TEXTS
Art is not an end, but a means to an end — a way to a higher life.
The word “art” is a form of the verb, “to be.” From this approach, art is not a noun, it is a verb — an action word. Yet, what does “to be” betoken? To be yourself. To be human. To just, Be? To Draw is to be Human is the title of Emma Dexter’s Introductory essay to the book, Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing. What does drawing and being human really mean?
“To be” conjures up Shakespeare’s ultimate question posed in Hamlet: “To be or not to be.” Is there an ultimate answer to such a question? I don’t think so, however, I am interested in the essence and connotations of “to be.” It sounds natural or inherent in us as human beings. Drawing to be human. To be here fully in the present moment — just to be here. Right here, right now.
I want to know what it means to be human. I want to know why we are here. I want to know why we are drawn to make a mark in this world. Why did we draw on cave walls? Why do children draw before they can talk, or write? Why am I drawn to drawing? “Drawing brings together humans and the world” according to artist Keith Haring, “it lives through magic.” Dexter attempts to understand and discuss this in her essay To Draw is to be Human:
Drawing exists at another level within the human psyche — it is a locus for signs by which we map the physical world, but it is itself the pre-eminent sign of being. Therefore, drawing is not a window on the world, but a device for understanding our place within the universe.1
Drawing is fundamental to being human. In the words of Dexter, “drawing chimes with the needs of the moment...”It is an unmediated record of an act.2 It demands me to pause, to be. Drawing is a way to map things out — an abstraction of the physical world. It is action through an attempt to understand. It is often said that Leonardo da Vinci drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.3 Frederick Franck, the author of Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing describes drawing as “the discipline by which I constantly discover the world.”4 Through drawing I understand my place within this body in the present moment.
Drawing is an act of seeing and understanding — it is a way of being for me. What is the pre eminent sign of being Dexter refers to? Is there a relationship between “to be” and being? Being comes before doing, before thoughts and emotions. It can only occur in the present moment — the Now. The Buddha is quoted as once saying, “we do not learn by experience, but our capacity for experience.” I believe he is referring to our capacity to see and understand, not just look. This capacity is the essence of the artist-within.5 Who is the artist-within? The French essayist Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve wrote, a century ago: “With everyone born human, a poet—an artist—is born, who dies young and is survived by an adult.”6 I believe the artist-within is the soul. We all have one, and it does not die, but is more like a dirty window that we can’t see through and blocks the sunlight entering the room. The dirt and dust has collected over many years and isn’t cleaned off. The act of drawing or seeing is like rain on our window, slowing dissolving and removing the dirt that distorts our vision of the world around us.
Through the process of creating things I come to understand myself and others. Specifically, I am referring to the act of drawing/seeing.7 For me, drawing is closest to my heart. It is the most direct medium that is the nearest to seeing. When I draw, I learn how to see. Not look, but see beyond the external form. Art critic and artist John Ruskin once said that seeing “is a more important thing than the drawing.” The act of seeing is more important than the result. 17th Century Chinese Zen Sage, Hui Neng said: “The meaning of Life is to see.” Through the discipline of drawing, I learn how to see myself, others and the world more clearly.
To create something is a spiritual act — it is an act of faith and relinquishing control. It is not an invention of the ego. Creation is a natural function of the soul.8 It doesn’t matter if you call it spiritual or believe in the soul. It can’t be understood by the mind — it can be felt and experienced. The act or experience of making is something we all share. There is nothing supernatural or esoteric about the soul or spirituality. It is not a belief. It is based in reality and the experience of life itself.
I create things for one ultimate purpose: to cultivate mindfulness or awareness. My practice is an act of meditation, if you will. By meditation I mean developing a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens — to be totally alive and fully aware in the present moment. In Tibetan, meditation literally means “to become familiar with.”
Art is the essence of awareness.
-Louise Nevelson
I am searching to understand the ultimate nature of the whole of life — an inner truth. Drawing confronts me with the mystery of being alive. It makes me present and aware of reality as it is. Time does not exist when I am drawing. It is difficult to explain because like all art forms, once you begin using words to describe it you move further away from what it is. However, stating drawing/seeing is what it is doesn’t get us any closer, but I digress. Firstly, what is the difference between looking and seeing. Frederick Franck, the author of Zen Seeing/Zen Drawing explains:
The glaring contrast between seeing and looking-at the world around us is immense; it is fateful. Everything in our society seems to conspire against our inborn human gift of seeing. We have become addicted to merely looking-at things and beings. The more we regress from seeing to looking at the world -- through the ever-more-perfected machinery of viewfinders, TV tubes, VCRs, microscopes, spectroscopes -- the less we see. The less we see, the more numbed we become to the joy and the pain of being alive, and the further estranged we become from ourselves and all others.9
Through the discipline of drawing, we cultivate empathy and learn to see. Franck refers to this empathic capacity in saying, you “become what you draw. Unless you become it, you cannot draw it.”10 To become what you draw, you must see and understand it beyond it’s appearances. I believe Aristotle pointed to this when he said, “the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
The search for inner truth is the search for beauty.
