Ideas on Art
When I try to look at the workings of western culture/society over
the past several thousands of years, I ask, What were we doing? What did
we discover? What did we accomplish?
And then I look for the works of art which seem to define or
illuminate the period.
So, what did we discover? What have we really done?
CONTENTS
——————————————————————–
POST-MODERN UNCERTAINTY
PLINKING ALONG META CREEK
DISSECT REASON
TWENTY IDEAS ABOUT ART
THE ART CLASS
——————————————————————
POST-MODERN UNCERTAINTY
(science, art, history all together)
When I try to look at the workings of western culture/society over
the past several thousands of years, I ask, What were we doing? What did
we discover? What did we accomplish?
And then I look for the works of art which seem to define or
illuminate the period.
So, what did we discover? What have we really done?
THE MODERN PERIOD UP TO THE PRESENT
I put down UNCERTAINTY as the major human discovery of very
recent history. The principal features of Uncertainty are chance,
probability, and randomness. The early landmarks are Dalton’s writing
about atomic theory in 1803 and the 1828 demonstration of molecular
rearrangement in chemistry. The 1897 discovery of the electron. These
demonstrations of an ultimate order made it possible to sharpen thinking
about disorder–uncertainty. I see this as the start of modern life, the
start of era “science,” hard science, technology-laden science.
After four thousand years of rapid development in Europe, finally,
our science was born. The absolutes of the religious universe were put to
rest; the unknowns of the new age, the age of unfettered inquiry, gave us a
charter for a new freedom. Instead of everything being known, suddenly
everything was not known. That’s real uncertainty.
Uncertainty got another boost in 1906 when it was convincingly
proved that the action of human judgement takes place wholly within the
inaccessible, the unknowable, doubtless unconscious part of us. In a black
box, so to speak.
Thinking people wrestled with the implications of uncertainty for
forty years. Sophomores cited Heraclitus and filed claims for a place in
the organic universe where virtually everything influenced everything
else–or, at least, they tried to.
Remember, the “Principia Mathematica” began with an unproved
proposition. You, the reader, had to accept it, understand it, or close the
book and skip the whole thing. A very shaky, uncertain feeling in the pit of
the stomach.
Remember, “feedback” and “ecology” were not yet part of the
vocabulary. We still said the time-bound “Good by,” or “So long,” when we
parted, being years and years away from the more thoughtful “Take Care.”
Painter Jackson Pollock gave elegant expression to a notion of
randomness, to in(de)finite uncertainty. He did it with great skill (not
chance), with rhythm, with grace, and with unforgettable style. Some of
the abstract expressionists, particularly those called action painters, did
rely upon the chance delivery of paint to canvas. Some whose work looks
as if they did, did not.
Because I see the modern period as best delimited by “Cezanne
through Picasso,” Jackson Pollock and the abstract expressionists have to
come afterward, and that, I think, is called post-modern, simply for lack
of a better word.
Other recorders of art history, call it something else. I do not have
an answer to the problem of making a better naming system.
Perhaps it is idiosyncratic to say that Post-modern Pollock gave
highest expression to the major discovery of the previous (modern)
period, but it appears to me that this is what artists do. They summarize,
epitomize, from the culture that produced them; and then go on to
synthesize newer stuff from that. And, that newer stuff is the platform
for the next generation–not a signpost pointing any particular direction.
Put it the other-way-around. Say that artists are the leaders of the
culture. This seems to me to be the conventional wisdom. This is the
usual romantic interpretation of the role of art in society. I find nothing
to support that idea except the puff publicity of the art gallery owner.
Having thought about these words for the last five years, and having
added only a comma here and there, tells me something: Perhaps I am
right, perhaps I have stopped creative learning and thinking, perhaps I
need a better teacher.
(3-23-95/Ht) RR. 3-14-00/ht
=================================
____________________________
Subj: Re: SEASONS GREETINGS
Date: Wed, Dec 20, 1995 3:21 PM EDT
From: carytenn@Slip.Net
XTo: Halltennis@aol.com
Cool.
