I open my eyes and the world comes into focus, reliably. Seems like a miracle when you consider how this happens in the interplay of biology and the world. It appears to be necessary to my survival (or at least my genes) for the world to be intelligible. I look at noise and find patterns, stories and intelligence.
Drawings and paintings are able to move over and between the divide between abstraction and recognizable things. I like the ambiguity of this process. I become curious when I realize that I've been looking directly at a thing, like a heron in the river or my glasses and not actually "seen" it.
Perhaps, noise is what we see …before we see.
There's a book I read back in the 1980s titled "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin" by Lawrence Weschler. Recommended.
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| starlings feeding on elderberries ink 09-09-17 |
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| mallards & reflections ink, charcoal 09-13-17 |
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| Mallards and reflections charcoal, ink 09-22-17 |
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| Mallard on top of the dam ink, charcoal 09-25-17 |
I have written an article for a trade journal and have researched how museum visitors are looking at the pictures in the museum. How long? Average 20 seconds. 10 seconds for the picture and then 10 seconds for the caption: title of the picture and name of the artist. I mean it has something to do with what you write about. What is that, seeing. “Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.” What a sentence! I can not find a German translation for the book, maybe the library can get me the book, but I fear my English is not enough to really understand the book, more precisely: to see the book. "Starlings feeding on elderberries", great!
ReplyDeletesomething else: the german writer Michael Ende (The never ending story) once said, he was in a van Gogh exebition and when he left, the world, the so called real world, looks like painted by van Gogh. All that is a wonderful amazing, question a great mysterie and as long as we lucky ones didnt know the exact answer we can keep on drawing and painting, making music, and dance in the dark, and writing poems. Bon Voyage, dear Rob, thank you, you kept me thinking aujourd hui.
ReplyDeleteThank you Klaus. The book: the title is the most memorable thing about it. Although, you would appreciate the sculpture of Robert Irwin. Very Zen. It's about perception and transformation and presence. James Turrell is similar.
ReplyDeleteMichael Ende: my favorite book is Momo. Have you read Momo?
My daughter Pauline read the book and she told me so much what happend in the story, so I could not read it any more. Maybe I get the Robert Irwin book via the local librarie, lets see, this days I am working on 4 canvases, painting, it is wonderful, a great time, but it takes a long time, every day I get just 2-3 steps further, that is the drawing advantage, I only need a pencil and some paper and the drawing appears much faster.
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