Personal Essay
Art and Wild
Exploring
the concept that freedom is the basis of all creativity, whether in the
consciousness of an artist or in the process of nature.
by Trent Thursby Alvey
“An artist
has to be free to create whatever he or she wants.”
Ric Collier, Director Salt Lake Art Center
“In wildness is the preservation
of the world.”
Henry David Thoreau
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At the
June “Art Too! Art Not!” debate, as I listened to people talk about
what is art, I was reminded of other discussions
on what is wild (wilderness). I was suddenly intrigued by the
likeness of these two discussions and decided to explore the similarities
further.
Ric Collier’s statement, “An artist has to be free to
create whatever he or she wants,” prompted me to position Collier in
lofty company by comparing his quote to that of Henry David Thoreau.
Collier has dedicated his life to art and artists and has spent a good
deal of time thinking about the primary trio of questions: What is art?
What is the job of the artist? What is the job of the viewer? With the
intent of inching closer to an answer to these questions and to compare
the concepts of wild and art, I’m writing this contemplation.
As educators and art historians go about trying to answer the
question of what is art, artists go about their business of creating
art. Correspondingly, scientists, philosophers and writers go about
trying to define wild. Luckily, neither artists nor nature await the
definitive answer. The answers to what is art and what is wild
seems to be the same. Art is best when produced without management,
interference, imposed guidelines, or moral and aesthetic dogmatic
restraints, just as it is with wildness. Wildness isn’t wild if
it is not free to create and evolve at will.
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As with
the wild, there is a larger consciousness that guides art. Nature
appears random, but responds to a higher consciousness that we cannot perceive
in our short lifetimes, with our even shorter attention span. Likewise,
the genius of creative art may not be readily observed. It may take
a perceptive viewer or a future society to appreciate it. Unfortunately
for the artist, his or her brilliance may not be discovered in their lifetime.
And, finally, even the artist may not know the future implications of their
work.
Unseen forces drive the creation of art and wild. Art and Wild
are not goal-oriented. When an artist announces that they are “pushing
the envelope,” a ubiquitous phrase I hear often (the only phrase I tire
of more is “thinking outside of the box”), they are paradoxically stifling
the wild experience. They are subconsciously derailing exactly
what they are setting out to do.
Art and Wild are about being and doing. They are elliptical and nonlinear.
In the wise words of a Buddhist Monk, in order to reach enlightenment
you must “strive to quit striving”. You must strive to quit creating
art in order to create art. This is the paradox.
Turner points out: “The idea of wildness is littered with paradoxes
— ‘wildlife management’, ‘ wilderness management’, ‘ managing for change’,
‘managing natural systems’ — what we might call the paradoxes of autonomy.”
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Spring City artist Lee Udall Bennion on the spot:
WHAT ARE YOU READING
THESE DAYS?
Lately I
have been reading The Book of Mormon (again), but I also have
been reading a trilogy of books by Phillip Pullman, "The Golden Compass,"
"The Subtle Knife" and the "Amber Spyglass." They are listed as juvenile
literature. I read them out loud to my teenage daughter, but I liked
them as much as anything I have read lately.
WHO WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO
PAINT YOUR PORTRAIT?
If I could choose anyone to
paint my portrait it would have to be Vincent Van Gogh. He was
the first artist that I noticed as a child, and I have always had
a strong emotional/spiritual response to his work.
WHAT IS HANGING ABOVE YOUR MANTEL?
I have no
mantle in my house, but the artist that would occupy that spot would
have to be Ella Peacock. She was a dear freind, neighbor and mentor
to me for many years and I have more of her work up on my walls
than any other artist. The image of hers that I would put over a
mantle would be the one of the Lehi Roller Mills she painted before
it was surrounded by fast food and gas stations.
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OVERHEARD:
ART TOO! ART NOT!
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THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM THE SL COUNTY'S JULY
"ART TOO! ART NOT!" A MONTHLY PANEL DISCUSSION.
DISCUSSING THE "IMPORTANCE OF PAINTING IN SOCIETY"
WERE KAREN HORNE, JOHN ERICKSON AND LAYNE MEACHAM.
LM: Do we need art? Well, we don’t have any choice.
Artists are going to paint whether society wants it or not.
JE: I like keeping the censors there so there is
some kind of an edge that you can push against; because, for example,
in Salt Lake I can start to feel somewhat like an edgier person
but if I go to New York I’m a conservative.
JE: Art is an engagement with that delectable thing
that is unprecedentally you.
KH: A painting is something that reveals itself over
time and you almost have to educate yourself to see it.
KH: The act of painting is a kind of meditation; it’s
a kind of refocusing . . that you confront a scene and you try
to make sense of it; you try to refine perceptions so that you can actually
see wihtout preconceptions.
LM: What's the artist's role responsibility to society?
Nothing really. But then hypocrisy slips in because we all like
money. The only artist that would really say there is no obligation
[to society] totally is the outsider artist; the one who has never
sold a painting, is barefoot in London, wandering around like a derelict
and doing art and nobody knows about him.
JE: Or someone who’s got a teaching job.
JE: I like to be influenced, in the broad sense
of being educated . . . it’s that need to know, maybe to become an
outsider through over education. . .It’s a great energizer, the
thickness of culture.
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Why do we persistently try to answer the unanswerable? As
humans, we distinguish ourselves from the other species by virtue of one
tiny genetic mutation, the ability to speak (and communicate with a written
language).
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The parallel paradoxes for art may be:
“art critics”
“art administrators”
“art teachers.”
Can art be criticized or praised?
Can it be administrated? Can it be taught?
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Geneticists believe that humans evolved into the ability to speak
quite by accident. This ability has allowed us another trait unavailable
to the other animal species: introspection.
