Bright Yellows, Soft Oranges And Reds (dig up the carrots and plant flowers instead)
I am enjoying two books which seek to extol the power of art. The first is Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson. In it she tells us how she moved from being totally disinterested in the visual arts to becoming an ardent lover. For the artist, it is chock full of sentence after quotable sentence, which shocks in recognition. She talks about true artists, in preference to great artists. The difference being in the act of connection.
“We have to recognise that the language of art, is not our mother-tongue.” A useful analogy which sees art as a conversation between the artist and the active partaker, between the art object and the surroundings, between the participant observer and their own self. Once the novice stage has been passed in the learning of the language there is, with sufficient time, insight, rapture, transformation and joy.
The second book Seeing Slowly: Looking at Modern Art by Michael Findlay also foregrounds connection as the way into art. Here we are guided into noticing how a work of art makes us feel, what it makes us think. It is so refreshing to move on from the “But is it art” debate and instead turn the question onto the person encountering the art object. I love the suggestion to imagine that this work has been made for you. Art, of course, is only a key – the real gateway is attention.
”Why is it art?”Gerald asked, shocked, resentful. “It conveys a complete truth,” said Birkin. “It contains the whole truth of that state, whatever you feel about it.”
DH Lawrence, Women in Love
And I am returned for a moment to my seventeen year old self, who knew about the potential of art, but did not yet know how to keep that potential alive.
JudithAnnBrown 