I feel really blessed to have an uncle who really thinks about stuff like
that. It would be much harder to do this stuff and be completely,
genetically, culturally, familially isolated.
Especially because now I’m doing all this fiction and poetry and
sometimes it is very hard to remind myself that this is a meaningful
activity, that it’s legitimate.
Anyway, going to go back to working a semi-regular job for a while
because the bottom has fallen out of the freelance writing biz for the
moment. I’m glad I got skills to fall back on!
Of course, I could move to New York…..
Merry Christmas to all.
/////|\\\\\
Cary Tennis, a writer from San Francisco
=================================
PLINKING ALONG META CREEK
My Bro and I wanted to go plinking. Like we did when we were kids, out in
the country where a rifle wouldn’t bother anybody. So we rented a cabin
for a couple weeks, out in the woods, an old place on Meta Creek.
You know Meta. A little bit off by itself. Nobody uses it much. The creek comes down from a cypress swamp in the north end of the county. Then it empties into the bay, south of here. So, we named the areas North Meta and South Meta when we talked about where to go for a walk the next day.
The cabin is on the west side. The porch looks east over the water where
the sun rises. When I wanted to explore the woods in North East Meta, Bro
knew where I’d be. He’d be careful not to shoot in that direction.
Without thinking about it, we had divided the whole territory up into four
sub-parts, quadrants, like some city streets. It helped us feel at home;
like we owned the place.
The four Metas are different from each other. Northeast Meta has low hills
and turkey oak, fading into pine-palmetto flatwoods as it comes south.
Southeast Meta is more and more just saw palmetto with now and then a
couple blackjack pines and some tall and very old sable palmettos.
Northwest Meta is a shallow arm of the cypress swamp that
feeds the creek, but not a very wet arm, rising slowly out of the cypress
into heads of bay and gum. Southeast Meta gets high again, just before
you get to the bay. Looks like ancient sand dunes of myrtle, youpon, sand
pine, dwarf live oak,(Myrica cerifera, Ilex vomitoria, Pinus clausus, and
Quercus minimus) and half dozen other shrubs that only grow in these
ancient, sandy places. Down in central Florida, or in California for that
matter, there’d be some Scrub Jays living there.
We’d been there a week.
I said –this place must be a single watershed. Meta Creek Watershed. A
place all to itself.
–Does that make it a natural “system”– Bro asked? As if I knew an
answer.
–Well, it’s sure natural, I thought. Nothing hereabouts but the cabin and
the dirt lane coming in from the highway.
–If it’s a system, then we’ve got four sub-systems, maybe– I said.
–What about making it two sub-systems, one for the water and another
for the land?
–That might work, but where do you put the water table that’s under the
land, in the soil itself, and hasn’t gotten to the creek yet? Is it another
sub-system?
–And what about the moisture in the air while it’s raining? Is that
another subsystem?
So, maybe dividing things up can keep you from getting shot. That’s pretty
basic. Like collecting data. But it doesn’t help me grasp the whole thing
and understand it.
–Can you understand the whole thing?
–Maybe. Won’t know ‘less I try.
–What I do know is you divide it up wrong, you get the wrong data.
–Or, maybe, if you divide it up, you get the wrong data.
–What about that one? Because, there’s another way. Look for it.
=================================================
DISSECT REASON
To dissect Reason while it still lives? Cruel? Necessary? Impossible? Certainly tedious at best. Dissection is an evil; synthesis is a good.
The human condition is here for inspection, perhaps for dissection.
Instead of a microscope, let’s try a telescope; instead of a laboratory,
let’s take a universe. We may be able to do this in the systems language.
The idea is not complicated. A system is a bunch of things that have
some order to them. (I have a list of twenty-eight characteristics you
may see when you look at a system. That’s too many to list here.)
