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Posted on 9/30/2019
By Donald Fox
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As I have been growing older, I like to think that in some ways I’m also growing wiser. Not one for particularly enjoying parties and gatherings, I also don’t see myself isolated somewhere waiting for sycophants or acolytes to find me. I am not and never have been a guru or a member of any particular party, communal or otherwise. The saying goes that the wise man knows that he doesn’t know, and if that’s the case, then maybe I have a little wisdom. At this stage of life, I should know something. All that experience, all that water under the bridge should count for something. All those squiggly lines, those scribbled words, and those erratic strokes must hold some clues to the nature of the universe – if nothing else, at least my universe. There should be a wealth of accumulated knowledge, but the trouble is in the remembering of it.
Now, when I stand in front of a blank canvas, I see the potential of hours lost in deep thought and fervent expression much like that bemused little boy who stared at the world of giants lumbering all around him, rushing this way and that, seemingly on purpose and eager to dispense their supposed wisdom on the path that he should take and scolding him when he rejected the rules that would make him one of them.
The blankness equals silence. The first and second and subsequent entries into that silence create a potential symphony, cacophonous at times, but a new order nevertheless that has everything and nothing to do with what has come before. It is a personal act of supreme selfishness that is for this self alone. Its highest purpose is to make a bridge to understanding, to create order from a consciousness riddled with disorder that is the plethora of information constantly beamed in this maybe-not-so-appropriately called information age, but in truth there has always been an abundance of input and its sources so vastly greater than the limited receiver that is any singular entity, i.e. the solitary ego.
The beauty of it may be in the choices made, the lines of inquiry followed, and discoveries encountered that could not have been predicted by the emptiness of its origin. Why and why not are basically the same question, for the result is usually an answer that leads to another question – the best answers, that is. Perhaps there is more than a little irony in that artists frequently and confidently use that oft-heard parental phrase “because I said so” in defense of their work.
Posted on 9/24/2019
By Donald Fox
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We are in constant motion, something to which we become accustomed from an early age, yet our experience of that motion changes very much over time. I remember as a kid the excitement of roller skating and riding a bike. Both of these experiences were direct and elemental. Riding in a car was faster but less direct since I was a passenger and not in control. Swimming and running were also great fun though slower than motion assisted by wheels. As a teenager I experienced riding a motorbike, water skiing, various carnival rides that involved spinning, and the thrill of a roller coaster. And all through childhood, I experienced flying many times because my dad was a pilot. Again, this was more indirect motion since I was not in control of the plane.
All these experiences taught me about perceptions of time. I would be in the moment with active motion like running or cycling or swimming but also aware of whatever goal was connected with the motion – a brief thrill, the limits of physical effort, the time needed to cycle to a friend’s house or to the creek where I sometimes fished, or the hours needed to make a journey by car or airplane. I learned about paying attention to present experience of motion and also to ignore the motion while reading or playing games to pass time during transition from one place to another.
Much of this experience we take for granted and develop traits like patience or impatience, the desire for instant gratification (“the need for speed”) or delayed gratification with the destination in mind. In a way this is like the perception of near and far, the ordinary and the extraordinary, monotony and excitement, foreplay and orgasm. A philosophical question often debated is whether life is the journey or the destination.
Although perhaps related to positive, optimistic or negative, pessimistic mindsets (glass half full or glass half empty), I think it important to remember that we are at choice in spite of what circumstance may seem to dictate. An artist, for example, selects a point of view and composes according to that observational perspective. A director chooses where to place the cameras and actors; a choreographer imagines how dancers will move through space on stage.
It is often stressed in education, in business, and in most fields of endeavor that focus leads to success. Certainly focus is a major part of effective creative experience for it channels energy where it supports effort expended. Focus, though, in my view, has to include broader awareness of greater context. Players on a field or court, despite focus on execution of plays, must also maintain awareness of other players, teammates and opponents, in order to reflexively adjust to unforeseen variations.
My sense is that what we learn from our relationship with motion is flexibility to focus on the particular while also being aware of the whole, not unlike being able to perceive both the faces and the vase in a Gestalt image simultaneously rather than shifting from one to the other.
Posted on 9/17/2019
By Donald Fox
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Color is a fascinating area of study, and artists in particular focus on the many nuances of color in order to enhance expression. Individual colors can have many meanings to humans, and sometimes colors will be interpreted differently by different cultures. We are usually influenced strongly by cultural beliefs, sometimes without realizing it. We assume something is true because that is what we always see or hear about it. With keen awareness, though, we may also make associations with colors (or other things) because of personal experience.
The color red, for example, is associated with fire, with warmth, with passion, with danger, with urgency, with emergency, with strength and with power. Exposure to significant red color can create physiological responses such as increased respiration and blood pressure. Cooler colors like blue or purple (even though this one contains red) typically have calming effects on the mind and the body. However, as anyone who has studied psychology can attest, a person can react negatively even to positive things if that person has been traumatized in some way. For that individual, a particular color (or other stimulus) associated with the trauma can conjure strong negative response, a form of classical conditioning. Blue might be stimulating or alarming to that person rather than calming.
