Douglas Witmer
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Tuesday, January 04, 2005
I want to believe (part 2)
(Part one of this line of thinking was just going to be an introductory paragraph, but it got kinda out of hand.) (This post is gonna go this way and that...)I've been an agnostic to my core about almost everything (save, perhaps my love of baseball and The Smiths...and I'm becoming more agnostic about The Smiths). Get too serious about that and see if you have a crippled feeling.
With my art, the thing is, I don't want to take anything for granted, so separating and isolating the components of issues takes a long time. There is no such thing as a happy accident.
Lately I'm feeling more and more like I _am_ here for a purpose. And I want to feel an assurance that what I put into the aesthetic realm also serves a purpose. The question for me is defining what I want my work to do. What are the possibilities for the forms of reductive geometric abstraction that I practice? What implications does identifying my desired "uses" have for the form my practices take?
Back to the idea of those life-changing art moments. They still happen, for sure, but they're not the "zing"-ers I remembered from before. My latest one happened just before the holidays, seeing the exhibition Field of Color--Tantra Drawings from India at the Drawing Center in New York.
Here is an example of a practice of image making that has a very express purpose and use. Not to mention its very spare visual means. I've been focusing my attention on drawing lately, and the found a lot of resonance between these images and my own. I see my own work as existing to focus the mind and senses in a contemplative way. But when my agnosticism gets the better of me, I can begin to think of it as mere design.
The exhibition had a focusing effect on me. I feel somehow more "enabled."
Here's something I can say I believe:
4.1.05 
3 Comments:
does this work?
By 
, at
1/06/2005
I can certainly commiserate with Douglas on questioning (or at least seriously considering) purpose. Lately, I’ve been vacillating between an intense urge to utterly slice my work down to its barest bones – almost pure concept; past Malevich, Reinhardt, et al – and wanting to slather paint in “meaningful” ways, having recently become enthralled with a little gem – a fairly visually complicated gem – of a Glackens here at the Barnes, where I work. So…where do I go? I greatly admire Richter, who can vacillate with the greatest of ease…but I’m no Richter. I have, like Douglas, a great desire to “contribute”, but not in a way which furthers the aesthetic clutter that is so prevalent in our world. Perhaps it’s a matter of just “working [it] out, with fear and trembling.”
Many times, I’ve stood in front of a crammed bookshelf in, say, a used book store, and realized that, rather than being desirous of reading everything there, I really wanted to contribute to the great panoply of thoughts. I really wanted to, like Sartre, Heidegger, or whoever else was residing on the shelves, have others know my thoughts, and enjoy myself in creating them; seeing them gain form in black and white. This is how I might flesh out my aesthetic desires, as well…they, like those writings, will probably either gain ever more “purpose”, beyond what I can imagine, within the eyes and minds of others; or they will be ever more anonymous and ambiguous. I can only hope they are still as pure and beautiful as those anonymous tantric drawings which Douglas shared about. Better beautiful anonymity, than a pedantic life with a long obituary.
By 
GIERSCHICK, at
1/07/2005
We all want art to mean something to our lives and the lives of others.
When we write about art we darn well better be helping to solve the problem rather than adding to it.
It seems your statement adds to the confusion.
Painting is an act but it has a result. And we judge and are judged on the effect of that result. It isn't good art because we simlpy feel like calling it so.
There are happy accidents. we can't be in control of everything. And a sharp eye notices those accidents and takes advantage of them.
Lighten up .Enjoy yourself more. Art should be beautiful.
By , at
5/24/2005