I had never thought of this before today, but it came to me that there might be two quite different ways of doing art. There are occasions on which I attempt to produce images that represent some kind of enduring idea, or symbol, that has a kind of durability about it. I suppose that the series of works I have done tend to fall into this category–the Four Quartets series, or the Set Apart series. The work I did responding to Italian experience during the Great War falls into this category also. The experience that set me reflecting on this approach to art was some time I spent earlier today glancing again at the Wassail set of drawings I made earlier in the year.*
By way of contrast, as great deal of my work has to do with the attempt to capture a fleeting moment of perception. On the wall above the desk as I write this is my drawing entitled After the Supper, which falls into this category. Good deal of my landscape work comes under this description. Oddly, I would argue, my obsessional engagement with Almscliff Crag has this character. Despite the fact that the crag is known to local Yorkshire climbers as “God’s Own Crag” I have no theological ideas in mind when I do these images. It doesn’t symbolise anything. It is simply itself, and I record the succession of images produced by my years of encounter with it. On these occasions I am an “artist of the moment.”
This evening I want to put in a plea for the importance of attention to the moment. I am very fond of the little-known opera by Arrigo Boito, entitled Mefistofele. You might have guessed immediately that it is a retelling of the Faust story. I believe he completed it in 1868, some years later than the better known version by Gounod. (In my opinion, however, