In yesterday’s post I shared a few thoughts about the possible future of my art (and by implication that of any artist.) The idea I’m coming round to is that whoever we are in the art world we have little if any control over what people make of our work, and hence over its future. Let me share a couple of illustrations with you from my own experience.
Quite a few years back I was doing my usual thing of loitering with intent, watching the responses of people who were looking at (or not!) my material in an exhibition. An elderly couple stood in front of one of my pictures, based on Victoria Cave, near the Yorkshire town of Settle. They were evidently in animated conversation. I drew closer, and they were commenting on the location of the picture, so I felt I could step in with a comment. It turned out that their interest stemmed from the fact that, many years before, he had proposed marriage to her in the mouth of the cave. They were on the verge of buying it, but realised at the last minute that it was actually too big to go on the wall of their very small cottage.
Even ‘though they didn’t actually buy the picture it made me realise that any future “life” of my picture (its significance for “posterity”) would have had absolutely nothing to do with my own experience and intentions. To be even more blunt, it had little to do with me!
This afternoon, while I was wrapping other pictures, intended for display in the Square &Compass, I fell to thinking about a recent sale I made there. (It was one of my “Beyond” series.) I was interested by the response of the young couple who had bought it, when I delivered it to their home. The rather dreamy mood of the image and its colours were exactly right, they said, for their bedroom, to which it was destined. I was delighted that they were evidently so fond of the piece, but as it lives on in their house it wall take on a life of its own in which it plays a part in their lives. My original inspiration and creative intentions will have little to do with that future.
Our role as artists is to engage to the best of our abilities with the moment of inspiration and the process of creation. Whether or not the things we produce have a life after that, and their meaning, might well have nothing whatsoever to do with their future. In that sense it is perhaps sober to think that our work will have a life from which, in one sense, we will be abstracted.