Disclaimer: I didn't write this one, but I post it for personal reasons.
Her Words
I was lying in bed, looking at him lying next to me; he had a calm confidence in his voice.
We had started talking about art and how exactly to define it. This discussion had been brought up multiple times in classes, and although it intrigued me, somehow I had never felt the need to define what I do. I felt as though I knew what art was even if I couldn't pin a definition to it, why should I need to define something in words if I already know what it is in my heart? We talked in circles for a while. He would ask a question, I would answer. Then he would swiftly find the fault in my answer and why it wouldn't suffice. It began to get frustrating. I turned over to lie on my back and started twirling my hair in my finger. I almost hated how he was so quick to find the holes in my responses, it irritated me because I knew he was right. Why didn't I know how to say what art was when I can feel exactly what it is??
I looked over at him frustrated, irritated. He looked back at me with his still confident smile, and then, with an almost sad look in his eye, he said "Art is that which is understood to be created for the sole purpose of translating non-empirical information into empirical form." I just stared at him blankly. Huh?? I didn't have the slightest clue what he had just said, but it made me angry and I didn't know why. I didn't say anything. I guess he decided that that would be the close of the conversation because he rolled over and I could tell he was sound asleep within minutes. But I, on the other hand, lay awake for hours. I was so angry.
It was four A.M. and I was going to have trouble waking up for class. I needed to get some sleep, but the more I told myself that I needed to sleep, the more difficult it seemed to be. Thoughts continued to churn in my head all night, it felt like my brain had tied itself in knots. How was it possible that such a simple definition could articulate what I do every day..but lack so much of the Quality of that art?
A few days later, I had to write a paper for Aesthetics class on the topic of "Squareness." When I had finished it, I printed it out and read it over. It was all bullshit. There were so many things I wanted to get across, but it all seemed to get lost in the translation. I didn't turn it in.
The notion of "Squareness" resurfaced again, but in my studio. I was doing press mold casts of hands. When I pulled the hand out of the mold, there was too much extra clay around it so I simply cut a straight line off. Incidentally, I cut off part of the thumb in the process. The way that clean edge contrasted against the form of the hand and texture of the skin seemed appropriate. So I cut off the fingers in another straight line at a ninety degree angle to the first. I continued until the severed hand was contained within the form of a box. It didn't really look severed though. The clean structure of the sides made it feel very analytical, yet it constricted the already stressed form of the hand in a way that made it look more contorted. For me, that was what Squareness was about. Breaking things down in order to define and understand them, but losing the whole picture in the process. The constraint of our minds is a difficult thing to get around.
The subject reappeared again later that night. My boyfriend and I were at Miglinchy's having a drink. I had my sketchbook out and he had decided that he was going to draw me. I sat there watching him as he worked on an eye. He looked up at me, then erased and scribbled more, then erased, then looked at me, scribbled, then erased again. Now he was working on the nose. I didn't understand why he kept erasing so much. He continued drawing like this, drawing part by part trying to relate each part to the whole image as he got to it. Almost an hour later he got tired of it, or maybe he was drunk. He scribbled on some hair and said he didn't want to do anymore. I looked at it and responded "Nice! It doesn't look like meactually it looks like you." He smiled and said "Heh, I guess that's why I don't go to art school anymore". I let it go at that; I knew that wasn't his real reason though.
He reminded me of Phadreus sometimes. I started to look at him as being Square. I feel that he has to analyze and understand every little part of something before he can try to construct the whole image within his mind, just like he was doing in his drawing. Seeing him as being "Square" depressed me, he was a classical thinker. I had never seen him react on an emotion; it almost felt like he understood them too well to really feel them. In Plato's terms, he was a non-lover, and I was a lover.
I tried thinking about a Square in a literal manner to see where it would take me, and decided that there was no such thing. Squares didn't really exist. A square is 2-dimensional and the sides are never perfectly square even if our minds simplify them to be so. There is no such thing as a naturally formed, perfect square. But squares do exist; they exist in our minds, things can be 2-dimensional, and perfect, in our minds. I was confused again. So does that mean they are real or not real? Maybe they are only real in that they are a simplification of the truth that our mind creates in order to delete excess information. So does that mean that every thing that we see is really a simplification of the truth? I felt like I was going around in circles tying myself in knots again. But somehow, I felt a little better about the whole concept.
It was strange to realize how all these ideas of Squareness were following my work. It was hard to tell which came first: the thoughts, or the work. It was as if the work gave me a cohesive way of looking at things, without having to try to constrain myself to conscious thoughts and the rigidity of language. I tend to be more fluid in my work because I work intuitively and, often, slightly sleep deprived. This tends to be the best way for me to keep my mind from getting in the way of things. I feel like I gain something from creating work and then reflecting on what is there. It's like I'm learning things from my own subconscious that I didn't know were there. It seems to be this constant push and pull of working and reflecting that takes my work to deeper levels and continues to hold my interest to the point that I know I will be creating art for the rest of my life, even if just for my own curiosity, for what it will reveal.
Post Script: She and I broke up on a Tuesday. Our paths simply... diverged. So be it.
