POST #69: DIGGING INTO THE SUBCONSCIOUS

"Untitled" Center panel triptych, 6'x4', oil on canvas

This week’s New York Times Science Section had an article by John Tierney called : “A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying.” In it, he discussed a new book by Dr. Edward Slingerland entitled “Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity” based on the centuries old Asian philosophy of “wu wei,” the Chinese term to describe “effortless action” This is the kind of spontaneity we see in champion athletes, musicians, experienced speakers and so on. Of course, as we all know, to get to that point requires countless hours of initial effort and training. Tierney talks about the charismatic effect it creates when a public speaker goes with the flow instead of struggling; “Paralysis through analysis and overthinking” is the way he describes it.

                                  

Although the article doesn’t talk about artists and writers, I’d like to throw in a few comments. A number of years ago, I saw a documentary about Picasso at work; most of you have probably seen it. Picasso, who knew his craft as well as any painter alive, did not seem to preplan his work; he painted without any visible preconceptions, purely from the subconscious. Works literally poured out of him, painting after painting, unplanned, spontaneous.

"Gangsters" Overhead projector drawings  8'x6'

I find that after years of studying art and painting stilted student work; I am now free to paint from the subconscious. In fact, it’s the only way I can work. I didn’t know it was called “wu wei” (pronounced “ooo-way;” I called it an alpha State, reached when my surroundings dropped away leaving me with a clear, empty, meditative state of mind. When I think too much about what I am doing, try to preplan the work, it looks forced and unspontaneous and I have to erase what I have done and start over. Also, in order to reach an alpha state, I must have absolute quiet, no one around, not even music on the radio. It often takes me an hour or more of false starts, bad beginnings, erasures before the alpha state takes over and unplanned images begin to pour out. Sometimes, I have a theme, other times what shows up is often a surprise. Since I begin with a charcoal drawing on primed canvas, I can always change my mind, wipe out, add, develop a theme,  discard it. I spend many hours in this glorious state of creative suspension. When things go well, I dance around the room, charcoal in hand. I am an artist and all is well with the world.

"Lower East Side," Panel #4, 6'x4', oil on canvas

All creative artists, writers, composers wrestle with the difficulty of reaching this state of wu wei. For some people, it is easier than others; being out of control is too frightening to them. You often hear of famous writers and their “drinking problems,” (Cheever, Fitzgerald) which might have been their way of getting to the point where their subconscious took over and words flew out. The NY Times article speaks of drinking as “mental disarmament,” a way in which your inner self is revealed. As the article says “Paralysis through analysis and overthinking are very real pitfalls that the art of wu wei was designed to avoid.” Of course, this leads me to Post #63 “Getting in Your 10 thousand Hours,” the time required to get really good at something. There’s no point “accessing your unconscious” if when you reach it, the skills you need aren’t there, or worse yet, you have nothing  to say. 

POST #68: WHY I AVOID GOING TO MUSEUMS

Photo-manipulation by Robert Callahan, Designer

I recently invited a musician friend to go to a concert with me and was turned down. He claimed he hated to sit trapped in a seat, listening to other people perform when he wanted to play himself. After thinking about it for a while, I realized I felt the same way about going to museums or art exhibits; I want to spend time in my own studio, working, being a producer, not an observer. Besides, I’ve been looking at artwork for so many years now that everything looks familiar. If I haven’t seen that particular piece, I’ve seen a similar one by the same artist. I remember the way museums used to be before exhibit designers got hold of them: solemn halls of study, footsteps echoing, not cluttered decorator showrooms.

Click to Enlarge
Photo-manipulation by Robert Callahan, Designer

Museums are packed with people who have no idea what they are looking at, but know, in order to keep up with the cultural expectations of their social circle, they have to be able to say they saw the latest blockbuster. The same thing applies to travel; culture vultures need to say they’ve been someplace, but when you start to ask them what they really got out of the experience, they answer in meaningless clichés. They didn’t learn a goddamned thing!

On a recent visit, I observed someone using his camera phone to take a picture of a painting and another of its explanatory label. He was obviously going to go home and study the piece. At first, I questioned why he would substitute the real experience for the camera image, but then I realized, he was probably right; it was better to quietly enjoy the work when he was alone.

Click to Enlarge
Photo-manipulation by Robert Callahan, Designer

The worst part of the present day museum experience is watching the hordes of schoolchildren invade a room: pushing, shoving, flirting, having a great old time out of class for the day, but learning absolutely nothing about art. I guess there’s something to be said for the museum experience, but it’s not educational.

