From:
Norman Watts <Norman_Watts@zzzzzzz>
Date:
Tue, 12 Oct 2004 14:11:17 -0400
Subject:
was (Re: creativity, gestalt, dreams)
On Oct 11, 2004, at 4:29 PM, Hap Hagood wrote:
Quoted text begins. The secret lies in willingly going where the stone (or wood) takes me.
End of quote.
I apologize if this is tiresome to anyone, but as some may recognize,
this is something I've been trying to get at for quite a while. Clive's
recent description of trying to clear-headedly discern and employ
structural features in a sculpture which can commonly send people off
into reverie is totally new to me. This is diametrically opposed to the
notion of letting the material (stone) take you where it wants.
Particularly in an unfeatured, uniform stone, the latter just means
letting things happen until a form suggests itself and then working
hard to bring it to a better representation of what was suggested by
the rough form. In other words, you happen to see a form or profile
that evokes a response in you and then you try to emphasize it, or
confirm it with secondary features. Are these two different schools? I
don't have a background in art, so this may be a fool's question.
What I'm trying to find out though is what those evocative forms might
be for us right now. For a very, very long time we have evolved as an
insignificant species, barely a threat to anyone and threatened by
several. We had however, a developing brain and we conjured up (and
believed) all manner of connections. We had things to fear, such as
large predators and malevolent spirits. We also conjured up help, again
in the form of protective spirits and animals. Early and "primitive",
for example Inuit, art celebrates animals. Though much of recent Inuit
art is simply imitative of the old, it still can burst with exuberant
power. I've felt it.
We still have our evolutionary past in our brains but we are now in a
very different world, we are dominant and realistically only have to
fear ourselves. Evolution and culture are out of sync. Recently there
was discussion of a series of sculptures in Germany; early on they were
stones placed intimately in the forest whereas more recently they were
frequently in urban settings and sometimes steel. I interpreted this
(for myself) to be a reflection of a lost connection to a once revered
forest. Absolutely I never meant to say there was more connection in
the '60s than there is now. What I felt was coming through though was a
cultural holdover of a much older time. The ragged ends of a mindset
that had survived the coming of the industrial revolution and at least
two major wars in the minds of a few people (where else could it
survive?). Now the situation is even more so. Nowadays the vast
majority of us have no visceral connection to the natural world. We cut
the lawn as if it were a growing carpet, and we walk in shoes into the
park and look about vaguely pleased but in incomprehension. The forest
no longer means safety. A beach is a place only for marshmallows on a
stick. I want to say it again, our "elders", reaching back, have lost
hold on the shore of the past. Even our grandparent's youth is now
utterly modern in nature; and our children focus on electronic games
rather than learning the texture of the earth. Note; I want to
emphasize that I don't want to invite harangues about the relative good
or bad of this situation. But I do want to ask about what is going on
in us. If those early German carvings mentioned above were somehow the
result of mental holdovers of a long lost time, then were are we now
after all that has happened since then? Artists, it has been
suggested, and I would tend to agree, are the first to have dim
inklings, apprehensions of coming change, even if they themselves don't
quite grasp it. Today we are changing very, very fast, probably faster
than we know. Indeed, I think we have overshot.
What structural features in a sculpture, particularly abstract works
which might stand some chance of getting at what has been called
"other" in this forum, might explain our current world to us? What
might manifest our conscious and unconscious fears now? Imagine, a
sentient, conscious, thinking species evolves, and then quite suddenly
and exponentially changes its environment. For eons it created
representations of the other beings around it, but what do its
sculptural probings and graspings show now? Mostly the stuff it has
always made. Maybe we have no relevant response at all??
n
Norman Watts, Ph. D.
National Institutes of Health
50 South Drive, Rm. 1509
Bethesda, MD 20892-8025
Phone: (301) 402-3418
Fax: (301) 480-7629
- Follow-ups
- message 00111: was (Re: creativity, gestalt, dreams) - Clive Murray-White (12 Oct 2004)
- References
- message 00108: creativity, gestalt, dreams - Hap Hagood (11 Oct 2004)
- Previous by Thread: message 00109: creativity, gestalt, dreams - abknight (12 Oct 2004)
- Next by Thread: message 00111: was (Re: creativity, gestalt, dreams) - Clive Murray-White (12 Oct 2004)
- Previous by Date: message 00109: creativity, gestalt, dreams - abknight (12 Oct 2004)
- Next by Date: message 00111: was (Re: creativity, gestalt, dreams) - Clive Murray-White (12 Oct 2004)
