ART: WHERE WE SPEAK OF HOLY THINGS

Dish of Apples (ca. 1875-77)
 Paul Cezanne

Frederick Buechner is a novelist, spiritual writer, and former minister who has wonderful gifts of insight into life, art, and other matters of ultimate importance. While perusing a collection of Buechner's writings last night, I came across a discussion of the role that art plays in our lives.  I share it with you today because I believe it will resonate with those who read this blog on a fairly regular basis.  As you read this excerpt, you will discover the relevance of the paintings I have chosen to accompany this post.  Enjoy.

Portrait of the Artist's Mother (ca. 1629)
Rembrandt

Excerpt from Meditation for February 20

 Listening to Your Life, by Frederick Buechner

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention.  Pay attention to the frog.  Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

The painter does the same thing, of course.  Rembrandt puts a frame around and old woman's face.  It is seamed with wrinkles.  The upper lip is sunken in, the skin waxy and pale.  It is not a remarkable face.  You would not look twice at the old woman if you found her sitting across the aisle from you on a bus.  But it is a face so remarkably seen that it forces you to see it remarkably just as Cezanne makes you see a bowl of apples or Andrew Wyeth a muslin curtain blowing in at an open window.  It is a face unlike any other face in all the world.  All the faces in the world are in this one old face.

Unlike painters, who work with space, musicians work with time, with note following note as second follows second.  Listen!  says Vivaldi, Brahms, Stravinsky.  Listen to this time that I have framed between the first note and the last and to these sounds in time.  Listen to the way the silence is broken into uneven lengths between the sounds and the silences themselves.  Listen to the scrape of the bow against the gut, the rap of stick against the drumhead, the rush of breath through reed and wood. The sounds of the earth are like music, the old song goes, and the sounds of the music are also the sounds of the earth, which of course is where the music comes from.  Listen to the voices outside the window, the rumble of the furnace, the creak of your chair, the water running in the kitchen sink.  Learn to listen to the music of your own lengths of time, your own silences.

Literature, painting, music — the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, and listen to life on this planet, including our own lives, as a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect as we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot.  In a world that for the most part steers clear of the whole idea of holiness, art is one of the few places left where we can speak to each other of holy things.

Wind from the Sea (1948)
Andrew Wyeth

ON BEGINNING A PAINTING — OR THE NEXT PHASE OF ONE'S LIFE

Richard Diebenkorn
Berkeley #19, 1954
The University of Arizona Museum of Art

Before embarking upon what I believe was the most productive and fascinating period of his work, the American painter, Richard Diebenkorn, made a list of ten "guidelines," for lack of a better word, that he believed should drive the creative process.  If you are a painter or some other type of artist, you will probably find, as I have, great comfort and wisdom in Diebenkorn's approach.  One need not be an artist, however, to find wisdom in these words. Through the years, I have come to believe that Diebenkorn's advice is as relevant to the creation of a good life as it is to the creation of good art.  See what you think as you read the document that Diebenkorn simply titled, "Notes to myself on beginning a painting."

1.  Attempt what is not certain.  Certainty may or may not come later.  It may then be a valuable delusion.

2.  The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued — except as a stimulus for further moves.

3.  Do search.  But in order to find other than what is searched for.

4.  Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

5.  Don't "discover" a subject — of any kind.

6.  Somehow don't be bored — but if you must, use it in action.  Use its destructive potential.

7.  Mistakes can't be erased but they move you from your present position.

8.  Keep thinking about Polyanna.

9.  Tolerate chaos.

10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

Diebenkorn's advice resonates deeply with me at both an artistic level and a personal level, and my favorite points are the sixth, ninth, and tenth:  the need to use the "destructive potential" of boredom; the need to tolerate chaos; and the need to be careful only in a perverse way.  What about you?  Do find anything in Diebenkorn's list that resonates with your personal or artistic life?