Back to my reluctance to see the latest, hottest, blockbuster exhibit.  How in the world can anyone give a work of art the time and attention it needs with crowds at their backs? You need peace and quiet to study art. The only way to actually get something out of a museum visit is to pick some out-of-the-way room i.e. medieval enamels or the paintings of Paul Klee, and hope that you can look at the work in peace. On my last visit to MMA, I came away high as a kite over a tiny 8 1/2"x6 1/2" 15th century Flemish Virgin and Child by Dieric Bouts that I found purely by accident; it stayed in my memory for months.

Click to Enlarge
Photo-manipulation by Robert Callahan, Designer

And last but not least, money! Entry fees! All museums should be like the Met, a suggested donation. They might have to lower the million dollar salary for the Director and the pricey exhibit designer, but that’s ok with me! If the admission is too high, it drives away the people who need the experience the most.

The truth it is, I’m getting older and the time I have left to do my own work is running out. I’d rather spend the day in my studio than see the umpteenth version of something I’ve seen a zillion times before. I applaud museums for reaching out to expand their audience; but in the gain, something has been lost.

POST #67: MY LOVE OF CARDBOARD (and other impermanent materials in a throw-away world)

"Factory Dreaming"
black gesso on wrapping paper  48"x34"

I’ve talked about the advantages of using cardboard for art work in previous blogs; cardboard and brown wrapping paper are great surfaces for artwork. There’s nothing like a cheap, easily disposed of material to encourage experimentation. An expensive piece of primed canvas is intimidating and costly; (you don’t want to waste it). My artist friends turn up their noses; “it’s not archivally stable,” they warn me. At the risk of repeating myself, neither am I.

I am acquainted with someone who owns a cardboard warehouse, or, I should say, “ a warehouse filled with cardboard.” It’s called Commerce Packaging and it’s located in a huge shed in an industrial section of South Norwalk. The building is filled from floor to ceiling with cardboard; all sizes, thicknesses, varieties. I am the proverbial kid in the candy store when I go there. I try to get someone with a pick-up truck to take me since the sheets are around 4’x7’ and won’t fit in the standard station wagon. Most recently, I discovered something called “triple ply;” an amazing material: cheap, sturdy, doesn’t collapse, yet is light enough for someone like me to manage. It’s not good for cutting-out figures since I would need a saw, not an Exact-o knife, but I have come up with a perfect use that I’d like to share with you.

Canvases mounted on cardboard panels, 6'x4' each

As anyone who works on canvas knows, you need to stretch it, a fairly expensive process that requires brute strength and neatness, neither of which I possess. My alternative is to roll the canvases up after I have finished painting on them. I have a couple dozen rolled up canvases in my attic; they don’t take up much room but I have no idea what’s on them. Out of sight-out of mind. Now, with my triple ply cardboard, I can tack finished work up (plain push pins, no hammer needed) and tuck the panel in a corner, easy to pull out and show visitors. Cheap, convenient and stackable and only 1/3^rd inch thick.

If I want to do cut-outs, there’s no material like cardboard. Foam core works but it doesn’t have that tan “middle ground” color that I like. Another good surface is brown wrapping paper; again, sturdy, inexpensive and subtly colored. It invites experimentation as failures can get crumpled up and without regrets, tossed into the garbage. About a year ago, I did a pretty successful series of charcoal drawings with white chalk highlights on wrapping paper. The problem is that when the paper creases, unlike canvas, it cannot be ironed out. Both cardboard and wrapping paper work especially well with children; inexpensive, disposable and much less inhibiting than a clean sheet of white paper. Do you really care if it’s “archivally stable”?

"Thrift Shop Half-Price Sale"
 Installation: gesso on wrapping paper with metal hangars

A year or so ago, in a rash moment, I ordered a huge, four-foot high, fifty-pound roll of brown wrapping paper from a commercial packaging catalog. There’s no way I will ever live long enough to use it up, so if you’d like to try some, come on over and I’ll cut you a few yards. You’ll be amazed at what you can do with it. Also, I’ll show you my movable, cardboard storage panels and how they work. I love them

POST #66: WORDS OF WISDOM

Until recently, the world was governed by aphorisms, shared words of wisdom accepted by everyone as truth. The ones I remember most came from my best friend, Dina, who died about ten years ago. She was a little older than I, a Lithuanian Jewish refugee who had spent her teens in a German work camp in Poland. She emerged with a zest for life I have not seen in anyone else, ever. The Nazi’s had taken away her parents, her brother, her chance for an education and her youth. She was not giving up any more. The past was past and whatever time she had left was to be enjoyed.

A talented sculptor and art teacher, a voluptuous beauty, a great cook and an unbeatable poker player, she had a wide circle of friends, mostly men. Some, I assumed, were lovers as she intended to make up for lost time. She was always encouraging me to have affairs, recommending one man or another. When I protested that I had a husband I loved and no need to look elsewhere, she would scoff : “Have fun! Enjoy life!” Men find you attractive! (Who? No man ever came near me. I had an omnipresent husband the size of a Michigan State linebacker) “Don’t waste life,” she would warn me. I guess if I had grown up in a Nazi prison camp, I might also want to keep my dance card full.

One of he things I loved most about her was her stock of wise sayings, aphorisms she had learned at home or concocted from her own experiences. Fortunately, several have stuck with me. “Three heads can’t sleep on one pillow” was one of my favorites, meaning it’s impossible for an outsider to know what goes on in someone else’s marriage. She and I had a friend who slept with every important man in Stamford, from the ex-mayor on down. We all felt sorry for her sweet, long-suffering husband only to discover that he encouraged her flings and they were what kept the marriage going.

Another one I liked was: “She exchanged a pair of good shoes for dancing slippers.” It was her way of describing a mutual acquaintance who had left her reliable spouse for a notorious womanizer, a man who taught watercolor painting (among other things) to rich, neglected wives. Still another favorite described an insatiably greedy friend as having a “hollow toe,” meaning that her need for “things” was bottomless – could never be filled.

The aphorism of hers that I found most disturbing was “Every artist has only ten good years.” I covered that subject in Post #37 and will deal with it again in a talk I’m giving at UConn in April about Marc Chagall.

Will let you know when and where as we get closer to the date.

POST #65: HERE’S LOOKIN’ AT YA, KID

"Diner Goddess,"  oil on canvas, 68"x44" 2012

One of the most famous moments in movie history comes when Bogie chucks Bergman under the chin, looks at her lovingly and says: “Here’s lookin’ at ya, kid.” I think about that scene every once in a while when I’m working on a painting. When the figures on the canvas communicate with me (or each other) I know things are going right. I’m a great believer in “eye contact” in general. That’s why I never read notes when I lecture; I need to look my listeners in the eye to see if they understand me.

I’m intrigued with an artist’s ability to create life out of inanimate materials; it’s almost a God-given power, like Michelangelo’s depiction of God touching Adam’s hand on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. You see the beginnings of this kind of contact thousands of years ago in Prehistoric cave paintings, where the realistic depiction of animals was meant to bring them to life for the hunt. In one of my earliest blogs, I related the (apocryphal) story about the Renaissance sculptor, Donatello, who was known to scream at his statues “Talk! Damn you! Talk! It was as if he were performing an act of magic, infusing life into a piece of stone. I often do not regard a painting finished until the moment the figures come alive. They don’t have to talk only to me; I’m not possessive. I’m perfectly happy if, like Bogey and Bergman, they talk to each other.

Detail from Lower East Side
polyptych, oil on canvas, 2014 

What always surprises me however, is how few artists are interested in making contact between the figure on the canvas and the viewer (or creator.) They are denying a gift from the gods. During the late Middle Ages, depictions of Christ show him staring straight ahead or looking down sadly from the Cross. I must say I get a kick out of those modern-day interpretations of Jesus now found in gift shops and dollar stores where the eyes follow you. Talk of communication! Jesus is watching you! For the last 200 years, however, subjects tend to look directly at the viewer, maybe because of competition from photography. “Look at the camera! Smile!”

I love when I am successful at bringing someone to life on canvas: I dance around the room; I sing and talk to my paintings. Many years ago, I did some huge cardboard puppets drawn from local political figures – “Gangsters” I called them. I knew my drawings were complete when the figures spoke to me; unpleasant as they were, I had given them life.

"Restauranteur" from "Gangster Series." acrylic on box cardboard, 6'x3'

POST #64: THE PRAM IN THE HALL

I thought I remembered Picasso remarking that “Children are the enemy of creativity.” It turns out he never said anything of the kind. Why would he? He never allowed anyone (especially his children) to interfere with his creative life. He actually said “good taste” was the enemy of creativity; I don’t think he thought of his children as impediments at all.