Contemplation of ourselves has become a major pastime since we
first jumped down out of the trees in Africa and started walking upright.
There are drawings of hunters and shaman in Namibia (Africa) drawn
on rocks by the Sans Bushman, a culture thought to be thirty thousand
years old.
I believe there are no genetic accidents, but that humans were
given this linguistic capability as either a gift or a curse, to be destined
to constant introspection. Jack Turner, a philosopher and brilliant mind,
writes meditations on nature in his book Abstract Wild: “This great feeding
body is the world. It evolved together, mutually, all interdependent,
all interrelating ceaselessly, the dust of old stars hurtling though time,
and we are the form it chose to make it conscious of itself.” Thus, we
will continue to contemplate questions about art, wild, freedom, creativity,
and spirituality because we are conscious of ourselves.
When defining wilderness, I cite Thoreau, who noted that “wild
is the past participle of ‘to will’: self-willed land.”
Gary Snyder, an award-winning writer, beat poet and activist for more
than forty years, also extracts the root word “wild” from wilderness
— “wildness is a self organizing system, needing no management.”
It is a simple definition, but encompasses much. He writes that wildness
constantly comes under the assault of anthropocentric guidance -- managing
by park administrators, government bureaucracies, self-serving recreation
groups and well-meaning scientists. Likewise, it seems the artist needs
to remain free and wild, unmanaged and untamed, despite the expectations
of critics, art administrators, gallery owners and social norms.
Artists moving beyond nameless boundaries will further the creative process,
as well as advance the net-creative-worth of society.
Turner writes a lot about what we are in danger of losing as
a culture if we lose wildness. What happens to wildness if it
is managed? How many anthropocentric overtones should we layer
on wildness, before the wild becomes tame? Do we still call it wild?
“A place is wild when its order is created according to its own principles
of organization – when it is self-willed land,” Turner says. Try
substituting the word “art” for “wild.” A thing is art when its
order is created according to its own principles of organization – when
it is self-willed art.
I believe the artist is the vehicle to great art. The artist
prepares herself with skills, sensitivity, awareness, and insight and
then relinquishes control, allowing something larger to take over. Thinking
too much about the outcome of one’s art can defeat the process and get
in the way of success. Being in the moment is the path to allowing the
artist to transcend his or her own ordinary consciousness, arriving at
a place greater than what could have been conceptualized through cognitive
thinking. Art is not destination driven. Art cannot be obtained by grasping.
It has to visit you, like the answer to a Zen koan.
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I like
to consider minimalist Donald Judd when contemplating creativity.
I believe that his elegant restraint is pure creativity. Physics and
geometry are at work in relating objects to space. Judd intentionally
avoids imprinting himself onto the work, as object/time/space become the
dialogue. The restraint and simplicity speak volumes about non-narcissistic
awareness in transcending everyday chatter and allows the viewer to contemplate
geometry and space without imposition of any personal commentary, bringing
the whole artist/viewer relationship to a new, creative high ground.
Speaking of creativity, David Bohm, the German physicist who conceptualized
Quantum Physics, defines creativity as “the ability to observe new similarities
and new differences.” That brilliant simplification for thinking
creatively is the process by which scientists, teachers, artists, statesmen
and spiritual practitioners all progress to higher levels of insight and
understanding.
In looking at the whole art experience, I consider the viewer as
part of a holy art triad: the artist, the art and the viewer. The
job of the viewer is to see without thinking for a moment as he or she
looks at a piece, giving the art a chance to communicate on a cellular
level rather than an intellectual level. I believe that is why it
is so hard for some viewers to relate to abstract art. They have
not been trained to just look and see and not think — to allow a more visceral
response.
Viewers somehow have the idea that they have to judge immediately
and be able to intellectualize about a piece of art. They should
verbalize -- about their response to color, shape, texture -- but it is
not necessary for them to find a logical, contextual meaning. The viewer
must grant himself or herself the freedom to enjoy without anxiety, to
bring their own experience to the work, and be comfortable with what they
may not understand about it.
I think of the artist Kadanoga, (see photos) who was introduced to
this community in a 2001 Salt Lake Art Center exhibit curated by Ric Collier.
Kadanoga’s work embodies spiritual simplicity. Using natural materials
such as wood, paper, bamboo and glass, he allows a dialogue to emerge with
the viewer. This non-verbal dialogue took me to a new level of understanding,
both of the materials and of my relationship with them. It allowed me to
expand my awareness of new similarities and new differences in these materials.
I had a creative experience, that is to say, a learning experience.
This, for me, is the ultimate answer to the art triad question. Does
the piece allow the artist, the art and the viewer to communicate?
Does it allow the subject, the object and the process to become one? If
that happens, then it is art. Viewing or experiencing Kadanoga's pieces
allows us to make a leap toward understanding ourselves as well as our relationship
with nature.
I will conclude with one last comparison of wild and art: Turner
writes, “Wildness is out there. The most vital beings and systems
hang out at the edge of wildness. The next time you howl in delight
like a wolf, howl for unstable aperiodic behavior in deterministic non-linear
dynamical systems. Lao Tzu, Thoreau and Abbey will be pleased.”
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In comparison I offer this — Art is out there. The most vital
artists hang out at the edge of wildness. The next time you howl in
delight like a wolf, howl for unpredictable outcomes of art, howl for unseen
order hidden in chaos. Kadanoga, Rothberg, and Hesse will be proud.
We need more anarchist art advocates, less dogma, more freedom for
artists, viewers and community. And then when you do choose to respond
to art, consider HOWLING.
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All
images courtesy of the Salt Lake Art Center. From the Installation of
Kazuo Kadonaga, "Wood, Paper, Bamboo, Glass"
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