-Harold Speed
I believe that the soul is the true power of all creative work. Therefore, I strive to become a pure and open medium for the soul’s expression. If I am really honest with myself, I don’t really “make” the art. It is something much larger and powerful that comes through me. Some artist’s describe this as being in the flow. Time ‘stops’ or is irrelevant and I am in the present moment fully. Of course, this does not occur every time the pencil or brush is in hand. It can’t be forced. It can’t be caught and held on to. In Neil Young’s words, it is like trying to catch a gopher on the prairies before it disappears into a hole. It’s a tricky things to even talk about — like inspiration.
Portraiture is another tricky thing to discuss. It is nearly an impossible proposition in the classical sense — to capture the essence and character of a living human being in a two or three dimensional form. Perhaps it’s what Yeats called the fascination with what’s difficult that draws me so much to portraiture. I’m trying to do what I can’t do.11Perhaps a portrait is much more complex and difficult to pin down through rational explanation.
In the words of Oscar Wilde: “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter.” In the words of the Buddha:
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thought.
With our thoughts we make the world.12
I have to ask myself, If I project my thoughts and feeling upon the person that I am drawing or painting, is every portrait a self-portrait? Jacques Derrida takes this implication even further justifying him “...to call any thing a self-portrait, not only any drawing, 'portrait' or not, but everything that happens to me, that I can affect, or that affects me.” We all make our own world. If all that we are arises from our thoughts, and our thoughts are incessantly changing, who are we, or what are we? We are constantly changing. We are different every passing moment.I attempt to capture this state of change and flux by merging two or three portraits in one composition. This alludes to the multiple dimensions of our Being. We are not solid, permanent and separate.
I am interested in time-based mediums such as erasure animation to explore the present moment and the concept of change or impermanence. Animation comes from the Latin, "the act of bringing to life"; from "to animate" or "give life to." I want to bring the act of drawing/seeing to life. I want to record, interpret and animate the entire process. By recording people with a video camera, I am able to capture the present moment frame by frame. This allows me to essentially control time and edit the sequence of reality. I want to explore and experiment with this process in the following semester.
In harmony with meditation, drawing/seeing is a Do — as it is referred to in Japan — or “the Way.” Do is “an art that allows us to understand the ultimate nature of the whole of life by closely examining ourselves through a singular activity of life: to arrive at the universal through studying the particular.”13It softens the differences between the individual and the universe into oneness. Drawing/seeing transforms the mind/heart, the spiritual core, our soul. The Chinese call this hsin and In Japan, kokoro. “It is the kokoro that brings the drawing to life, that transmits its spirit to the one who views it.”14
Art emanates directly from the mind and our hearts. One could also call this a “visual representation of our spiritual condition.”15A drawing or painting is an index of the body. It is all there: the mistakes, the erasures, the hesitations, the day dreaming, the thoughtlessness, the ego. Drawing/seeing is the most immediate medium. It is honest: the most revealing. It is my awareness and quality of seeing in that moment that is the drawing. It is all connected: head, heart and hand. I believe this is what John Ruskin was explaining when he said, “the sight is a more important thing than the drawing.”
Through the discipline of drawing/seeing, I am reminded, “physical existence is now, with the past and future functioning as ideas rather than actual reality ... The full experiencing of life and art must be now or not at all.”16 The present moment is the gateway to life. It is all that we really have. Right here, right now.
1 Emma Dexter, Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2005) p.6.
2 Dexter, “TO DRAW IS TO BE HUMAN,” p.10.
3 A quote by Kenneth Clark.
4 A quote by Frederick Franck.
5 Artist-within is a term used by artist and author Frederick Franck in his book Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing.
6 Frederick Franck, Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing (New York: Bantam Books, 1993) p.1.
7 Drawing/seeing is a term used by artist and author Frederick Franck in his book Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing.
8 Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Every Day (New York: Penguin, 2009) p.21.
9 Franck, Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing, p.3.
10 Franck, Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing, p.3.
11 Inspired by a quotation from Lucien Freud.
12 Dhammapada, as translated by T. Byrom (1993), Shambhala Publications.
13 H.E. Davey, The Japanese Way of the Artist (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2007) p.43.
14 Franck, Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing, p.12.
15 Davey, The Japanese Way of the Artist, p.46.
16 Davey, The Japanese Way of the Artist, p.47.