The past day and half I have been working on the starboard side doing the necessary caulking and can you imagine it has given some pause for thought achieving a clearer head after. Indeed I landed on a notion that provided me with the boost I needed to venture out to take a public study, (which you have been asking for and which I have promised) not a revolutionary thought, perhaps not very original but had the effect of returning my turbulent soul to the flat calm necessary to paint from nature. Or in point of fact I resolved to accept my 'turbulant soul' and all other reverses with serenity. Let us receive lifes unfortunate events with a good heart, par for the course if you'll permit another1 and with this thought born I felt an almost audible release of pressure as I stood in the mud and you know, having read and re read the Naifeh and Smith biography2 it is clear that despite obvious unrest and stress in life, Van Gogh, in the act of work, was calm as a cucumber. Fast, bold, aggressive yes, but controlled so and with a conscious dislocation. Permitt me to quote at length:
"I don’t ask to be without difficulties or cares, only that they don’t become unbearable, I hope, and that doesn’t have to be the case as long as I work and continue to have the sympathy of people like you. Life is the same as drawing: sometimes one has to act quickly and resolutely, tackle things with willpower, take care that the broad outlines appear with lightning speed. It’s no use hesitating or doubting, and the hand may not tremble and the eye may not wander but must remain fixed on one’s purpose. And one must be so engrossed in it that something quickly takes shape on the sheet of paper or the canvas, where at first there was nothing, so that later one hardly knows how it got knocked into being. The time of reasoning and reflecting must precede the decisive action. While doing it there’s little space for reflecting or reasoning. And acting quickly is a man’s work and before one is capable of it one must have experienced something. Sometimes a helmsman succeeds in making use of a gale to make headway instead of foundering because of it."
Letter 226 To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Friday, 12 or Saturday, 13 May, 1882. vangoghletters.org
Re-reading this passage from 226 last night gave enormous heart to stride back through the steel gates today and out into the world to face the music once more. With the tide out and the sun rising over Mount Edgecombe it was my intention to stride boldly into Torpoint via the beech for a view of the library from the old rowing club, you must know the view? Well as it turned out I did not get so far as on my way down to the beech I happened to glance back towards the yard and was instantly struck quite dumb by a perfect composition; the yard with foreground of long yellow grass cutting in from the right and background of trees on the hill. The library will keep by god! I erected my easel where I stood.
Now I am quite of the mind that the library view would suit you down to your institutional boots but my fair view of the yard is in point of fact a "Torpoint picture" and one that, if I may be so bold, marks some progress particularly in the question of composition. It seems that tackling a more complex composition is a way to guard against the kind of tentative dithering that is always just around the corner if one loses focus. It keeps one fully occupied on all elements and the task of bringing them together and I think you will concur that this view of the yard is more ambitious as a picture due precisely to the amount of elements.
We have the grass bank dominant, leading on to the yard fence and an old wooden boat above. The grass also leads down to the rocky beech and across the water we see the breakwater barges and the yard beyond. The distinctive red and white of the Albacore3 can be seen in the centre and you know if there was time to tackle figures I would have inserted one of Tim4 who was watching me through his bins from atop the shelter deck. Above the boats we have the line of trees marking the border between Carbiele Wharf and the firing range of HMS Raleigh and to the right we have two houses of the military wives quarters looming.
My only regret is that I had no time to properly paint the sky as a group revellers appeared round the bend of the beach so I hastily packed up and headed back to the yard. Perhaps it can be worked on in the studio? Van Gogh would add props or figures and 'harmonize the brush strokes a little' as he says but I think not. I am yet to tackle the figure and besides if I new I could go home and add this or that detail willynillie then my concentration in front of the motif would be compromised and that is too great a risk. You see one aspect of this campaign that has really been a revelation to me is the way that the motif or nature can be a giver of gifts. If one concentrates, observes honestly the best one can and dispenses somewhat with ones own intentions and pre conceptions then the stream of the new and unexpected begins to flow, and that is no small potato!
Of course this is the sort of thing you hear all the time if you read about the old plein air painters, they go on like 'we must enter into a pact with nature'....'one must be honest in front of nature'...'nature is the only teacher'... 'nature is my only mistress'...etc but I feel that this sort of committed partnership between artist and chosen subject has something to offer in our contemporary stasis precisely because it begins without any preconceived outcome and leaves room for the unexpected. The question as always it seems is how the doing is framed?
No answer but based on my TAS work I can say, from a strictly personal stance, that a link between the relationship of the plein air painter to nature and that between the Open Council instituter and that darkest of dark sides of nature - the neoliberal city - is no mere fancy. In the Open Council Report I described this as a principle of adjacency5 and as a reactive type of art practice where the artist lays in wait with all the necessary creative tools to hand, (in the Open Council this meant appropriation, detournment, satire) watching waiting then at a certain point the creative process begins and proceeds in relation to the subject or rather the artists ongoing encounter with the subject. This is in contrast to studio practice where the process is very internal; what one works on is not susceptible to outside influences nearly as much, be it the events of the city or the changes in nature. You think, you do, you think, you do and Im not counting it out but there are no alarms and no surprises in the studio; the subject doesn't talk back if you follow.
In any case I think that a conscious sacrificing of control over the process as one must do when en plein air, whether its painting or instituting, leads to work with "meaning" beyond ones intentions. And I do not mean in the sense of injecting chance into the process ala John Cage and Fluxus; no. I recall the stalwart Ranciere's point about how aesthetics can become political but one cannot predict how this happens and is not something that can be created but occurs as part of the 'distribution of the sensible'. Well maybe so but we can still strive for political meaning; the agnostic believes in niether heaven nor hell but may be wise to say a little prayer just in case. No, ill leave the sky as it is and on to another tomorrow.
With a handshake,
John
PS When I got back to the yard I headed up to the wheel house where I could quite easily see the revelers on the beech lingering just yards from where I stood, so you see I was right to leave.
-----------------------------------------------
1. Sporting metaphor/analogy. See work 26, paragraph 3, line 9.
2 Comprehensive biography of Van Gogh by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, 2012
3. The Albacore was first mention in work 9 and again in work 14a and in work 21.
4. Owner of the Albacore see work 7, paragraph 4.
5. The concept derives from the work of Grank Kester: Wazungu means “White Men”: Superflex and the Limits of Ethical Capitalism