15 January 2013
The artists mark
It comes to my attention that the mark made by an artist tells everything about their aptitude as artist. The clarity, maturity, wisdom and experience shines brightly for an audience to see and there is nowhere to hide. Except of course when it comes to audience and artist perception that is based in the trickery of sight and mind. Then the ‘mark’ can hide and the artist has the chance to dodge honesty through the reflection of his/herself as the audience. Then through clever manipulation of medium the artist can trick an audience into believing that their work is good.
Some artists actually declare this trickery to be their ‘form’ of artistic expression, but when one goes into the on goings of the artist’s mind, sooner or later there emerges that yearning for peace among the restlessness of mind. This yearning for mental resolve is what lies at the root of all manipulative on goings of a restless soul. Whether or not an artist wants to dig into them self to see the illusion that needs resolve, is a matter of life itself, a life that no one has any actual personal choice about. So the artist either roots out their false identity or not. And the very words that touch this root when pointed to it, is where the telling lies in whether or not the artist wants to look or not. There is no way out and yet, try as he/she might, a way out is sought and this very action is what reflects in the art that one makes.
I don’t see that the perception of art can be anything other than an honest view of oneself no matter what the subject appears to be. But the ‘mark’ will tell you what the artist is really saying and to the sensitive eye, no trick can allude.
Our Art History shows the application of the moment through mark making recorded and then relayed as the work of art. Work that always reflects the ‘times’ so to speak and work that represents present state of life as we know it to be no matter the subject.
The artist speaks and the audience listens. Parallel similarities can be seen between different artistic expressions some of which hold titles like poetry, writing, dance drawing and painting.. In all these artistic expressions lie the honesty of mark making.
It is therefore up to the artist to communicate through the use of a medium, but most importantly of all is the artist’s ability to be direct and honest, otherwise the hand of pretentiousness creeps in and masks art in much the same way as a man would wear a glass mirror on his face so that the image reflected on the mirror surface would only be the face of a viewer and the face behind the mirror would remain obscured.
The tricks of the trade have been handed down in our history of art. These are the many ways in which a medium can be manipulated to create effects. These effects are reliant on technique. A so called good and even mature technique can easily be overlooked to be art. And many artists today are known by their technique alone. But the moment that technique is seen to be a fine veil that is used to enhance the true mark of an artist, and not that which is the art itself then the emperor stands naked for all to see.
It is neither good nor bad that an artist hide behind technique, but it does make a difference to art and its recognition when transparency of technique is used or not.
Now, should the artwork attempt to refuse the transparency that art requires in order to be ‘art’, the mind will not be given a chance to see outside the usual habit of recognition so that it can rest as itself without having to continuously perpetuate the notion of the necessity of thought(which is restless) in order to be alive.. This, I shall emphasise, is only a ‘chance’ encounter, a chance meeting with what always and already is the case without any intervention of habitual thought. In other words, a meeting as the very Intelligence that animates life without the use of thought to define itself as a thing.
While in some philosophical circles, this would be referred to as the ‘spiritual’ in art or that art is a spiritual practice. I would counter this by saying that the making of art contains every thing to such an extent, as to leave no need for conceptual definitions. This would mean that spiritual and physical are one and the same and as this would not be necessary to emphasise conceptually as two different things. The understanding of this cancels out the need to emphasise a difference between spiritual and physical in art work. Furthermore, art is very physical and immediate and does not lend itself to the ‘unseen’ of the spiritual only because life itself is physical and immediate.
So it would not be the spiritual aspect of art apart from the physical, that could give way to the expression of art, but rather that all consuming creative surge, the primal force that is life itself that uses the artist as a medium to communicate itself to itself.
When life itself (the audience or viewer of art) recognizes art, then that which is always present sees directly without the use of thought.
To conclude I would say that through the ‘lazy’ application of art, technique gets used as the stand-in that compensates for lack of factual observation of what is really taking place.
And that the artists ‘mark’ is what carries the understanding of observation in it.
