Art TalkScattered Beauty

Scattered Beauty

This is the story of the simple things in life. The simple things that take us to strange places. We meet strangers in those foreign spaces who take us out of our isolation to see beyond the addiction of loneliness. Or they might even poison the very existence of the solitude we dwell in, with their impure intentions.

Now absorb these simple thoughts and color them with your imagination. Keep on adding more colors as you further read to fill the empty frame you have in your mind. You will find the color of your emotions once you are done painting the frame with your unknown eye.

It’s the simple things in life which take you to the transcendent state embracing the closeness with the things beyond ourselves.

Think about the smile you have when you are looking at something beautiful. Is it a lopsided one or the closed one (a favorite of politicians) or is it the smile you had when you first fell in love?  There is no harm in being impassive, but I don’t want you to be a dead nerve while you are still alive, because dead bodies are expressionless, not the living ones. So show the temerity of being present and lively.

Sometimes, it’s hard to find inspiration. The inspiration to be in the present and being full of zest and vigor. There’s a solution to it and it’s very simple. STEAL IT. Everyone does it. So don’t be hesitant in stealing the inspiration that makes you feel good and happy. Be careful though not to get caught, as this is where your art of hiding comes handy.

To feed my gluttonous inspiration I will steal from Picasso; “good artists copy, great artists steal.” But don’t even think for an instant that I am calling myself a great artist, in fact, I am bewitched by great art and trying to show you the art of stealing and not getting caught.

In 1890, Paul Gauguin moved to the island of Tahiti for his artistic craft. The inspiration came from the inhabitants, the culture, and the landscape of that island. He stole from these things to give birth to an artwork which entwined the Europian themes and the Polynesian lore. Other artists from that era looked to the Islamic cultures  for inspiration. 

2697349905_aac2ba14a5_z.jpgHenri Matisse, a French artist was a collector of artifacts and artworks. One day he showed his friend Picasso a mask he collected from the Sub-Sharan Africa. This mask was the creation of the Dan Tribe. Fascinated by the beauty and the exotic shape of the mask, Picasso visited the Trocadéro Ethnographic Museum in Paris in 1907, to see a collection of the African art. His Les Demoiselles d’Avignon painting was inspired by the African artifacts and is considered as the first truly 20th -century masterpiece while defying the notions of the art world. “It was at once aggressive and abstract, distorted yet primal in it’s raw geometry, a new artistic language with new forms, colors and meanings.”

Did you notice the power of expression Picasso showed? There was a hubris in the way he crafted his body of work. The ritualistic certainty of his oeuvre teases you to be bold and deviant; ‘things’ lacking in the artists who follow the artistic norms. The deviation to reject the traditional means and  expressing oneself is what makes art special.

The subject is in search to find redemption and the artist is looking for the color to fill that void. Even painting it red or black or gray, he has to slit the colors deep, so that it leaves a stain which titillates the sin but redeems the sinner

Depending on your personal proclivity, you may love or hate certain aspects the way the colors tempt you. Sometimes the artist plays the dominant role and his art the submissive one to satiate your eyeballs. Other times the artists may allow being the passive bottom and letting his art be the active muse. Either way, he is seducing the idea to make you feel euphoric about what you see and make you reach to the pinnacle of ecstatic pleasure or sweet pain.

There is a romance to everything you do. At times, your romantic flair extinguishes and boredom starts creeping in. This boredom though has the talismanic effect of enlivening your sexual urges. You indulge in it to satiate one of your seven deadly sins and color the devoid romanticism with the color of love or should I say sex? Contemporary art, because of its arrogance, might prefer calling it fuck.

Sex is a taboo too to some in this modern day and age and one’s indulgence in it may be deemed a paradoxical sin in the artist’s eyes. To the artist, it might not be taboo, but to the subject, in the artist’s mind, it is, as he has eluded his puritanism. The artist has to stain the canvas with this paradoxical sin. He might color the committed sin with red, may be blood red or he might paint it gray or black. The subject is in search to find redemption and the artist is looking for the color to fill that void. Even painting it red or black or gray, he has to slit the colors deep, so that it leaves a stain which titillates the sin but redeems the sinner.

The nuances that set up the artistic craft and which has a language of desirability entertains the idea of enamoring the scattered beauty in the universe. The secret glimpses to the encounters we have with the man-made beauties submerge you in the color of its created cult. It’s the simple things in life which take you to the transcendent state embracing the closeness with the things beyond ourselves.

-By now, the empty frame your unknown eye has been filling in must be completed. If it’s not scattered with the colors of beauty, start painting it again.


 

Photos Credit: Elizabeth Weller and Jordan Lewin (Flickr Creative Commons)

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