The In-between

"The camera will never compete with the brush and palette until such time as photography can be taken to Heaven or Hell." --Edvard Munch

 Whether Heaven or Hell, Edvard does not explain, perhaps because he himself cannot pin-point with accuracy the delineation between the dichotomies. I'd rather prefer to think that this world, wherein lies the artist's soul, is a marriage of both. Inside a man, there exists the imago dei and original sin; we are such stuff as dreams are made--a mingle of divinity and depravity--a precarious balance. 

What Edvard may mean is that the brush and palette offers a power, a force with which one can create motion tactily, palpably, substantially. It is not a mere click of an indistinct button, but movement in actuality. Perhaps similar to the difference between typing and writing. The sensation of feeling the tip of a fountain pen glide across a sheet of paper and the ink, flowing, that glimmers slightly under bright sunlight--is priceless and irreplaceable. What is being captured is not so much the final product as a more elusive element of participation, or even incarnation. As Edvard as also said else where: "Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye.. it also includes the inner pictures of the soul."

For him, nature, reality, and humanity means so much more the superficial, or mundanely routine: "No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love."  He was a keen perceiver, in touch with harsher realities that eventually even lead to irrevocable psychological breakdown. As a tormented soul, Edvard confesses with these painful words:

 "My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Somtimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm’s edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss. For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art. Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder."

I think often times, artists who reside in this world of bleak reality cannot help but be overwhelmed by a wave of pessimism that may consume any ounce of resistance. For Edvard, this wave could even be channeled into a kind of artistic power, and energy, which I cannot but humbly admit with admiration that such a continuous struggle between the "mainstream" and the "edge" requires much courage.

One of my most beloved authors, who, after decades of being wheelchair-bound and a chemical experiment  recently passed away, commented once: "Being ill is my vocation, writing a hobby." Indeed spoken wrly, he has since moved out of the painfully trapped In-between, into perhaps a place where his artistic labor may be finally rewarded fully.

Envisioning Space

I have recently moved into a studio, with navy carpet, white ceiling, and bare walls. A simple divider separates the further part of the room--where cushions, blankets, a kitchen, and a grapefruit reveals a place to entertain the guest--from the empty space at the entrance. At the foot of the divider, lie my shoes (and guests' shoes), marking a line into civilized space, while before it, when one's first glimpse after opening the door is a view of near nothingness. When asked, what are you going to do with this? I'd shrug slightly, with nonchalance, head tilted a bit and eyes thinking of something that leads to a fleeting smirk at the mouth. I'd say, oh nothing. 

In reality, I intended it that way, that empty space of near nothingness. Perhaps one Saturday, I'll wake up and brush up a giant mural of cherry trees with blossoms  budding and trailing across the entire wall, blown by some invisible wind. Or perhaps I won't. For right now, the nothingness is an invitation for my imagination to envision what potential can lie there.

In Calculus III, the first chapters are on vectors, lines in space with certain magnitude and direction. I find that a profoundly artistic and philosophical paradigm. Ever since young, I've loved Geometry, the intricacies of infinite points, lines, curves swirling in imaginary space. I could envision infinity with the closing of two eyelids.

When Michaelangelo talked about seeing the sculpture inside a block of stone or marble, I felt as if I was eavesdropping on a conversation between a genius and his own imagination. Because of his obsession, his perfectionism, his near insane devotion to the artistic vocation, I fell madly in love with the David, the  Pieta, and the name carved upon them--I, who study haikus, woodblock prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige, and Ming ceramics. In East Asian art, absence, the ineffable, is always more valued; and even now, when appreciating western art, I feel sensory-overload almost always. But even with its elaborate iconoclasm and overwhelming sense of "presence," western art has become less unbearble, because of Michaelangelo.