Immediacy

As I work through some of the challenges with a new piece that will be mutable and interactive (for the audience- see below this blog) I’ve been thinking a good bit about Walter Pater’s famous observation that “all Art aspires to a state like music.” Yes, part of the reason is also music, having recently been to several shows by groups whose performance incorporates real-time, sometimes broad re-interpretations of compositions, resulting in art works that will never again be repeated exactly as I experienced them.

As this article observes, one interpretation of Pater’s observation “is that music is the only art whose form and content are not just inseparable, but the same. … Pater was writing at the dawn of the modern art revolution when literal representation was being purged from art and literature like pests from an old, dirty house.” I’m not going to waste a contemporary reader’s time with unpacking all the usual topics or point at what is wrong-headed about this time period in Art’s development. I hope with these words to point at the experience of live music and the quality of immediacy- of “bringing one into direct and instant involvement with something, giving rise to a sense of urgency or excitement.” Granted, as I’ve written, urgency and excitement don’t have to be the only sensations or emotions we experience through Art- awe is an option; and I’m just not convinced this moment in history is the time to narrow our aperture regarding what is or isn’t Art anyway.

Featuring prominently in my mind these last couple of weeks has been the recent passing of Robert Irwin. There is. No. Artist that has had more influence on me than Robert. I am so privileged to have seen so much of his work, including his installation at the former DIA Beacon, the gardens at the Ghetty, his retrospective at the Hirshhorn, and the work that was included in the recent Light and Space retrospective at LACMA

“To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perceptions.”

Robert Irwin

tldr #1; I am painting after art is dead (long live art).

tldr #2; despite having to use words to point at it (because thoughts don’t exist without language) I’m convinced that there is an experience to be had through Art that is unique to the same and exists- with immediacy- prior to our ability to describe it using language.