I recently picked up a second hand book called The Artist in his Studio. It was written by Alexander Liberman, and published in 1960. The author was able to visit, observe and talk with many of the great masters of impressionism and post impressionism. Many of those artists were still alive, and of those who were gone, their studios remained. So although we are offered the thoughts and processes of the artists through the author’s perceptions, there is a freshness to the his commentary and I almost feel as if I am visiting the studios myself.
In between delving into the book, artist by artist, I found myself in my own studio painting shapes onto an abstract landscape. It’s earlier incarnation had disturbed me, so I decided to sacrifice it to a transformation, the vision of which I was unclear. I noticed that I wasn’t even attending to the colors. In fact, it was just before dawn and it was hard to see. Absorbed in the moment, and looking for the right brush marks, I was too impatient to stop and turn on more light. Later, I asked myself, what on earth was I doing? In some ways, I felt that I was sculpting and not painting. I also felt as if I was making feather-like strokes on space itself. The inner and outer seemed as one, and I was completely unconcerned with the appearance of the painting. How odd, I noted upon reflection. Again, what am I doing?
I know enough to say that I am listening to something, and I am trying to bring that something to light. But the features and the trajectory of my efforts are multilayered and only partly conscious. I seem to want to stay in that state, a state in which my thoughts aren’t so much thought but rather dance-like gestures whose significance might be discovered only later. I am both myself and someone else during these periods. Or, if I were to say it differently, I am exploring what I am, completely unsure of where the I am came from.
I move back to the book, where Liberman described his visit to Kandinsky’s studio. The studio, which was only a space in Kandinsky’s apartment, was very neat and orderly.
Bottles, glasses, jars of colored powder are meticulously stacked and classified on shelves. Kandinsky mixed his own colors with a chemist’s tools and a chemist’s precision. Opaque white jars are lined up on their particular shelf, transparent jars on another shelf, next to glass retorts, white china crucibles, pharmaceutical flasks. Immaculate brushes are next to neatly stacked cartons of paints and columns of empty cigar and cigarette boxes which he used as miniature filing cabinets. On top of a bureau stands a glass vase filled with odd pieces of string, collected throughout the years.
I was struck the most by Kandinsky’s commentary on meaning in abstract art. I’ll quote again from Liberman on Kandinsky because he says it so well.
For the spectator the way to abstract art is through an emotional reaction. Between the painting and the onlooker a bond of sympathy and attraction has to exist. One must literally fall in love with a painting. This by-passing of the intellect is a direct appeal to feeling. Logic, understanding, cannot prove everything, but emotion, by upsetting our contact with reality, can put us into a state where without proof we are willing to believe; intuitively we sense truth.
Abstract art is an attempt at direct communication with the spectator, a search for an instinctive response in the onlooker, unspoiled by preconceived, hard-to-dispose-of associations. To search for meaning in an abstract painting is to try to open a door with a wrong key. Meaning is there, but not a meaning that is translatable into words. Kandinsky said, “When something appears senseless, and people say, ‘It does not mean anything,’ this must not be interpreted literally. There isn’t a form, there isn’t a thing in the world that means nothing.” There are in our lives moments of indescribable emotion; words fail us many times; this vision beyond the usually describable is the realm of non-representational art.
Returning to my own reflections, I notice that in the gymnastic of painting, I need to move between different forms of seeing. Stepping back to view what I have done, I remember composition and perspective (which I tend to ignore) and color compatibility. But these things are not thoughts when I am painting. The painting is feeling. What goes on the wall, in the end, is simply an afterthought; a pause in the continuum of discovery.
At times it seems to me that I am introducing forms and shapes only to diminish them with butterfly strokes of blending. I am caught in an echo between form and formlessness-usually more satisfied with the formless, though an ache can appear and I will announce to myself, that is not really a painting.
In a way, it is all very painful, and perhaps even senseless. Am I trying to do something with paint that can never be done with paint? The pressure of the process leads me to begin to formulate a criteria, or maybe even a morality of art making. Certain edicts seem to pursue me. I start to lay them out, alert to the contradictions in them.
~ When an inspiration, curiosity or idea appears, it is the obligation of the artist to try to bring it into being. This is the artist’s calling
~ Art making requires solitude because it is necessary to shut out the other voices in order to clearly hear the voice from within.
~ One cannot rely on logic or the rational mind to paint.
~ One must use the rational mind to view the painting and ask whether or not it is successful.
~ The painting is in essence, a throw away-it is the process that matters.
~ The painting is your voice to the era, the generations-your letter to the future and it must be clear as a representation of your vision
According to Liberman, Kandinsky planned out his paintings and by the time he approached the canvas, knew exactly what he would do. This is certainly not what it is for me. Am I undisciplined? Or am I doing something different, something that looks like art, but really isn’t?
These are themes I will continue to explore. I don’t know the answers but I am clear that the inquiry is leading me somewhere, somewhere very deep. The meditator who sits with the hot coal of question pressed against his body is doing the same thing in stillness that this painter is doing with color and form. What amazes me the most, and fills me with gratitude is that out of the void of the emptiness within flows an endless cornucopia of imagery. My teacher used to talk about the image-less image. It took me many years to understand what he meant, but I think I do, now. The imageless image is the source of all imagery. Imagery is representational (even when abstract) where as being itself is not representational. That which we are is the imageless image. Our manifestations, which include ourselves, are the gestures which point back to this origin. This source is upstream, and we are compelled to twist around and try to see the source from which we ourselves are spawned.
Thank you for joining me on the journey.
Thank you for sharing your reflections, Leslie. Listening to you speak brought me along to listen deeply to the questions you raise. And I really appreciate your laying out your criteria even as you note they are contradictory. It seems like a very good practice and though I am a poet rather than a painter, your newsletter is inspiring me to try to lay out my own criteria that lay behind my writing poetry. And to consider what you mean by the imageless image. Thank you for inspiring us to twist around and try to see. 🙏