Sophistication no thanks

 

I don't know what this is all about. I do know that somehow I'm bored with more and more sophistication and panache; that I can't bring myself to make an effort at certain kinds of accuracy or realism, even though I know that would surely thrill me in some way.

I love subdued paintings, all grey and sepia, smudged white, with tiny bits of colour that sing against the linen darkness, and I love well-practiced lines that conjure the perfect form of a hand (hello Durer) or the slope of a nose, a mouth, an upper lip.

And yet somehow I've seen that kind of skill and expertise and subtlety and cleverness and sheer beauty a thousand million times, and I can't find it in myself to try and do a version of all that.

Of course, if I did, I would immediately have to assess myself against the history of 'Western' art, and would find myself, if not utterly wanting, certainly not excited or interested in my contribution. I'd rather just look at the Durer or the Da Vinci in the first place.

I just can't find it in myself to step into that ring. I don't want to try to make a landscape that has the power to be unexpected, thrilling, exciting... how could I ever achieve that, after Rothko, after Turner, after Nolde?

None of this is a conscious decision, it's just the soil, the undercurrent. Instead I go back 5,000 years, 2,500, to gaze at human creations which were made for purposes other than art. There was no art then. There were only human-made artefacts, produced for different purposes; protection, play, supplication...power, warning, gratitude. Making images was just a thing that humans did, like defecation, like eating, like moving to a beat. We are programmed to make images and to respond to them. But not, for me, in the way that any of the art worlds instruct me to today.