Hang-Ups   34"x46 Acrylic on canvas

So if not Picasso, who then? I turned to Google and came up with several hundred thousand “hits.” Apparently, it was British author, Cyril Connolly, who famously said “There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”  Anyone who has gone through the sleep-deprived months (or years) following the birth of a child might be tempted to agree with him, although I don’t know a single person, who, in retrospect, would have done things differently. Like childbirth, the pain of sleepless nights quickly dissipates once a normal schedule is established.

Child's Play   38"x48"   Acrylic on canvas

It turns out that, according to Google, (what would we do without Google?) lots of things can be blamed for lack of creativity: some internal, some external. Ray Bradbury was quoted saying  “Don’t think! Thinking is the enemy of creativity; just DO!” Saul Steinberg suggested “boredom;” Sylvia Plath said “self doubt.” David Lynch offered “negativity.”  A writer I never heard, Lucas Parry, blamed procrastination, fear of failure and any form of self doubt. My own candidate is “perfectionism”. The need to be correct all the time discourages experimentation.

My Life & Art   36"x48"  Acrylic on canvas

As for children, it’s obvious that if you haven’t slept in months you’re not going to do very well on the creativity scale. On the good side, when you finally do get a night’s sleep, you tend to work demonically to make up for lost time. And children do grow up eventually and/or you can hand over dealing with them to “experts,” leaving you free to pursue your creative life. In the long run, I agree with most people who study creativity: rigidity of thinking kills it, not children. I admit that three children in five years took a toll on my creative life but, in the long run, I’ve had plenty of child-free time to create and if I haven’t accomplished all that I set out to do, the Pram in the Hall wasn’t to blame.

Oh, and by the way, a friend of mine reminded me not to forget “having to earn a living.” He’s right. That can kill creativity faster than anything else,. 

POST 63: GETTING IN YOUR 10K HOURS

I just came across Malcolm Gladwell’s essay “The Ten Thousand Hour Rule.” It appears in his book “Outliers- The Story of Success.” He quotes neurologist Daniel Levitan as saying that “ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything.” Gladwell goes on to state that this holds true even for people we think of as prodigies, like Mozart. It seems 10k hours is “the magic number of greatness,” no matter what your field.

I wonder now, despite my having been “an artist” for so many decades that I’ve probably gone way beyond ten thousand hours, in fact, I’m probably on my second or third ten. Genius, however, appears to have eluded me. Maybe Gladwell’s theory has a built-in timer that resets after a certain number of years.

What pleases me no end, however, is knowing that my work is getting better, although very slowly. It requires that I paint or draw every day (like practicing an instrument) otherwise my hand gets “stale,” refuses to perform the way I want it to, does not respond to my subconscious commands or read my mind.

I once taught a for-credit painting class at the University of Connecticut in Stamford, mostly highly motivated older students. As I always do when I teach, I try to break down complex ideas into easy-to-understand chunks of information. Painting (in oils) it turns out, is extremely easy to summarize. You go from dark to light, from thin to thick. That’s it! The rest is practice. Sure, I can explain how to glaze: you thin down a darker shade of paint with varnish and apply when the original is dry. Or how to “scumble:” brush a lighter color on with a dry brush and rub it in. There! You know the tricks of the trade! Now, all you have to do is practice it over and over, every day, for ten thousand hours and you too can be great.

As most of you know, I am very involved in community activities and because of that have spent endless evenings at endless meetings. I survive by sketching, usually on the ubiquitous paper plates that are always on hand. My models are generally unaware they are posing and tend to sit still for long periods of time, listening intently. When I first start to draw in this circular format (a tondo is its official name) the work is stiff and unacceptable. By the time I get to the fourth or fifth plate, I’m on a roll! (and, since paper plates are cheap, I can afford to throw the previous efforts in the garbage.) The lines I use become fewer, simpler and more direct. Less becomes More. Definitely.

Over the years, I have amassed a 6” stack of a couple of hundred paper plate drawings that are reasonably successful. If I want to exhibit them, there are all sorts of possibilities. I visualize entire walls of faces in twelve-inch box frames or maybe lined up behind a large sheet of glass.

I think I’m getting better and better; just another few thousand hours of practice and I’ll really be good! (Whether I’ll survive a few more thousand hours of local politics is another matter.)