Her Words
I was lying in bed, looking at him lying next to me; he had a calm confidence in his voice.
We had started talking about art and how exactly to define it. This discussion had been brought up multiple times in classes, and although it intrigued me, somehow I had never felt the need to define what I do. I felt as though I knew what art was even if I couldn't pin a definition to it, why should I need to define something in words if I already know what it is in my heart? We talked in circles for a while. He would ask a question, I would answer. Then he would swiftly find the fault in my answer and why it wouldn't suffice. It began to get frustrating. I turned over to lie on my back and started twirling my hair in my finger. I almost hated how he was so quick to find the holes in my responses, it irritated me because I knew he was right. Why didn't I know how to say what art was when I can feel exactly what it is??
I looked over at him frustrated, irritated. He looked back at me with his still confident smile, and then, with an almost sad look in his eye, he said "Art is that which is understood to be created for the sole purpose of translating non-empirical information into empirical form." I just stared at him blankly. Huh?? I didn't have the slightest clue what he had just said, but it made me angry and I didn't know why. I didn't say anything. I guess he decided that that would be the close of the conversation because he rolled over and I could tell he was sound asleep within minutes. But I, on the other hand, lay awake for hours. I was so angry.
It was four A.M. and I was going to have trouble waking up for class. I needed to get some sleep, but the more I told myself that I needed to sleep, the more difficult it seemed to be. Thoughts continued to churn in my head all night, it felt like my brain had tied itself in knots. How was it possible that such a simple definition could articulate what I do every day..but lack so much of the Quality of that art?
A few days later, I had to write a paper for Aesthetics class on the topic of "Squareness." When I had finished it, I printed it out and read it over. It was all bullshit. There were so many things I wanted to get across, but it all seemed to get lost in the translation. I didn't turn it in.
The notion of "Squareness" resurfaced again, but in my studio. I was doing press mold casts of hands. When I pulled the hand out of the mold, there was too much extra clay around it so I simply cut a straight line off. Incidentally, I cut off part of the thumb in the process. The way that clean edge contrasted against the form of the hand and texture of the skin seemed appropriate. So I cut off the fingers in another straight line at a ninety degree angle to the first. I continued until the severed hand was contained within the form of a box. It didn't really look severed though. The clean structure of the sides made it feel very analytical, yet it constricted the already stressed form of the hand in a way that made it look more contorted. For me, that was what Squareness was about. Breaking things down in order to define and understand them, but losing the whole picture in the process. The constraint of our minds is a difficult thing to get around.
The subject reappeared again later that night. My boyfriend and I were at Miglinchy's having a drink. I had my sketchbook out and he had decided that he was going to draw me. I sat there watching him as he worked on an eye. He looked up at me, then erased and scribbled more, then erased, then looked at me, scribbled, then erased again. Now he was working on the nose. I didn't understand why he kept erasing so much. He continued drawing like this, drawing part by part trying to relate each part to the whole image as he got to it. Almost an hour later he got tired of it, or maybe he was drunk. He scribbled on some hair and said he didn't want to do anymore. I looked at it and responded "Nice! It doesn't look like meactually it looks like you." He smiled and said "Heh, I guess that's why I don't go to art school anymore". I let it go at that; I knew that wasn't his real reason though.
He reminded me of Phadreus sometimes. I started to look at him as being Square. I feel that he has to analyze and understand every little part of something before he can try to construct the whole image within his mind, just like he was doing in his drawing. Seeing him as being "Square" depressed me, he was a classical thinker. I had never seen him react on an emotion; it almost felt like he understood them too well to really feel them. In Plato's terms, he was a non-lover, and I was a lover.
I tried thinking about a Square in a literal manner to see where it would take me, and decided that there was no such thing. Squares didn't really exist. A square is 2-dimensional and the sides are never perfectly square even if our minds simplify them to be so. There is no such thing as a naturally formed, perfect square. But squares do exist; they exist in our minds, things can be 2-dimensional, and perfect, in our minds. I was confused again. So does that mean they are real or not real? Maybe they are only real in that they are a simplification of the truth that our mind creates in order to delete excess information. So does that mean that every thing that we see is really a simplification of the truth? I felt like I was going around in circles tying myself in knots again. But somehow, I felt a little better about the whole concept.
It was strange to realize how all these ideas of Squareness were following my work. It was hard to tell which came first: the thoughts, or the work. It was as if the work gave me a cohesive way of looking at things, without having to try to constrain myself to conscious thoughts and the rigidity of language. I tend to be more fluid in my work because I work intuitively and, often, slightly sleep deprived. This tends to be the best way for me to keep my mind from getting in the way of things. I feel like I gain something from creating work and then reflecting on what is there. It's like I'm learning things from my own subconscious that I didn't know were there. It seems to be this constant push and pull of working and reflecting that takes my work to deeper levels and continues to hold my interest to the point that I know I will be creating art for the rest of my life, even if just for my own curiosity, for what it will reveal.
Post Script: She and I broke up on a Tuesday. Our paths simply... diverged. So be it.