wrote that we should "treat life like art" and to "remember that we are all created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed". I had been going to write about the interconnection of life and the visual arts, but as I was opening up this blog site, I began reading Tyler Green's entries in Modern Art Notes about Considering Torture through Art and Bruce Nauman's Double Steel Cage Piece. It seemed an ironic reversal of what Maya Angelou said. The recent and increasing discussions about the Bush-era issues of torture and abuse remind one that many people do not, in any way, see life as potentially beautiful or noble or even ethical. As Tyler Green said correctly, artists are among the few people who can address such issues as torture since they are "independent contractors", able to "embrace ambiguity rather than reject it" and address it through art.

Not all of us, as artists, feel equipped to tackle such important and weighty subjects, but thank goodness there are many who are the conscience of a society. However, I also feel that each artist is particularly passionate about some important issue and thus will marry life and art as eloquently as possible. In my case, it is the natural world and the need to respect and care for it that move me.

To that end, often, I find that the choice of what I paint or draw is, consciously or subconsciously, guided by environmental concerns and observations. Even when one works plein air, there is a constant "invention of new scenarios" by pruning and editing of the scene in front of one to achieve better the desired effect. Life and art are so closely allied that it is hard to separate them out and the art of living, or living for art, are both full time occupations, requiring practice and thought, a code of conduct and a very necessary sense of humour. As Ms. Angelou reminds us, there is always that gift too - the option of inventing new scenarios, in our own lives, or on canvas or paper - an option to grow as an artist, as a person. She also said, "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." A good thought for an artist to remember!