At first we don’t have to know everything about each bunch or
everything in them. We don’t have to know all the things that are not in
each bunch. We require only a rather general idea about them.
The human condition, obviously, includes several bunches of things.
For today, let’s say they are something like this:
Bunch 1: the neurons.
Bunch 2: the mentality-personality.
Bunch 3: the society.
Bunch 4: the physical-economic environment that we can recognize.
Whether you want to use this framework or another, we easily agree
it is too complicated to talk about or study when approached as a whole.
Of course, that is the purpose of this essay into rationality.
To talk about those four bunches, we have to simplify–to dissect,
and do so without damaging the subject. To do that, let us assume that
each of those four bunches is actually a system. That keeps it simple
enough to work with.
If each is a system, we have an avenue of approach. A system, they
say, exists because its parts have pattern. No pattern, no system.
With this four bunches–call them systems, now–their actual
patterns can wait. First, let’s test them with George Boole’s diagrams.
Four circles, each overlapping the other three, somewhat.
1: the neurons.
2: the mentality-personality.
3: the society.
4: the physical-economic environment.
Pattern is one of the characteristics of system. In fact, pattern and
system may actually by synonyms for the same phenomenon. Ergo, pattern
has system? And, system has pattern–? Maybe, perhaps.
Pattern is not there just for the fun of it. Pattern results from the
working relations of the parts, the components. Their relation to their
environment also helps shape the pattern.
Looking at the names of those four bunches [systems], we know they
are so complex we can’t even name all their parts. That’s Okay. We are
not trying to duplicate the theory of least particles– molecules, atoms,
energies and all that. Not like that. We do not have to go after the least
particle and the shortest wave length. Au contraire.
Those four bunches [systems] have been explored in religion,
philosophy, science and technology for generations. Their reports fill our
libraries. They are our data base.
For the sake of talking about it, let’s identify a major pattern that
may fall within more that one of the four circles of our Boolian diagram
(the overlaps). Be warned, now. Just because we can do this does not
mean we know how to do Boolian algebra with it.
Circle #1-Neurons.
Circle #2-Mentality-personality.
Circle #3-The society.
Circle #4-The Physical-economic environment.
Erik Erikson has given us a description of a pattern of human
components which show clearly an overlap of Boole circles two and
three.
Julian Jaynes has provided another that depends upon the overlap of
at least Boole circles one and two .
Maslow and Herskovitz, and many others, did things in the overlap of
circles three and four.
I have a list of thirty investigators now publishing new work that
deals with the overlap of one and two ; and the socio-biologists seem to
be describing the patterns in the circle one and circle four overlap–
adding a bit to the Darwin plan.
Is this significant? Yes. If one ignorant artist sees a happy pattern
in all this, others must see it too. Our perception of our world is still
changing–and rapidly.
Pertinent example: Have you noticed chaos recently? It used to be
made up of confusion and disorder. Not any more. Now chaos appears
infinitely reasonable, and ultimately has some characteristics of order.
How’s that for change? Want another example? The word “mind” used to be a verb. During the past hundred years we made it into a noun also.
Another? When Homer “wrote” the Iliad, our emotions were
characteristics of what we now know as the chest and the abdomen, not
the nervous system.
Those early Greeks, not to mention the early Egyptian, Sumerian and
Sinian groups, did not perceive the chest and abdomen–from shoulders to
pelvis– as articulated separately. They saw them like a tree trunk–
monolithic. They knew well what was inside that trunk. It was the
outside that was invisible. It was self-perception that had to change.
Modern translators of Homer sometimes ignore these differences.
That encourages us to be ignorant of the changes that are still underway
in us.
I suspect that is part of the pattern of change we all experience. Is that good? What a question. That’s life, pal, that’s life. What we ignore
is just as important as what we see. Maybe there’s a natural “law” about
changing the patterns.
Part of that, of course, is the inability of the fish to say much
about the character of the water–much less to know he is in it.
