Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Universal Vision (To the Class of 2018)
In the most diverse classes I’ve ever taught, multiracial,
multicultural and from different national and economic backgrounds, there was
never any problem understanding each other’s art. The expression and feeling in
visual form engages a universal response system. From the beginning of life, we
learn the ups and downs of navigating our world using the same systems of
response to space as everybody else. This specific and highly nuanced relation
to surrounding territory sees the state of balance and the trajectories of
moving objects and anticipates what to do in relation to them. Awareness of the
body’s adjustments to these expectations creates the feeling we experience
consciously. Just because we’re not conscious of the first part doesn’t mean it
doesn’t exist, perception is always guiding conscious attention to the needs
that demand it. From infancy, we learn the way the world behaves in a commonsense
physics that becomes so automatic it’s taken for granted, yet it’s a complex
multifaceted intelligence that scaffolds conceptual knowledge. Art stimulates
visual intelligence stirring feelings with essential form based on the
relationship with space we share as a species. Cultivating that level of understanding is a
way to build on our commonality. Human differences are just the skin of who we
are cloaking the outside of the core understanding we share.
The particular
details of every person’s life are varied, but they are structured by universal
human needs. The locations of our memories may look very different and school
particular sensitivities, but the routines of living are basic to us all. The
patterns of home, school, work, social gathering, create common circuitry
through the way we function within them. Beneath that is the hardwired response
to gravity, movement and balance. The ability to discern significance can be
developed by looking at art which reinforces essential relations. This builds
the circuits of visual sensitivity and triggers personal reflection that builds
on human meaning structure. It needs no translation and creates bridges where
words cannot.
With new graduates coming into the workforce, employers
would be wise to recognize that art students have concentrated on training
their perceptual intelligence and this attunement to the big picture can apply
anywhere. It’s a way of thinking that’s been neglected by education and those
who have immersed themselves in it at an art college have cultivated their
ability to cut through the mountains of information to see what’s important.
That combined with the practice of their creativity offers an exceptional
resource for the future.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Ten Years of Seeing Meaning
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| "Material Dimension" Most viewed image on blog |
I launched this blog in April of 2008 and it’s been a
pleasure to share thoughts and images that express my sense of what a picture
can show about what matters. On the
occasion of this tenth anniversary I want to thank everyone who has stopped
here to read or look, and think about how meaning is expressed visually. By
showing what’s significant, art expands perception Developing the wisdom of the
overview will be more useful to a rapidly changing future, than preset ideas. To
trust what we see puts universal values at the core and takes every situation
for the unique experience it is rather than filtered by labels and categories.
Having readers from ninety countries shows that these are
ideas that resonate all over the world. There is a global shift of
consciousness that is spreading as the necessary foundation for effective
future thought.
To celebrate my ten years sharing these ideas, here are the
links to my five most popular essays in order.
‘
Here are the top five images.
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| "Heaviness" |
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| "Restraint" |
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| "Cool Under Fire" |
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| "CoCausal" |
What a pleasure it’s been to emphasize a shift to perceptual
thinking that feels necessary and that uses an untapped capacity it’s time to
put to use. Hopefully more will share their ideas on the same concepts, and if
they do, in the future I will take advantage of the opportunity for dialogue
and comment back.
Saturday, April 14, 2018
More Primitive Emotions
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| Snarling Puppy oil on panel 2018 photo by Kyle Kutner |
This is currently showing at the Peale Center until May 6.
The Need to See
Nina Simone “How can you be an artist and not reflect the
times?”
An image is a starting point for thinking. What it triggers
is evoked from the life experience of the viewer, but the trigger itself is a
structure of interrelationships that offers a way of putting past observations
in a new light. Art presents a new perspective and the life of the work once
created is continued in the minds of the viewers. The most significant new
ideas always involve seeing in a new way whether in an individual’s personal
evolution or a paradigm shift in a field of study. The philosopher Thomas
Carlyle said, “The chief value of any book is that it excites the reader to
self-activity”. This is good brain chemistry. So many of the connections to the
nucleus accumbens, considered the pleasure center, come from the area
associated with creative thinking and other higher mental activity, the
prefrontal cortex. One function of art is to get people’s minds working, not
just to stimulate new ways of thinking but to direct attention to what is
important, to emphasize values. People need to know what matters.
Ai WeiWei is an artist that sees the need to make something
visible, showing what numbers on a page can’t do, move us with the visceral
reaction to quantity thereby making us feel the impact of the numbers. He draws
attention to lost schoolchildren or refugees, big groups that are ignored to
avoid feeling the connection to the tragedy. In the great line from Arthur
Miller’s, “Death of a Salesman”- “Attention must be paid.”, talking about the
everyday struggles of living. Art shines light on what people need to see. As long
as we don’t see, we can avoid responsibility. When we see, we can’t avoid
responding. That’s why art can have powerful influence on changing
consciousness, and that’s where serious change will have to happen. Once a
situation is taken in differently, it can change a whole point of view.
While the internet opens new territory to see, because it is
led by the personal search, what a person is looking for can blinker them to
what could actually enlarge the point of view. A simple way to open it up is to
do image searches on topics of interest, narrow the search to contemporary art
with your subject and see what current artists are trying to show about the
world we all inhabit together. Seeing is the first beam of connection. The
strength of the response is a measure of personal significance and an expansion
of self-awareness.
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