By Jane Bauer—
“Great art picks up where nature ends.” ~Marc Chagall
I get very excited when I see a piece of art that resonates with me. And when I can afford to acquire it, I am besotted. Art that I love doesn’t just sit on the wall. I will sit and stare at it the way one watches the sky for birds.
I have no idea why some pieces affect me so profoundly, but I suspect it has something to do with the creative impulse we all begin life with. As children, our creativity was encouraged; to play an instrument, to paint, to draw, to write poems and stories, to nurture this creative force each of us has within. Up to a point. As we get older these pursuits are treated as childish rather than essential to life. Art has always presented itself as a contradiction.
What is it that causes us to make art? Dogs don’t appear to do it and they seem perfectly content. Birds may indeed consider their nests art; a collage of sticks and objets trouvés.
In the ocean, off of Seattle, in a patch of garbage it has been discovered that Giant Pacific octopuses are flourishing. These are not the small octopus we eat grilled for lunch, these are huge badass octopi whose arms can span 20 feet. They are creating all sorts of stuff with the things they find. One was found to have made a sort of apartment out of an old fridge and another had collected hundreds of golf balls and arranged them into interesting designs.
Some orb-weaving spiders add zigzags, crosses and other decorative silk patterns to their webs. Scientists still debate their precise functions, which may include attracting prey or warning larger animals away. Whatever the purpose, they produce something that looks remarkably like deliberate design. Maybe we aren’t the only species trying to find some order in this world.
Art is rarely a waste of time, even if it isn’t good art. Artistic expression is the moment when we sit with ourselves. It is not about finding perfection in a reproduction of what we see before us; it is about conveying some truth that lives within our soul.
Conveying is communication, and maybe that is all decent art is: something that transmits to the viewer an aspect of our collective experience. A painting might capture the light in a certain way or combine colors that remind us of a moment of loss. Someone else might see the same painting and remember something entirely different. That is the magic of art.
While art can be about beauty, I think good art is most often about truth.
See you next month,
Jane
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