DABBLER SCRIBBLES: art

Wandering of a Mind

Our mind is the greatest vagabond we will ever know. It’s always on the move. One moment you are smelling roses on a meadow and the other moment you are wandering the dust laden streets of a rustic town parching in a summer. Galaxies are transited in milliseconds. But that’s not what is concerning, for wandering is but the nature of the mind. It is the use of the possessive pronoun “our or my” that we often do when the wanderings happen and we have to talk about it. When we have to say that the mind wanders, we describe its nature as a vagabond and say that “my mind is so fickle” or “my mind is always restless”. Who is this “we”? Whose mind is it? Why is it a possessive pronoun sometimes and sometimes it is identical to self as in when we say “I got lost dreaming” or “I tend to zone out”. So when the wandering happens we assume that it is identical to our self and when we get back to reality we realize that mind was just a medium. We, and whoever that “we” is for different cultures will provide us with different understanding of that “we”, are of a sort of the owner not only of the anatomical brain but also the process, the mind. A master of this piece, this wandering vagabond. But most of us are upset about not having a strong mind about something.

To most of us discipline and motivation comes hard. For most of the time it doesn’t at all. We are not disciplined or motivated and the reason we sight is that the mind talks us out of it or that it just cannot stick to a routine. How weary of us?! Here the discourse must be steered in the direction that there is a duality we are talking about. And to elucidate the same let me take two statements, “I have fever” and “I am ecstatic”. Now in both the case we have used the personal ego, “I” but they are not hinting to the same thing. I have a fever is a bodily issue for now I am talking about my body running a fever. But “I am ecstatic” is feeling and the body isn’t feeling it. It is the other “I”, the non-bodily one. For a piece of medicine might get me rid of the fever but the feeling of ecstasy knows no bound, could be ephemeral or lifelong (as I can be the happy prince). So it is obvious that there is some form of duality. And when we say “my mind is fickle” we are hinting at the other “I” which is in the driving seat but the mind which is wandering is just like a kid which wants to go the amusement park and is crying his lungs out about it while he should be going to school. This simple understanding about who is the owner gives us courage or I believe it does to some extent because History stands as a proof of this fact that the moment we realize that we are stronger than our colonizers we drive them away. All it needs is the belief that you are the owner, metaphorically.

The important question that arises after this realization is how to do it. How to arrest the futile wanderings. There can be so many ways but a process I believe that can be employed is the Hegelian Dialectic method. That is the process of Thesis, Anti-Thesis and Synthesis. A process which Karl Marx accepted too. The philosophy is not the same but distorted. When I say we often mostly look at the Thesis part that is the part we need to learn we are often ignoring the Anti-Thesis part that is the part that we should be unlearning. The thesis part will be the discipline part and the anti-thesis will be the problematic habits. It might seem like they are complimentary that when you are in the process of learning, the unlearning happens automatically. It is the case often but not always. Because issues are not always parallel. They are if not anything radial from a point and learning one thing might just help you unlearn one branch that is oozing out of that point. There are several more and they influence indirectly the cause. So keeping an eye on the unlearning is important and when the learning and the unlearning combine, you get the synthesis of a new habit or a better self. The philosophy will be better structured. But the beauty of the method is not in the output which is natural but the process. Because after a certain period the Synthesis will become the new Thesis and there will be Anti-Thesis to deal with and working on both, a new synthesis will arrive. The process is quite endless and one may be weary of this longevity. How are we to become something if we only keep going through this process? The simple answer to this should be that perfection, discipline, stability are not destinations. They are in themselves processes. We are only better than yesterday and can be better tomorrow. There is no stagnation like the Buddhist philosophers would say that there is no “Being” but only “Becoming”. We become more and more of what we want to but never in the entirety. Hence the mind which is mentioned through a “possessive pronoun” now, will be our identity one day but the process is long and arduous and starts with the understanding that it is not on the driving seat.

We have to realize that the personal ego “I” is stronger and our mind wanders because we think we are in its control and watch it do its job, passively. But that is not the case. We have the reins but not the courage. We don’t feel we are part of it. Like in the Hellenistic era paintings, filled with drama, everything that is to happen is happening in the painting. If there is king waging a war or talking to the subjects, they are all in there. The viewer who sees the painting in some museum now is only a passive viewer. But art grew to encompass all and in the later period in the mosaic artwork titled “The Miracles of Loaves and Fishes” circa 520 AD, you would see Jesus standing with his apostles with bread and fish and according to the story there must have been thousands of people but in the painting there are none. Jesus and the apostles look straight out of the painting and when we go to see that painting, we feel as if he was giving us the bread. We feel to be part of the painting. That everyone who sees that painting is believing self to be among the thousand that were there when the miracle happened. This is the sense of identity that is required to understand that we are not passive pillion riders of our mental activity but we are the activity and constraining it or allowing it to flow is our discretion. The mind is not the rider, we are. So drive safe.

(A Hellenistic era painting)

(The Miracles of Loaves and Fishes, Circa 520AD)

Paul Gauguin portrait: source Google.
The paintings have been taken from Google images.

The view in the article is personal and Dabbler Scribbles (Abhishek kumar) hold the copyrights of the same.

