Inadequate, but not inane; that is the best way to describe art. It describes,
or tries to recreate, an instance of phenomenological being, or witnessing; to
describe an experiencing. Even Surrealism is the recreation of an initial
evocation of a feeling or an emotion. Art is merely a striving to produce, in
an objective existence, what one feels in the sub...jective. Thus, art is the
trying to posit something lasting, from something essentially transitory; it is
an objectively perceivable memory. It is the artist's, albeit crudely,
objectifying of his most inner being; "I am here; I am alive, and I am
experiencing". It is understandable then, the frustration most of us feel
when the image envisaged in our minds does not correspond to that created upon
canvass; it does not provide an adequate copy of this rememberance or feeling,
and even more so, for us who are unskilled at such things. If anything, art is
demonstrative of an artist's narcissism to be remembered, to have one's meaning
validated by a sense of futurity and permanence, when otherwise, there would be
none. Thus, it is harrowing for the artist, to try and recreate an instance of
being over a period of time; it ends as a conglomeration of instances, of
merely a trying to remember that one, initial, instigating one. Thus it becomes
distorted and unrecognisable from the original, though this, I'd hasten to add,
is too remembered in mind, and not felt. Thus, we create a copy, of a copy, of
a copy. Therefore, one cannot pre-ordain the form and content of art, it simply
is. One may have an idea of what one wishes to paint on canvass, or strike into
marble, but the finished piece is truly original; it sprouts only into
existence once the tired artist's hands are finished. It is only definable
afterwards, the same as in life. We, and art, are merely consecutive instances,
but that is going more into the nature of our own phenomenology, than into the
nature of art itself.
Perry
Smith
