The art I make and the art that I respond to is as fiction is to writing, a place of control and resolution. I am reading a novel now in which all hell breaks loose. The family portrayed is dealing with difficulties which spiral into a hideous and painful mess; lives are knocked off their path and into a place of unforeseen suffering. I read on anxiously knowing that there will be some kind of resolution, most likely not a happy ending but resolution nonetheless.
That is most of what art is about. The artist gets to make something happen according to his own lights. Who amongst us hasn't at some point wished for a magic wand to convert an awful situation into the fantasy that we crave? Or maybe just to experience something that is not in the cards for us?
Well, look no further. It is available in a museum, at a library, at the theater, and in our fertile human brains. Art is generous.
Saul Bellow, speaking of his books, - Nobel Prize Lecture, 1976: The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science.
The image above is Square One ©2007, Acrylic & Mixed Media on Archival Board, 24 x 24". For information about any of the paintings on this site, please email Joan.
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