Young Man At His Window, 1875 by Gustave Caillebotte.
In a world obsessed with productivity, this activity is increasingly frowned upon. The Book Of Life tells us that if we do it right, staring out the window offers a way for us to listen out for the quieter suggestions and perspectives of our deeper selves. We can explore the contents of our own mind which contains far more information than we are aware of at any one time.
My favourite time of day. When colours become muted and you begin to see things with your minds eye as details become blurred, and imaginings begin. It's a time of reflection, but it can also be a time of anxiety or haunting - as a child I was not a good sleeper. Perhaps I was super-sensitive to atmospheres or preoccupied with the mysteries of the unknown.
Reference material for my paintings are usually photographs, but often I will produce a drawing from them, experimenting with composition and developing a relationship with the scene. That is, getting into the psychology of the scene.
I am commencing a new work based on the sketch below. I often use a sky from one photo with a scene from another to achieve the desired psychological effect.
Ever wondered what it would be like to live around the corner from a world renowned art gallery? Apparently it can be a pain in the arse. According to the School of Life, there were some very famous artists who at one time or another wanted to burn the Louvre down – Braque, Picasso, Pissarro and Corot to name a few.
All that inspiration just a stones’ throw away may seem like heaven for an artist, but being presented with such perfectionism can be intimidating as it can make your own efforts look futile. It saps your creative confidence. I can remember many years ago driving home after visiting the Golden Summers exhibition featuring the Heidelberg School artists at the NGV and thinking “they’ve said it all so there’s nothing more to say”.
The School Of Life warns us that our admiration for the masters can be major impediments to ever ourselves reaching a good enough solution to the tasks we face in our own working lives. “Your love of the ideal has made it frightening and humiliating to do anything yourself.” Perfectionism is a major cause of procrastination and the Book Of Life has 4 solutions to the problem without resorting to arson, and I can add a 5th.
1. Go to the artist’s studio, not the gallery and look at the wrecked early versions, the frustrations and all the ground work that lead to the final product.
2. Buy a Korean moon jar. It’s beautiful but certainly not perfect. The glaze is uneven and there are lumps and dents at various points. “For something to be loved and valued, it really isn’t necessary for it to be perfect.”
3. Place yourself at the outer reaches of the solar system, let’s say Pluto which seems to be in the news at present. It is equidistant from London, Sydney and Moscow. From what we can tell, nothing much happens there. From the point of view of Pluto “the exact quality of the report you are writing, the ideal order of the financial presentation, the brilliance (or lack of it) of the marketing campaign… none of these look very urgent.”
4. Write down the fears that are preventing you from making a start, and subject them to rational analysis. Will the world end tomorrow if I don’t produce the perfect painting?
5. In an earlier post, I referred to the story we all have to tell. Should a Rembrandt or a Caravaggio prevent you from telling that story?
Twenty years have elapsed since the artists Jeanne-Claude and Christo wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in fabric drapery. Apart from the result being visually stunning, the artwork had a powerful symbolic importance according to a recent article in The Book Of Life.
The history of the Reichstag, built in the 19th century, is tarnished due to it being the seat of Nazi government from 1933. It's a painful fact for many Germans that this regime was popularly elected but as The Book Of Life points out, a vote cast in 1933 does not sanction every element of party policy up to 1945, including the concentration camps and atrocities committed by it's armies on the eastern front.
"Jeanne-Claude and Christo did not change the Reichstag; but by covering and then unveiling it, they set up a grand public opportunity for renewal of the nation’s relationship to its foremost political building. It allowed Germany to give its parliament back to itself." The argument is that political art can help by giving expression to a collective experience of confession, grief, atonement and renewed good will.
"These pictures are about creating a world. I’ve always had these images inside my head that I want to get out into the world. These towns are just a backdrop for a more submerged psychological drama. It is really a projection from my own story where I have explored my own fears, anxieties and desires." Gregory Crewdson
Crewdson was raised in New York City and his father was a psychoanalyst who practiced in the basement of the family home.
What was going on there was a complete mystery, Crewdson tried to eavesdrop on the sessions and hence the hidden psychology of his work.
Among other things he is credited with exploring lives of quiet desperation in towns abandoned by industry, although Crewdson denies there is a strong socioeconomic element to his work.
I often think of the cave paintings of the first Australians and I've wondered what prompted them to produce those images. It can only be one thing – a desire to tell a story, and if they had a story to tell thousands of years ago, we have a story to tell today. I think it's encumbered on all of us to tell that story, if only to ourselves.
If painting is not your thing, then perhaps drawing, printmaking, sculpting, writing, playing a musical instrument, photography, acting or building something simply because it's you. Something you can do that defines you as a unique individual with your own particular talents that you've had since day one. And to me, that's what it's all about.
A fairly unremarkable photo of inner London (presumably) you would think, except that it accompanies an article on higher consciousness. I've always struggled with this concept, but now thanks to the Book Of Life, I get it and it's limitations.
I've gone on "spiritual retreats" before and more often than not found them tedious, even annoying. This article explains why. We spend most of our lives in a lower state of consciousness where our primary concerns are ourselves, our survival, and our own success, narrowly defined. Neuroscientists call this lower brain function the reptilian mind where we strike back when hit, blame others etc. In other words, we are entirely driven by ego.
But there are times when we have access to a higher mind, the neocortex which is the seat of imagination, empathy and impartial judgement. We are less driven by the ego and are able to gain a more universal perspective on things. It's usually late at night or early in the morning that we get the opportunity to access this state of mind when there are no immediate threats or demands placed upon us.
Importantly, there is no dogma being expressed here. The Book Of Life acknowledges that we shouldn't aspire to this state of mind permanently as there are many important practical tasks we need to attend to. The "spiritual retreats" I referred to earlier seem to insist we go through our entire lives in a higher consciousness state. BOL suggests we should make the most of these states when they arise and harvest their insights for a time when we need them most.
He was pale, he suffered dyslexia, he had a skin condition that blotched in the sun, he was described as looking like something that crawled out from under a rock, he was gay (an issue then if not now), he was shy - as a primary school kid was he beaten up by a girl and spent weeks at home recovering from it psychologically. He came from a working class immigrant Slovakian family and his father died when he was thirteen.
Yet at the time of his death, Andy Warhol had an estate estimated to be worth $600m. So how did he do it? It probably helped that shortly before his death his father set up a trust that got Andy through art school, but he was also talented and fiercely ambitious.
As soon as he was old enough he left his native Pennsylvania for New York. One of his associates said Warhol had a vivid sense of his own limitations and he knew that what he would achieve in life would be within these limitations. So Warhol developed the persona of Andy the machine - deadpan Andy, and he exsponged all emotion out of his life (so it seemed). I hated Andy Warhol at art school, but now I wished he was still alive and doing the things he did so well, especially early in his career - taking the piss out of this world and its obsession with wealth, celebrity, commercialism and violence.