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, by Abhishek Kumar

CANVAS OF THE GROTESQUE

( Cave painting of a Bison in Spain)

“Art is to be seen, not talked about”, when Pablo Picasso, the most celebrated cubist artist, quoted art as a subject of understanding and not of explanation, he spoke for the art that might need the crutches of verbal description. Art, in particular, painting, is the record of civilization’s evolution on several social levels. If I can persuade you to take a brief look at the chronological art timeline and feast on the exuberance of various art movements that evolved through history, I will be delighted. But again, in some sense, I will be defying Picasso and his view about art’s perception. I am rather going to talk about art as a subject of subjectivity.

Art has always been there, from the painting in the Caves to the elucidations in Sistine Chapel to the pictures in newspapers and hoardings, it is an indispensable part of human society. Although what art holds in terms of significance has varied through its journey from Caves to computers. Initially when human civilizations started documenting experiences and when there was enough comprehension in people to understand the illustrations, art was tacitly owned by religion as a medium to depict the religious epics on a broader scale. It was in the most modest term considered as a property of the elite class. Only the affluent can own art pieces which were of any significance. Classic art which evolved from painting epics to painting the rich, made the owners flaunt it as a sign of owning great wealth and each painting commissioned was very specific to the mansion or palace that it was painted for. In a way, it was a record of the people who housed such affluent properties. Eventually, the reins of art slipped from the hands of privileged few and fell on the ground amidst the general public in terms of subject and the sitters and locations transformed from the elite class to the common people and their common, ordinary lifes. Realism was the art movement which captured the reality of the working class. From paintings of Dukes and Landlord and ambassadors in classic art, artists started to paint peasants, workers, and vagabonds. It was adeptly complimented by romanticism where there was a bit of drama on display alongside the common life day to day depictions. But this was the era when the walls of rigid and well-defined art were slowly cracking.

Impressionism art movement emerged when the photographs came into existence and it was sort of a revolution against the dark colors and “plastic” pictures clicked by cameras. Impressionists took the responsibility of using bright colors to display the excellent effect of light in painting which the powerless lenses of cameras could not catch. The walls of rigid and agreeable art were broken when expressionism and surrealism came into the picture. When dreams became subjects and expressions and feelings were painted on Canvas in the form of strokes and waves and lines, the requirement of involvement of spectator or viewer increased exponentially. To the common eyes these works seem subversive and a bit childlike. Painters like Vincent Van Gogh and Edward Munch did not receive enough recognition in their lifetime but posthumous their work has been recognized as pure genius. When we moved a little further and were invariably flung into the cradle of modernism, we had cubism, abstract art, and abstract expressionism as the prominent art movements. Where cubism fragmented a picture into geometrical figures, abstract expressionism was in the pure sense to the common eyes mere splashes of paint on canvas. But if they were deeply observed and the viewer allowed himself to flow with those lines, he would embosom the warmth of the emotions that were etched on the canvas by the artist.

If I were to quote an analogy for the evolution of art, I will choose to talk about the simple similarity it shares with the evolution of science, especially from classical to quantum mechanics. On one hand, we had classical mechanics that talked about laws of gravitation and motion whose effects were easily quantifiable by common eyes and hence the substantiality of comprehension was readily available. It was possible to show an apple drop and talk about the gravitational pull. The common eyes were not required to understand complex equation to agree with the fact that there is gravitation. But on the other hand when quantum mechanics emerged, we talked about energy and waves which were not easily understood or “shown” and the common minds found it a little mystical and flabbergasting. Equations were the base of acceptance and substantiality of this evolutionary science was comprehended by a very small section of the world. Abstract art is more or less like quantum mechanics, it seems mystical and there needs a greater involvement from the viewer’s side in comparison to the usual looking at the classical art. This problem exists with poetry too. For a long time, poetry had a specific structure and there were meters to decide its applicability and importance. But most importantly, rhyming was an indispensable part of poetry. But now we have contemporary work that has embosomed blank verses where rhyming has fallen out of poetry’s canvas. Rhyming has become intrinsic and it could be blatantly found in the thoughts but not in words.

Art without definite structures and poetry without rhyming is alarming to many. We have a tendency to reject them as pieces of art in the first place. But these contemporary art forms are more open to emotional interpretations than the classical art were ever. It is the allowing of the viewer to feel his melancholy, his joy, his delusions in those undefined stripes and sprinkles and splashes is what makes abstract art so pivotal. But it is the same allowing that renders it rather mystical and unrelatable by general public. And so it is often accused of being ridiculous and irrelevant because we, the common heads, do not like to invest a lot of ourselves into something that demands pushing our boundaries of general and obvious. We always have the tendency to look for defined and ready-made explanation without much requirement of deductive thinking. Pieces of art which seem achievable by the untalented too are often deemed low in contrary to the ones that have such finish of brushes which seems like a demi-god’s work. We are, on a broader scale, influenced by complex structures and consider only defined complex artwork as actual work of art.

Indian artists like Tayeb Mehta and Francis Newton Souza painted in the simplest shapes and most subversive lines. Their work had a serious impact on the society that we freely breathe in. Symbolism which the modern art speaks of with great pride, aboded their canvases. Souza’s dedication to allow the sensual, oppressive, grotesque to creep up his canvas instigated the acceptability of the Ugly and “tabooed”. His work might seem childlike to few but it is impossible to achieve the effect it had. As a common error we have a humongous tendency to confuse the simple from the ordinary. Simple seems achievable but has an effect that is ungauged and undeniable but ordinary is only achievable. It does not have the effect simple can ever have.

So the modern art, as criticized and as debated as it may be, is only an object of seeing and exploration of the inner self. It is not to be talked about or quantified in terms of structures and definitions because making sense amidst the chaos of colors is commendable, no matter what.