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edenfallingWhat you have to remember when looking at a painting is this: nothing is accidental. Maybe that seems obvious, and maybe it seems trivial, but it isn't either one. If something is emphasized, the artist wanted it emphasized. If something is downplayed, the artist wanted it played down. Even more, if there is a wisp of a bird off in one corner of the landscape, that bird is there for a reason....
It takes an effort, an act of will, and physical movement of a physical brush with paint on it, to put in that bird, whether you're James Whistler and you spend six years on a wing, or you're Van Gogh and suggest "bird" with one plunge of brush to canvas. It's there because the artist wanted it.
I don't always know exactly why I want something to be in the painting, or why I want it a certain way. Sometimes I do, but sometimes it just feels right. Then I have the pleasure of figuring out why just as you do, after it's done.
---Greg Kovacs, from The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, by Steven Brust
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As you can tell, I just finished reading The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars last night. It's an interesting book. Like a lot of Brust's stuff, it has a rather intricate structure that was probably half improvisation and half planning... very like the structure of the Hungarian folk tales he uses as a thematic inspiration.
The particular folk tale included in the book -- how the Gypsy boy Csucskári finds the sun, the moon, and the stars and puts them into the sky -- does not, at first, seem to tie into the rest of the story, but if you stop trying to find a direct relationship you can sort of 'feel' how all the pieces play against each other and find the resonance.
This is a book about creation -- painting in particular, but art and creation in general -- and Brust tosses a number of theories up into the air without ever quite committing to any single one. Even Greg Kovacs, the narrator, changes his mind and contradicts himself during the story. I like that. I like the uncertainty that produces, and the way it allows the book to speak with many voices instead of declaring, flat out, "This is the Truth."
The quote above rings pretty close to truth for me, though I would say that there are such things as accidents. However, if an accident is then left in a work of art, it is left in for a reason, so we go around again and come back to where we started. :-)
I dunno. Thoughts?
It takes an effort, an act of will, and physical movement of a physical brush with paint on it, to put in that bird, whether you're James Whistler and you spend six years on a wing, or you're Van Gogh and suggest "bird" with one plunge of brush to canvas. It's there because the artist wanted it.
I don't always know exactly why I want something to be in the painting, or why I want it a certain way. Sometimes I do, but sometimes it just feels right. Then I have the pleasure of figuring out why just as you do, after it's done.
---Greg Kovacs, from The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, by Steven Brust
---------------------------------------------
As you can tell, I just finished reading The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars last night. It's an interesting book. Like a lot of Brust's stuff, it has a rather intricate structure that was probably half improvisation and half planning... very like the structure of the Hungarian folk tales he uses as a thematic inspiration.
The particular folk tale included in the book -- how the Gypsy boy Csucskári finds the sun, the moon, and the stars and puts them into the sky -- does not, at first, seem to tie into the rest of the story, but if you stop trying to find a direct relationship you can sort of 'feel' how all the pieces play against each other and find the resonance.
This is a book about creation -- painting in particular, but art and creation in general -- and Brust tosses a number of theories up into the air without ever quite committing to any single one. Even Greg Kovacs, the narrator, changes his mind and contradicts himself during the story. I like that. I like the uncertainty that produces, and the way it allows the book to speak with many voices instead of declaring, flat out, "This is the Truth."
The quote above rings pretty close to truth for me, though I would say that there are such things as accidents. However, if an accident is then left in a work of art, it is left in for a reason, so we go around again and come back to where we started. :-)
I dunno. Thoughts?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-29 12:39 am (UTC)And--because I can't resist--POETS ARE PEOPLE TOO, iponly! ;o)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-29 08:31 pm (UTC)