After watching "The Beauty of Questions," I began thinking about Robert Irwin and what I could learn from him. He spoke so thoughtfully of his journey through art and life...he seemed able to step away from himself and analyze the developmental stages he went through artistically in order to come to the place where he finally felt that his work was communicating in the way he desired it to. It seems like he came upon an awful lot of resistance in his journey: people didn't know how to react to his work. It defied categorization and even enraged some people as he stripped the idea of a painting further and further away from physical object. I wonder if he always felt as sure of his vision as he did in the retrospective angle of the film. I wonder if there were times...and I remember from the film Irwin describing an opening for his work where a woman yelled at him to "stop it" immediately...when he doubted himself and the validity of his ideas. When he sold all his studio equipment and spent a year in the desert, was he searching for his reason for making, the truth behind it? I suppose that a big part of the reason (THE reason?) we make art is because we have something to say, whether or not it is understood may be irrelevant. But even so, it can't be denied that we make work for others to see, that we want someone to hear what we are saying. Irwin seems so sure of himself...maybe the reason that he resonates with me so much is that I am struggling to pinpoint why it is that I want to speak and what it is that I want to say, and the validity of this desire. The question is, how is that validity determined? Who is in charge of deciding if I am valid? Now everybody sees what Irwin doing when he stopped painting with paint, where he was going with the shadow thing...thus the film about him...but what about in the middle of his development when old ladies were yelling at him in galleries? So who can say in the moment what's right or wrong, good or bad? And why do I even care what others think? This is a constant debate in my head. But I do care, and a lot of times I don't feel so confident, so when I see things like "The Beauty of Questions" or read about someone like David Wilson and his Museum of Jurassic Technology I am recharged and inspired. Sometimes it doesn't matter who is in charge, who says what's art or a painting or a museum. What matters is the drive inside that must be obeyed despite external opposition. Trusting ourselves, questioning established parameters...let someone else figure it out later.
Some thought-provoking quotes from Robert Irwin:
"The act of art is a tool for extended consciousness."
"We have chosen that experience out of the realm of experiences to be defined as "art," because having this label it is given special attention. Perhaps this is all "art" means—this Frame of Mind."
"If that state of consciousness I keep talking about became, in a sense, the consciousness of society as a whole, if we really thought in those terms, and were really that aware, . . . really that sense-sophisticated, then our art would be an integral part of our society, and the artist as a separate discipline or art as a separate event would not exist."
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