And there is another law that we may not break. No, not the speed
limit; but the character of the vehicle we drive.
It says that our personal resources are always scarce; the places to
spend them are virtually infinite. So, we just do not get around to them
all. That’s part of our pattern.
–10-19-99/ht
__________________________________________________
TWENTY IDEAS ABOUT ART
(an abstract expressing sermon)
May 7, 1995, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast)
I am telling you twenty things about how I
experience Western Art. I do this to you only because of who you
are. I would not do this to anyone else.
This is an abstract expressionist sermon. It is splotchy with colored
ideas, streaked with dark pieces of personal history, spattered with
bits of intimate, purple truth, and glossy with carefully scripted
presentation.
I ask you –do not believe a single bit of it. Not a single piece.
I do wish, however, that you will allow an overall sense of integrity
and purpose impress upon you that there is a message here.
At the end, I’ll tell you what it is. In the meantime, you can be guessing.
But, now to get started. I’m going to read you the
twenty ideas about western art. Here we go: –
Item Number One: I spent a year, once, studying the
influence of Buddhism on art in China, under Dr. Wu Chi Liu. That
was not enough for me to include it as part of my understanding
of art. I do believe that the art of Asia is very important in the
universe of human experience.
I also recommend the arts of tribal societies and
cultures, though I suspect we are not equipped to appreciate
them.
Item Number Two. Traditional ART insists upon visible
connections to a visible object. The art piece must capture,
suggest, or remind us of the essence or character of the visible
object which it is related to. That is enough to make it
traditional.
Number Three. Modern art insists upon its right, nay
its DUTY, to modify the visible object in a manner that has no
immediate, logical, rational connection to the visible object
itself.
It insists upon abstraction as the point of the thing. If you are
to find meaning you must search for it in the abstraction, not
in the object alone. (The truth is that you must search for
meaning within yourself, but TRUTH is another topic. This is
about art.)
Modern art became HISTORY ABOUT FIFTY YEARS AGO.
Lots off people today paint traditional art, and lots
of people paint modern art (even though they are both history).
Number Four. If Traditional and Modern art are
history, where is the avant garde?
THERE IS, probably, ALWAYS AN AVANT GARDE. IT IS OUT
THERE SOMEWHERE , PERHAPS IN THE FUTURE, PERHAPS HERE IN
RIVER CITY….
This is every critic’s PROBLEM; not ours.
Our problem is:
Question- How do we look for it?
The answer is, First We Have To Know Where We are.
Question - How do we know where we are?
Answer- First We Have To Know Where We Came From.
Question -Where Did We Come From?
Answer -That is what Art History is about.
Art historians and art critics are teachers and
writers who concentrate on art. They are very useful people in a
complex society.
Number five: I DONT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MUSIC, BUT I
KNOW WHAT I LIKE.
This is the biggest half truth (that’s polite
talk for LIE) that I ever tell myself.
The whole truth is that, when examined carefully, I
really do not know what I like, because I don’t know enough
about music to know what I am talking about–much less what I
am hearing.
Number six: The eye can see only what the mind has
already conceived.
The human person results from a bunch of inherited
characteristics which wrestle with the surrounding culture to
make us be. That struggle patterns our speech, our hearing, our
logic, perhaps some aspects of our metabolism, and certainly our
seeing. It is not the culture that patterns us, it is our struggle
with the culture that does it.
Number Seven. In any art medium (music, poetry,
sculpture, painting, cinema, short story, novel), the critics and
teachers are happy to explain that the piece of work, in order to
be art, must combine in an inseparable soup three attributes.
a. First, there must be at least a flavor of real newness to it
b. Second, it must have significance.
c. And third, it must have felicity among all its parts and aspects; they must be apt.
These three attributes must be inextricably intertwined.
Number eight. The artist does not lead a culture.
I include the avant garde, wherever they may be. They lead art,
but they are a synthesis from the culture. ART is a synthesis
from the culture.
Number Nine. The fine arts enable us to understand who
we are, how we are, and where we are. They do not show us
where to go. That is still up to us as a society and a culture.
Number ten. (we are half way through). Remember that
Mr. Dalton wrote about atomic theory in the year 1803.
Remember that molecular rearrangement (what you and I woul
call chemistry) was demonstrated in 1828 . Thinking about the
universe had finally escaped the monastery and church. People
everywhere were remaking the universe according to their own
personal logic.
I count Cezanne and Picasso as the beginning and end of Modern
Art.
I am sure Picasso understood that, too.
Number eleven. Remember that around 1906 we proved,
scientifically, that the process of making a judgement is
inaccessibly within the unconscious part of us. Research also
showed that I do my thinking BEFORE I know what it is I am to
think about.
Stay with me, now. This is all connected.
Remember, that in 1945 we destroyed two cities with the
molecules and atoms in two bombs.
The principle of uncertainty, and its potential for
political significance, gave artists a new perspective, with
lines that extend in parallel all the way to infinity — and,
randomness in the death of tens of millions of people, in a
shockingly short space of time, brought new meaning to chance
and probability.
Jackson Pollock and an entire generation of well established
and often already famous and thriving American artists became
an avant garde for a short time. They invented Abstract
Expressionism, and it changed the way the world sees western
art.
The drama, of the culture giving birth to the art, is seldom
more dramatically seen.
Number twelve. So, by the time affluent sub-urban
Americans had stopped building bomb shelters in their
backyards, our artists had three remarkable and different
models to think about in making pictures:
Traditional, Modern, and Abstract Expressionist.
So again, we have to ask,
WHO, WHERE, WHAT IS THE AVANT GARDE OF ART? WHAT
IS NEWNESS ? in the world of these three models. What is
significant? What is next?
Number thirteen. Fortunately, people who paint
pictures do not have to answer those questions. It is fun to ask
them, but we painters, when sober, do not have to verbalize an
answer. Our job is to paint.
One of the important things about painting is that it
is not done in English. I mean, the thinking is not done in the
word-language. It is done in some other system that often
(most of the time, I believe) does not use words.
The Poet and the other Art-writers suffer most from
language. You see, they have to deal with at least three separate
functions of language simultaneously:
First, language is our internal sense organ. We use it
to tell ourselves what is going on inside:physically, emotionally
and intellectually (that is, logically).
Second, we use it to keep track of the story of our
lives: where we have been, where we are, and where/what
we are to do next.
And Third, the writer-artist must use it to construct
metaphorical materials in a medium of syntactical rigor and
invention that permits a careful reader to find in what he is
reading or hearing something of Newness, something that is
Significant, and altogether something that is Apt and
Felicitous.
I think that is an awfully big job, and writers have my
sympathy.
Number fourteen. When I am at my easel, making a
picture, and I turn to pick up a brush (one brush out of a hundred
at hand), and then I pick up a pot, or a tube, of paint out
of dozens at hand, it is not words that guide me. And when I
change my mind about which of these half-dozen basic reds I
pick up to mix with a little white, it is not an argument in
words that leads me to know what to do. Brushes and paints are
a non-verbal language.
When I am painting, if you walk up and ask me what I am
doing, I honestly cannot tell you (not honestly) in words. In
words, I do not know. In paint, I do know.
Number fifteen. For a moment, right now, think about a
large, red beach ball, big enough to be an arm-full. Put it down
on the white, white sand of an Okaloosa county beach.
Step back from it and sit down on the warm sand, look at the
big red ball. Notice how the emerald green water and the
cobalt-cerulean sky make the background.
What a simple picture: white foreground, red circle, green and
blue background.
The wonderful thing is that there are tens of thousands of
different ways to make that picture, in those colors.
How many of those paintings would fall into the
category called Fine Art?
There’s only one way to find out. Paint them. These
pictures are just waiting for someone to come along and paint
them.
Number Sixteen. While preparing this talk, I was
tempted to write a ritual Responsive Reading. You know, I read
the capitalized parts and you respond reading the lower case
paragraph.
It would go something like this:
I read:
THOUSANDS OF NOVELS ARE PUBLISHED EACH YEAR.
You reply:
Most of them are not worth reading.
I read:
TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PAINTINGS ARE PAINTED EACH YEAR.
You reply:
Most are not worth looking at.
I read:
MILLIONS OF VERSES ARE WRITTEN EACH YEAR.
You reply:
Few are worth listening to.
And so on, through the arts, one after another. And
this is generally true.
The significance, however, is important. To appreciate
an individual poet, you must read not just one verse.
You must read several of his poems, many, in fact.
And, then read them again, several times, so that you know them.
Then you will be able to say Yes or No to his work.
If you want to know the best in music, you have to
listen to a lot of it. Then you will know.
The same is true for every art form.
If you do not have the wherewithal to indulge yourself
in the arts, then I would say, don’t worry about it. Take what
you can enjoy and don’t fret about it.
Number Seventeen. I had a friend in Miami, the wife of
an affluent dentist; her three kids were all in school, the
servants took care of the house, and she was too bright.
She went back to college. First she earned a bachelors degree in
English, then she took one in Music, then another BA in a couple
romance languages, then in art, then history and religion, and
finally another BA in philosophy.
In the process, she discovered that people have some
very important things to say to each other and that the arts are
one of the effective ways that we do this.
She developed a confrontational method of safely
communicating with other human beings. She designed a course
of study, a classroom experience, to teach therapists how to
interact with patients. It was very successful.
It came out of an understanding of the function of the arts,
which is, of course, to enable us to become more whole. I believe
she is now a fully equipped Gestalt Therapist.
Number eighteen. The so-called Cave People, twenty
thousand years ago, made wonderful drawings and paintings and
carvings. Ten thousand years later, or more, people in the
Tigris and Euphrates valley, and in the Nile valley, were making
fine art.
Later in Greece and in India traditions of high art came into
flower–more or less separately. Then the Romans
institutionalized Greek art. (Parenthetically I should add that
there is no record of Rome producing more than a small handful
of either scientific or artistic genius. It was a very model
authoritarian state).
Almost none of these traditions of thousands of years
of high art was known to the great Master Painters of the Middle
Ages of Europe. They had to invent painting and building design
all over again (there was some sculpting they could look at). We
call it the Rennaissance –the rebirth. It was a new birth, not a
re birth. That New Birth is representative of the vigor of
western culture. We are still proud of it.
The art critics and art historians today are looking
for another re-birth, another new-birth, of western culture, or
perhaps of a new world culture. The writer or teacher who finds
it, and names it, becomes famous forever. That should be
incentive enough.
Now let us go back for a moment (we are getting on
toward the end of our sermon) so I can summarize something:
Painters are doing Traditional Art
(that is, it is importantly representational), and they are doing
Modern Art (that is, it most importantly deals with the artist?s
abstractions from the represented things, and they are doing
Abstract Expressionist Art (that is, it deals with the insides of
the artist, put out there on the canvas in glorious color for all
to see).
Notice the direction of the changes, from the outside, objective
vision toward the inside, secret, unknowable of the individual.
So, what’s next? I suspect it comes out to be painting
god. Painting the great steering committee of the universe, and
how it goes. Painting the operating principles of eternity, and
how they are. Painting the very nature of nature. Painting the
very essence of the most and of the least and of the relation
between them.
This story that I have been telling you has two endings. That
last paragraph was one ending. There I told you what
the avant garde is doing.
But here is another ending:–
Number Nineteen. When we allow our minds to wander,
unfettered by goal or purpose or attitude, unusual thoughts can
come to mind.
When we sleep, to dream unthinkable fantasy, we find
it quite usual to associate unlikely events, we find it not
surprising that we see ourselves amidst the most surprising
circumstances, in our mind’s dream.
