Friday 17 April 2020

Surpassing Yourself in Art


This idea of surpassing your intent that I mentioned
knausgaard
has a bootstrapping inflection. How do you get past yourself and really create? How did Hemingway write a story which was not a Hemingway story? Pablo Picasso was once approached by his good friend art dealer with a painting whose provenance he wanted to authenticate. Picasso took one look at it and said ‘that’s a fake’. ‘But’, said the dealer, ‘I was there in the studio the day you painted it and I saw you working on it’. ‘I often paint fakes’ said Picasso.

When asked for the meaning of her dance Isadora Duncan said ‘If I could tell you that I would not have to dance it’.

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of”. Pascal.

The notion of patent intent that is linked to correct interpretation is a logical rational confection that entirely misses the transcendent connatural aspect of art. It is at home in the univocal flatland world. The mu force of the double-bind holds that there is no true single interpretation merely the affront of the work before you. ‘Whaddya think of that, bright boy’? Unless we transcend we miss the point. The work is the point and our interpretation dashes itself against that.

The classical view of genius is that you had a genius or were subject to an impersonal force. The Romantic artist is a genius, one who is attuned by an individual grasp of reality. Prometheus is his avatar and his fate.

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
(from Among School Children by W.B. Yeats)

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