The Audacity of Art
Provocation is sometimes ugly art. Sometimes provocation is continuing to recognize the beauty in the world when life becomes ugly.
Edification – Newsletter #91 – October 10, 2021
Dear Reader,
Happy Sunday!
Today I share a still life drawing, done in probably 1998 or so, when I was about twenty years old. It is damaged in a few places, as you can see. Probably it was bent slightly in the moving processes. It was also exposed to humidity (causing that fading, or “wax bloom,” most visible some sections of the black background). Some of this can be repaired, which I plan to do.
I did not properly protect my art over the years. It happens. Visual art is perhaps the most vulnerable to wear and tear, to precarious housing or bad storage arrangements. Next to nothing in my hundreds of pages of sketchpads has been framed. Most drawings have no fixative applied.
It’s not a big loss in the case of this drawing. I still have it, tucked safely into a portfolio. I know what’s wrong with it. It isn’t lost or destroyed.
Although drawings are fragile, they also exist in the material world – unlike most of the writing that is produced by millions of writers every day on this planet. Back up your stuff!
But about the drawing: it is 18 x 24 inches, on medium-weight Strathmore paper. My go-to colored pencil since college has been Prismacolor Premier because they are softer and waxier than most other brands. I apply them with a heavy hand, even sometimes melting the wax with my body heat in the process. In college I often drew in a house without air conditioning and realized that in the summer, I could create an almost painting-like finish on paper by pressing hard in my overlays.
This drawing is one of what I called my “time lapse” still lifes of that period. The vases contain the same bouquet of tulips; they are drawn twice, side by side, over the course of a few days.
Tulips, like many flowers, open and close over the course of a day. The heaviness of the blooms causes them to shift around in a tight-necked vase.
I was fascinated (still am) by the mobility of plants, by their sensitivity to the location of the sun, by the transformations they make on their way toward death.
I have also long been preoccupied by the use of a “still life” to tell a story. As you can see, I include a self-portrait in the reflection of the first vase. Not the second. Behind me, another figure enters. What is happening in the second vase? Who is standing there? Are they coming or going? Is it me? Is it you?
I think it takes a certain love of ambiguity to create art. Any art, visual or written or musical, is most rewarding when it leans into the contradictory. What is open to interpretation is interesting. Involving the audience, reader, viewer, is what completes the artistic process. For that reason, I find art that balances accessibility with challenge most satisfying.
I also think it takes a certain audacity to continue creating art that is beautiful. Provocation is sometimes ugly art. Sometimes provocation is continuing to recognize the beauty in the world when life becomes ugly.
On Saturday, I was lucky enough to attend a workshop with the Ohio Poetry Association led by Tunisian-American poet Leila Chatti. As the event page framed it:
“It can be difficult, in these trying times, to make space for praise, or to notice the occasion for it. It is easy to believe it, even, selfish. (“Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home,” writes Szymborska.) But to find in dark times things to praise is not to be ignorant of suffering—it is to, despite our suffering, survive.”
Let us apply this “space for praise” to poetry itself. Is art selfish when the world is burning? Or does it become more important than ever? Why is it so hard for us to accept that it can be both at the same time – that what is sometimes castigated as “selfish” is more appropriately understood as a form of survival?
In her introduction, Chatti offered a wonderful and simple prompt to create a “praise poem” that I want to pass along to you. She had us begin by writing down the things that were stressing us out. Just top-of-the-head, in the span of a minute.
I wrote: “pandemic, scared of kids getting sick, parents getting sick, keeping everyone healthy, money, holidays coming.” Not that great as poetry fodder, I thought.
But then Chatti said to leave that list aside. Journaling can act as a sieve, she said. It is a sifting process that begins by dumping it all out. Get it all out of your system in order to move on, to come to deeper or more complex ideas. The complaints are part of the process (and as it turned out, I began writing a new poem last night on the vulnerability I feel raising sons).
I think that “sieve” is really a crucial aspect of poetry – and all art. The process should yield something that you didn’t know you had or hadn’t put together in your mind before you began. Art ought to surprise you, the artist.
No matter the form or subject matter, the act of creation is a startling (self) discovery. Isn’t that lovely?
Talk soon,
Edie
I love Szymborska, so thanks for that. As always, my Sunday isn't complete until I've checked in with you here. Thank you, Edie! Lovely art as well.