Response to color, and especially the complexities of color within art works may be beyond the scope of the artist’s control. Even so, he or she will often utilize color as the main element to convey the sensory meaning of a work. The viewer then is tasked to interpret the work according to its given parameters. The artist’s and/or the viewer’s personal history relative to color may serve as an unpredictable influence in the aesthetic experience.
When noted artist, educator, and color theorist Joseph Albers said that color is relative, he meant specifically that color is always seen in relation to another color – a colored object is observed against a colored ground. The background will affect how the object is seen and vice-versa. A simple example is that a medium gray against a black ground will appear lighter than the same gray against a white ground. That gray will seem darker by comparison even though both are exactly the same gray color.
Add to this the complexities of individual psychological make-up and the human response to color is greatly expanded from a simple positive or negative response. The astute viewer will ask him or herself questions regarding personal response in order to more fully appreciate the experience relative to color (or shape or form or subject or… ). The response to color, then, and to art in general, is a continuous learning process and perhaps why so many have suggested that art is a mirror where we find ourselves colorfully reflected.
Posted on 9/8/2019 3:41:43 PM
By Donald Fox
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In a dream last night there seemed a kind of apocalyptic saga. Something unfolded from the landscape and began to enfold everything. It felt like a kaleidoscope going backwards. Lots of layering and compartmentalizing. Things folding in upon themselves. A handful of characters fled or attempted to flee this encroaching force. There was no malevolence, and in spite of seeming inevitability, there also was hope that some unforeseen avenue of escape existed. The characters felt that and would plunge into collapsing spaces with intuitive sense that they could adapt to the shifting environment much like shape shifters in science fiction stories. Hope existed on the flip side, as it were – see what’s on the back side of the page, under the rock, around the corner.
Potential and possibility always exist. When everything seems at an impasse, when no other avenue appears, there is opportunity in transformation. Something withers and dies, and something else is born. Art is an agent of transformation that humans have created for millennia. Art may appear magical, even spiritual, but it is also seen as a commodity that for some engenders value, prestige, status, something to be hoarded and something to be preserved. It is bought and sold. It is given away. It is put on display for the few or the many. It is the highest achievement of the human mind and spirit, and it is a wasteful pastime of no use to the vast majority whose concern is day to day survival. Yet, art can encompass all these disparities and often does. Like religion, some will recognize it, and some won’t. Truths will be proclaimed, and art will live on, or so will its idea.
Posted on 9/5/2019 6:37:26 PM
By Donald Fox
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Most of us are familiar with triggers, some word or phrase spoken or read, an image or color, a sound or smell or other sensation that brings to mind something from the past, a memory sometimes so palpable that we may feel transported in time and space to that other realm. Sadly, this experience fades, and either with joy or sorrow we cherish that connection for a time until more pressing matters recapture our attention.
Massive amounts of art have been created from memories of past experiences. Writers, generally, are the creatives who explore this realm, perhaps because we as a species tend to relish communication and description and chronicling our experiences. Visual artists and musicians also sometimes explore memory as exemplified in works like Salvador Dali’s surrealist take, The Persistence of Memory, or the plethora of popular nostalgic landscapes especially rural scenes with fences and old barns. Classical musicians have also explored memory themes as celebratory as in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Popular music lends itself to memory exploration in film score, romantic ballads, country and folk traditions, and the expressions of singer-songwriters.
It is fair to say that memory connects us to the past, expands appreciation of the present, and serves as a conduit for creative expression. Whether it is ironic that appreciation of art depends upon memory (it certainly exercises memory centers in the brain) or is simply natural fact, memory is a powerful, and perhaps the only real, learning tool. Isn’t being mindful also memory dependent? Can we truly pay attention without remembering what we’re paying attention to?
Posted on 9/3/2019 7:34:49 PM
By Donald Fox
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Portrait of the Artist's Mother and Sister, 1870
This October Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts is hosting a three-month long exhibition of paintings by Berthe Morisot, one of the few and most prominent of women painters who were part of the Impressionist group. From work of hers I’ve seen through the years, she was an exceptional painter among a group of exceptional painters. Her work is very painterly with fluid brushstrokes that often create a dreamy quality to the images, which are always carefully observed and brilliantly suggested. She was a master editor with a keen eye [Many people think that the quality of a painting depends on the amount of detail that is rendered; for example, making a painting of a person so that a viewer could almost count the numbers of hairs on the sitter’s head. The truly great painters understood that the power of suggestion is paramount. Less detail, but the right details, are what makes a picture outstanding. Artists learn to discern those details that make something not only recognizable but also believable. This can be borne out by comparisons of a range of artists with different painting styles.]. I think of Renoir’s observation of Cézanne when he said that with a few strokes he would get something. Renoir could just as easily have been talking about Morisot.
Despite the challenges facing any woman serious about art making, Morisot exhibited seven times at the prestigious Salon (her earliest inclusion when she was only twenty-three), but later joined with her friends, the famous refusées later to be known as the Impressionists, in their outsider exhibitions. In her letters and writings she often bemoans not being taken as seriously as the men around her, but I think Morisot was in a league of her own and did not need the grand gestures of her male counterparts like Renoir’s The Boating Party or Monet’s mural-size water lilies. Her paintings are typically intimate and smaller in scale though not in power. Sadly, she died young, at the age of fifty-four.
Anyone close to Houston between October and January would do well to mark the calendar and schedule a museum date.
