Is the job of artists to reflect the times we live in so as to make our fellow citizens aware of the historical mistakes we as a society may be repeating? Should artists be confronting us with our greed, stupidity, and all the other deadlies we constantly commit? Or should we be celebrating the slow progress of conscious human awareness? How can an artist distinguish between their own perception of reality and what is actually going on out there? How do we know if our sins are more numerous and deterministic than our saving graces?

The post-moderns, post-post moderns and other recent schools answer these questions by assuming that we can’t perceive what is real because reality is made up of momentary impressions that we superimpose on the world around us. Some might even suggest that there is no independent reality, there are only disparate individual perceptions created by cultural norms, personal histories, situations and emotions. By this logic, artists cannot depict reality as it is an illusion and they must avoid attempting to impose their personal understanding on their audience as this is dishonest and even unfair.

This leads us to the second part of the question posed by Barnes: is art a concentration of reality? If one accepts the logic outlined above, then reality cannot be depicted, let alone concentrated. But perhaps artists, through their craft, discipline and experience, are able to distill experience into a hyper-real depiction of the world around them. This is the case in many non-Western cultures and was the case in earlier European cultures before the pursuit of realism became the measure of excellence. In First Nations cultures on the west coast of British Columbia, artists capture the history, stories and spirit of their culture rather than individual emotional states or experiences.

The power of a work such as this can’t be denied and its concentrated energy negates the idea that art can’t depict reality. But this is a reality on a different scale that the one debated by the post-moderns. This is the type of reality that Westerners lost sight of as scientific reductionism took all our attention.

Early Europeans also used powerful images to concentrate and communicate the essence of their culture, and this has been explored in an earlier blog . One such powerful image is the sculpture below:

These works provided a schematized, abstract rendition of human traits, in this case, fertility (mother-goddess). They were depicted in stages of pregnancy, giving birth or showing maternal affection, parts of life independent of individual artistic bias.

Is art a superior substitute for reality?   Can we attain the same level of understanding from an excellent novel by Julian Barnes as we can by exposing ourselves to life in all its variation, wonder & squalor? Does a well-written novel, riveting play or mind-altering painting represent a more refined and accurate conception of reality than the lived experience of a non-artist?

This topic can be diverted by the issue of digital vs. non-digital reality and the current worry that for many, if not most of us, “real” reality has become a dull reflection of what we can find in our devices. Is a well-written novel, riveting play or mind-altering painting intrinsically more valuable than an hour or two on Facebook, Snapchat or TikTok? If we accept that there is no “real” reality anyway, it’s quality doesn’t make any difference.  But if we don’t accept this, we might suggest that an undifferentiated virtual world with no limitations or standards is a formless, dumbed-down alternative to a well-written novel, riveting play or mind-altering painting. These collate societal  experiences into artworks that don’t substitute for reality but distill it into something greater than all of our busy minds. So in that way, yes, good art is a superior substitute for mindlessly getting through the day.

But the last part of Barnes’ question is the big one: is art just a beguiling irrelevance? Is it defensible to be working diligently to create artworks in the context of world hunger, war, climate change, mass migrations, mass species extinction etc.?

Shouldn’t we all down pens, paintbrushes, ballet shoes and violins to distribute needed supplies to exhausted refugees? Remove invasive species from nearby wildlife habitat? Sit in front of our legislature with a placard demanding a sustainable future?

We artists defend our practices by arguing that in a world of greed & violence, the arts preserve the best part of humanity and provide an alternative paradigm to getting & spending. This doesn’t really answer the big question, but it will have to do for now.

The post A Superior Substitute for Life first appeared on Marion-Lea Jamieson, Artist.

Despite defaulting to the usual formula of a highly successful artist protagonist, Roxanna Robinson has managed to express how it is to make paintings and present them to the wider world, and the inner doubts and fears that arise. In her book Cost she describes the moment when the protagonist has just entered the gallery where her latest work is being shown.

This rather long but brilliant excerpt effectively captures the experience of an artist, especially a female artist, on showing her work.

“…her next thought was fear that she was not good enough for the gallery. The work was not what she had hoped. It was never what she hoped. She could see she hadn’t done what she intended. Nor was she breaking new ground: she wasn’t combining video with cake or making sculpture out of garbage or using pigment made from Moose urine. She was only trying to work deeper into the presence of landscape, to find something interior that had not been revealed before. She was trying to create a certain set of relationships. She was trying to create a glowing mystical terrain. Why shouldn’t you work deeper into a tradition instead of breaking out of it? Everyone worked within some  tradition even if it was the tradition of subversion, rebellion. What she wanted was her paintings to mean something, to have their own speaking presence. It was feeling, it was passion. Passion was what she wanted. Giotto’s tiny angels weeping and ringing their hands, quivering with grief like anguished hummingbirds.

Julia had no interest in art that jeered at passion. Irony was the suicide mode of art, parasitically dependent on the culture around it, so instantly obsolete as the culture evolved. Who cared about those ancient needle sharp skewers, so exquisite, so excruciating, so on the mark, so of the moment, so hopelessly outdated? Passion would still drive the universe.

The paintings stood their ground, made their claims, said their pieces. What was it she had meant to do? Was this it? This role of coloured panels; these flat bright things hanging against the plaster walls? Now looked at from a distance, it might be failure again. There had been something else, something quick and liquid, something deeper. That was what she had been trying for, she’d wanted to make a large bright place, larger, more radiant more frightening than here, but like it. These were only awkward, shorthand comments, incomplete versions of the larger thing. She had failed, as always; she’d comes nowhere near the mark. She would have to stand here and listen people offer kind words about work, a low drone of pity thudding through the false congratulations.

She could not change things. The pictures were done, they were up on the walls, they were presenting themselves to the world. She had failed maybe, but maybe not. Maybe what she was trying for could not be achieved. She had come as close, perhaps, as she could, as anyone could, given the limits, right now, of herself. All she could do was make things come close, as close as she could get them, to the real thing.

Actually, they were close to what she had wanted to say. There was the work to be judged, and there she was, accepting authourship. What she hoped was that people would see her intentions, that she was striving for that bright, liquid, melting thing. Now she felt full of alarmed anticipation. And also full of pleasure: it was an honour to be a part of this dialogue about art & beauty & value. Everything was near-misses wasn’t it? Fail. Fail again. Fail better. Suddenly she felt deliriously happy, inflated & buoyant with pleasure, simply to have the opportunity to participate in the great discourse.

There was nothing you could believe about your work from other people, nothing. Praise sounded false; criticism, mean. Everything was biased, of course, there was nothing objective about responses to art. There were a few friends you could trust to tell you the truth, but it was only their truths. Nothing to make  certain your place in the world of art. You had to find it yourself and then make it your home. You had to create your own balance your own certainty. No one else knew what you were trying to do. You had to find your own faith. You have to stand up for it against the assaults of logic and fear and the articulations of the whole critical world. You had to close your eyes to everything else, repeating your personal creed, reminding your self of what you were doing, why you were doing it.”

Beautifully said and relevant to any artistic discipline, the need to fail, fail again and then fail better in order to participate in the great discourse.

The post Fail, Fail again and then Fail Better first appeared on Marion-Lea Jamieson, Artist.