It comes to my attention that the mark made by an artist tells everything about their aptitude as artist. The clarity, maturity, wisdom and experience shines brightly for an audience to see and there is nowhere to hide. Except of course when it comes to audience and artist perception that is based in the trickery of sight and mind. Then the ‘mark’ can hide and the artist has the chance to dodge honesty through the reflection of his/herself as the audience. Then through clever manipulation of medium the artist can trick an audience into believing that their work is good.
Some artists actually declare this trickery to be their ‘form’ of artistic expression, but when one goes into the on goings of the artist’s mind, sooner or later there emerges that yearning for peace among the restlessness of mind. This yearning for mental resolve is what lies at the root of all manipulative on goings of a restless soul. Whether or not an artist wants to dig into them self to see the illusion that needs resolve, is a matter of life itself, a life that no one has any actual personal choice about. So the artist either roots out their false identity or not. And the very words that touch this root when pointed to it, is where the telling lies in whether or not the artist wants to look or not. There is no way out and yet, try as he/she might, a way out is sought and this very action is what reflects in the art that one makes.
I don’t see that the perception of art can be anything other than an honest view of oneself no matter what the subject appears to be. But the ‘mark’ will tell you what the artist is really saying and to the sensitive eye, no trick can allude.
Our Art History shows the application of the moment through mark making recorded and then relayed as the work of art. Work that always reflects the ‘times’ so to speak and work that represents present state of life as we know it to be no matter the subject.
The artist speaks and the audience listens. Parallel similarities can be seen between different artistic expressions some of which hold titles like poetry, writing, dance drawing and painting.. In all these artistic expressions lie the honesty of mark making.
It is therefore up to the artist to communicate through the use of a medium, but most importantly of all is the artist’s ability to be direct and honest, otherwise the hand of pretentiousness creeps in and masks art in much the same way as a man would wear a glass mirror on his face so that the image reflected on the mirror surface would only be the face of a viewer and the face behind the mirror would remain obscured.
The tricks of the trade have been handed down in our history of art. These are the many ways in which a medium can be manipulated to create effects. These effects are reliant on technique. A so called good and even mature technique can easily be overlooked to be art. And many artists today are known by their technique alone. But the moment that technique is seen to be a fine veil that is used to enhance the true mark of an artist, and not that which is the art itself then the emperor stands naked for all to see.
It is neither good nor bad that an artist hide behind technique, but it does make a difference to art and its recognition when transparency of technique is used or not.
Now, should the artwork attempt to refuse the transparency that art requires in order to be ‘art’, the mind will not be given a chance to see outside the usual habit of recognition so that it can rest as itself without having to continuously perpetuate the notion of the necessity of thought(which is restless) in order to be alive.. This, I shall emphasise, is only a ‘chance’ encounter, a chance meeting with what always and already is the case without any intervention of habitual thought. In other words, a meeting as the very Intelligence that animates life without the use of thought to define itself as a thing.
While in some philosophical circles, this would be referred to as the ‘spiritual’ in art or that art is a spiritual practice. I would counter this by saying that the making of art contains every thing to such an extent, as to leave no need for conceptual definitions. This would mean that spiritual and physical are one and the same and as this would not be necessary to emphasise conceptually as two different things. The understanding of this cancels out the need to emphasise a difference between spiritual and physical in art work. Furthermore, art is very physical and immediate and does not lend itself to the ‘unseen’ of the spiritual only because life itself is physical and immediate.
So it would not be the spiritual aspect of art apart from the physical, that could give way to the expression of art, but rather that all consuming creative surge, the primal force that is life itself that uses the artist as a medium to communicate itself to itself.
When life itself (the audience or viewer of art) recognizes art, then that which is always present sees directly without the use of thought.
To conclude I would say that through the ‘lazy’ application of art, technique gets used as the stand-in that compensates for lack of factual observation of what is really taking place.
And that the artists ‘mark’ is what carries the understanding of observation in it.
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