Mystery and the Art Experience 1 2 3 - PRINTER VERSION
>> able, no matter how briefly, to experience a moment of clarity? First of all, I do not believe one can make work of this nature unless one has had the kind of life altering experience I am speaking about. One cannot make a cup that has the kind of mystery Joseph Campbell alludes to unless one has had an object as "ordinary" as a cup or bowl change the direction of their life. Moreover, the work has to spring from the core of ones being, out of feelings about, and ones relationship with, the world in which they live. I don't believe, for example, that one can intellectually structure work or rely purely on technical skills to realize objects that cause such a profound experience. Nor do I believe that can one make work with that kind of emotional resonance if one is constantly thinking about praise from ones peer group, audience or the monetary rewards of fame and notoriety. It must be done for oneself. This, of course, applies to any serious or meaningful endeavor. In a talk to Harvard law students in 1886, for example, the 19th century American philosopher and Supreme Court Justice Olivier Wendell Holmes, Jr. eloquently addressed this point:
"Only when you have worked alone—when you have felt around you a black gulf of solitude more isolating that that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair, have trusted to your own unshaken will—then only will you have achieved."
To artists who make art because they need and value this art experience more than anything else in life, art-making is a scared act that is both consuming and extraordinarily rigorous. They measure their success by their ability to create work that gives them that heightened sense of awareness, work that challenges and expands their view of the world and in doing so refreshes them with a renewed sense of reality. Ceramic artists, indeed all artists, who have had their lives changed by the sense of mystery that exists in great art, recognize that the ridiculous prejudices against the form an object takes or the material it is made of, whether it is a clay cup, marks of pigment on cloth or an assemblage of steel, wood or stone have little to do with the ability of an object to, as Campbell said, "address the transcendent mystery". Throughout human history peoples have struggled using all manners of form and material to make objects that do precisely that. They engaged in this activity for the same reasons we do now, because it brings joy and meaning to life and makes us better human beings.
References:
1. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myths, Doubleday, 1958.
2. Donald Kuspit, The End of Art, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
3. Louis Menard, The Metaphysical Club, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2001.
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© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> able, no matter how briefly, to experience a moment of clarity? First of all, I do not believe one can make work of this nature unless one has had the kind of life altering experience I am speaking about. One cannot make a cup that has the kind of mystery Joseph Campbell alludes to unless one has had an object as "ordinary" as a cup or bowl change the direction of their life. Moreover, the work has to spring from the core of ones being, out of feelings about, and ones relationship with, the world in which they live. I don't believe, for example, that one can intellectually structure work or rely purely on technical skills to realize objects that cause such a profound experience. Nor do I believe that can one make work with that kind of emotional resonance if one is constantly thinking about praise from ones peer group, audience or the monetary rewards of fame and notoriety. It must be done for oneself. This, of course, applies to any serious or meaningful endeavor. In a talk to Harvard law students in 1886, for example, the 19th century American philosopher and Supreme Court Justice Olivier Wendell Holmes, Jr. eloquently addressed this point:
"Only when you have worked alone—when you have felt around you a black gulf of solitude more isolating that that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair, have trusted to your own unshaken will—then only will you have achieved."
To artists who make art because they need and value this art experience more than anything else in life, art-making is a scared act that is both consuming and extraordinarily rigorous. They measure their success by their ability to create work that gives them that heightened sense of awareness, work that challenges and expands their view of the world and in doing so refreshes them with a renewed sense of reality. Ceramic artists, indeed all artists, who have had their lives changed by the sense of mystery that exists in great art, recognize that the ridiculous prejudices against the form an object takes or the material it is made of, whether it is a clay cup, marks of pigment on cloth or an assemblage of steel, wood or stone have little to do with the ability of an object to, as Campbell said, "address the transcendent mystery". Throughout human history peoples have struggled using all manners of form and material to make objects that do precisely that. They engaged in this activity for the same reasons we do now, because it brings joy and meaning to life and makes us better human beings.
References:
1. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myths, Doubleday, 1958.
2. Donald Kuspit, The End of Art, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
3. Louis Menard, The Metaphysical Club, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2001.
<<
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign