Essay: When does the painter become the audience.
This is a question I have only recently stumbled upon, and is mainly inspired by my moments in the studio versus what I am witnessing amongst my fellow artists - some of whom have gone on to become successes in the naturalistic sense and others (myself included); learning, changing, mixing and crossing fingers.
Leonardo Da vinci. Saint John the Baptist, 1513 & 1516
It occurred to me that understanding the ways of the two, painter and audience, would be a natural place to go from. Now I exist in both worlds, as a painter and designer (namely graphic, for the time being) and the answer to the design work I find are often easier to get to: there are all sorts of studies, surveys and templates that are known and proven to have work, you can google just about any sort of design and you’ll land at a starting point guaranteeing success. Sure, you will change a colour here, the font size there, even remain in the popular style of the time and you’ll be guaranteed success without any measure as to your worth. Not to say there aren’t moments of phenomenal work, there can be. As for the painter, oh I don’t possess the eloquent language of the brilliant minds, vividly describing to you the flow moments in the studio when the material becomes alchemic as James Elkins speaks of in his book ‘What painting is’ or Mary Oliver writing of the ordinary mind in one of her essays titled ‘Of power and time’ in her book ‘Upstream”. But as the painter, I have been searching for the necessary moment in which it is okay to become the ‘audience;’ “what makes the smile mysterious,” “that’s just a blob of white paint” or “I could do that.” I do however believe there is a danger in the idea itself, especially when the questions are at a surface level, only concerned with the market or trends, not a great place to be working from when seeking ‘greatness.’
Claude Monet. Water Lilies, 1897–99
Francisco Goya. They Do Not Know The Way, c.1810-1814
I’ll tell you; the exercise of paint is a very conscious one, an active engagement and you start to realise why on some days Leonardo would sometimes make his way to the church and not pick up the paint brush for his fresco. You see, I believe it is the material that offers the experience; the effects of the experience do consider the drive or walk to the work, the conversations had, a life lived a certain way, sure, but the fundamentality of the work itself lies in it’s moments had with the painter. What are such moments of brilliancy you wonder; it is Goya laboring on his ‘Disasters of war’ etchings, Monet miraculously capturing light in his ‘Water Lilies,’ having suffered significant loss of vision from cataracts and Leonardo creating atmosphere with the same will (you imagine) as God had with the words “Let there be light.” It is this dance that I believe leads to great works, and the lack of resulting in an artist who is strictly working in the way of a design product creative, with the likes of Damien Hirst leading the way.
Damien Hirst. For the Love of God, 2007
I am too currently engaged in this dance and I’ve decided my audience will be that of other greats, similar to how I know some of the greatest musicians, the likes of Kanye West, to be driven to make music (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy) better than their favourite artists.
I believe all the artist does is present the world as they see and have experienced it...at least that’s what I think the best art does, none of that conceptual stuff only open to a niche group (you know that group) whose dance is strictly one of a social experiment to see how far they can take the market before they realise it’s all phantasmagoric.
Kanye West. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, 2010