In our dream, unrelated object or incompatible creatures or
disparate environments or widely separate natural forces are
magically melded into impressive, even memorable, adventure.
The human mind has the power to conciliate extreme
differences. This process of untrammeled memory combined by
conciliation, resembles the process we call creativity as it has
been told by musicians, poets, painters and sculptors.
And, much to my dismay, when I look carefully at the
real world around me, nothing I can dream, nothing I can create,
can rival either the beauty or the cruelty of the real world–
our reality. No paint can do it. I cannot paint it that beautiful;
I will not paint it that cruel.
Number Twenty. For five years I “studied,” practised,
a discipline called Expressive Movement. It is sort of a cross
between mime and dance. The idea is that each person moves
uniquely, and also according to how he or she actually lives each
moment.
As you practice and practice, you gain confidence.
Movement changes with practice, but it remains uniquely yours.
Each of us has our own. Each person has his own way of moving
that expresses him. This becomes a piece of truth, a truth that
is part of each person.
I learned that each truth also has a unique beauty. And,
I learned that each person has his share of that beauty.
This taught me about beauty and about art.
However clumsy your performance, you must patiently do it
again and again and gradually integrity comes through, truth
comes out in the open and you see some beauty that anyone
can see.
4-26-95
————————————————————————–
THE ART CLASS
SUPPLIES FOR EACH PERSON
1. A couple soft lead pencils, black.
2. A cheap paint brush from one quarter to one half inch wide (if
non-bristle plastic, up to one inch wide will be okay), you choose.
3. Seven large sheets of paper, with maybe a couple more for back up.
Paper can be old blue prints, white butcher paper, anything
reasonably tough and not too colorful. Size should be at least 16 x
20.
4. Set of poster paints. Hopefully red, orange, yellow, green,
blue, purple, white. DO NOT WANT ANY BLACK. IT DOES NOT HELP.
5. One cheap, plastic water bucket, maybe like kids take to the beach.
6. Water in the bucket.
7. Something else I forgot.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A–NEXT A FEW WORDS ABOUT EACH OF THE FIVE PROJECTS WE ARE
LOOKING AT
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
TASK ZERO.
Take one sheet of paper and use it to get familiar with the brush and
some of the color and how to get most of the paint out of the brush
in preparation for the next stroke of the brush. Put this paper aside
for use while doing the others. And remember, there is no correct
way to make these paint things, there is only your way.
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B– A LIST OF FIVE PAINTING PROJECTS TO BE DONE IN THIS SEQUENCE.
do each one and save it till the end. You use it in the last act:
1. Time, 10 minutes. Draw the disappearing magician on stage in mid
performance, with your eyes shut, and without taking the pencil up
from the paper.
2. Time, up to 15 minutes. What your eye knows. Using brush and
paints, make all the straight lines suggested by the paper rectangle.
3. Time, up to 20 minutes. With brush and paints, make all of the
single strokes/marks that the paper needs in order for you to subdue
it rather completely.
4. Time, up to 20 minutes. Make the eye follow your marks around the
page.
5. Time, up to 20 minutes. What you do not like, FIX, in each of the
above.
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C– PROJECT ONE.
ESTIMATED Time 10 minutes. Draw the disappearing magician on stage in
mid performance, with your eyes shut, and without taking the pencil
up from the paper.
First, with eyes open. The paper is in front of you. Reach out and
touch all four edges so that later when your eyes are closed, your
brain knows where they are. Put the pencil point to the paper.
Close your eyes and, without taking the pencil up off the paper, draw
the picture of a magician on stage making him/herself invisible for
an audience.
When you get to the end of the act of drawing, do not lift your
pencil. Instead count to sixty-five and then ask yourself if you
want to add anything to the picture. If so, do so.
Then stop. Open your eyes and lay the drawing aside and think about
the next one.
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D– PROJECT TWO.
Estimated Ti