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The Artist’s
Almanac
January 2010
download and print this installment as
a PDF
(you will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open this file, you can
get
it here free)
The turn of the century raises expectations. The end of a millennium
promises
apocalypse and revelation. But at the close of the twentieth century
the golden
age seems behind us, not ahead. The end game of the 1990s promises
neither
nirvana nor Armageddon, but entropy.
- Robert Hewison,
British Historian
The new decade blows
in on a snowstorm and with record low temperatures. After meeting
with fellow artists at Joel’s studio for fried crappie and a
critique of our paintings, David, Frank and I had to caravan our way
back to town over solid ice at 20 mph past three cars off the road
and lots of blue lights. The global warmers are in retreat. Children
slide across the pond.
Forget painting in
plein aire: sullen skies, wind like a knife and ground turned to
mud persuade me to view landscape today from inside a warm house
next to a fire dancing on my stone hearth. The mood is
reflective.
Entropy, mentioned
in the head note above, is a little understood scientific term
defined in Webster, broadly, as the degree of disorder
or uncertainty in a system. To experience it,
turn on your television and surf channels. Alternative
definitions include, a: the degradation of the matter
and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert
uniformity or b: a process of degradation or
running down or a trend to disorder. Congress, for
example.
The measure of
entropy in a system or society is the amount of its available
energy which is wasted to no useful purpose – just frittered
away. If the society is closed and the energy is not replaced,
the society ultimately becomes old and cold, as did Rome.
Hewison is on to something.
We fritter away
our energy in a thousand insignificant and useless tasks – all
of us do. Every January we resolve to do better – to exercise
our bodies, to paint more pictures, to clear our clutter. I took
a walk today. But our resolutions suffer from their own entropy
and soon we descend to our old chaotic ways.
Art reacts in
various ways to chaos. The ruling current fashion in modern art
seems to be to celebrate chaos, while another school seeks to
find meaning in it - to embed meaning within the work and
challenge the viewer to twist it out, like some symbolic riddle.
I believe the true
role of art is to find meaning in the world and celebrate it.
The same for religion, which is why Christianity and Art are
such long-time allies. El Greco manifests transcendence in the
face and elongated figure of Christ while Goya’s stark
depictions of the evils of war are vividly vicarious.
Time seems frozen
in place this cold January day, yet we know the arrow of time
flies but one direction. Or do we? Scientists can tell us what
time it is but not what time is. Chambers English Dictionary
defines time as a concept arising from change experienced
and observed by past, present and future – a definition
that strongly promotes the idea that time is nothing but a
product of the human mind.
Art stands aside
and suspends time, both in its appreciation, in its subject
matter, and for the passionate artist, in its creation. While
theoretical physicists argue whether time in a parallel universe
may flow upstream, the artist may paint the streams of his
childhood and frolic in them forever.
Playing in the Creek – Bill Puryear, Artist
Upcoming Events
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Art In Bloom
– March 12-13, 2010, Annual show of Gallatin Junior League at
Bluegrass Country Club, Hendersonville, Tennessee
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Watch for program news on
Tennessee Crossroads on WNPT – last week of January or
first week of February.
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