An Addendum.

An Addendum.

I think it is true that this last piece was not a philosophy. Of course, I am not a philosopher. The best wordsmiths any artists have ever become are the ones who became poets. Probably, in the West, Michelangelo is the finest poet who was a professional artist. His poems are all directed at people for whom his figure paintings might be images. So there is a closer connection than we might ordinarily assume. But, to a man [and that includes a few greatly talented women] the Chinese landscape painters were poets. Now that we only have a group of copies from different centuries and one contemporary stone carving left of the work of Wang Wei, he is remembered as much by the poetry which celebrated the same scenes which he painted[and was written on the same paper in the landscape], as by the later images based on his work. The other things which some artists have written is a treatise on painting or sculpture, or on both. I am afraid that this moment is not a propitious one for writing a useful treatise. The things we know least about are how to make good art. Except for our own performances, we have a hard time with the work of other people, and none of us feels we have the authority to tell others exactly how to go about getting to the right spot. The best I can do is suggest how to go about getting to a place from which a great deal may be learned, and decided by the artist, so that he/she will be able to continue productively.

Hopefully, many of my artist readers have had some good experiences during their education. Some coming from their teachers, others coming from their own discoveries. None of those should be jettisoned freely and easily. If they were real last week, they are still real. Nothing should be discarded, except for cause. If you have been working in a different way, you may certainly put aside earlier conventions which you used for some time. But, using Klee's example, that does not mean you are giving them up. Klee learned many different pictorially logical, intuitive systems of forming. He never lost what he had invented because he went on to something else. He could always come back to something he had before from some new angle. Klee is an artist who had as radical an idea of the artist as Derain. He believed that what the artist brings to each work is not a constant style, or even a distinctive hand, but rather a distinctive mind set. His necessity of inventing new systems or logics for picture making was his constant. It was a poetic necessity. It must be admitted that there was some continuity in his hand, nonetheless, but not enough to explain his constant quality and originality. Yes, originality is not a sin, if it is real and arrived at by worthwhile artistic thought and experimentation, like his.  It is important to know that spatial arabesque was something which Klee understood and used. But it was not always the comfortable un-bumpy ride which you get from a Titian, or a Corot. Sometimes it is a peculiar spatial arabesque which is the metaphoric linchpin on which the whole structure rests. And Klee was not ever a scoundrel.  Leland had very good eyes for many things, one of the artists he thought wonderful was Klee, Although he had to know that Klee did not always "do the right thing."

I have not laid out any diagram which says what you should all be doing. All I have done is to unburden you of any of your sense of inferiority to the current success machine and its votaries. And I have mentioned some examples for you to look at.  I have tried to explain alternatives which are out there for you to sip, taste, try out... and some of the potential for those to put you in better places  for development and future artistic growth.  That is really as much as I should do. My own path shows that I have been trying to follow the same kind of logic that I am advising you to follow. But it is only my personal path, and my words are much more worth following than my example. Of course my own journey is not yet finished, and I may either throw off some fine sparkles now and then without reaching my goals, or I might become another good example. I believe that is not yet clear, as I must, because I am still striving for the best potential works that I can do.

Gide's "Counterfeiters" is made up of a long narrative, his own comments on his characters, many of them in one chapter; Edouard's thoughts about the story of which he is a part; letters by Bernard Profitendieu [whose last name is important] and finally Gide's journal which he kept while writing the novel. Several of the characters are based on real people. Cocteau is the source of the Comte D'Passavant, and the very young Boris was based on the very young Balthus.  By the way, Gide was quite wrong about Balthus, he expected the young prodigy to die young. That is a book which might be the source of a pictorial idea, but at this point I mention it as a potential source for a verbal one. How we might be involved in a discourse.

Now a P.S. While I do appreciate your letters about my writing, and as you can see, they do influence me, wouldn't it be better to share them with whoever reads this?
Love,
Gabriel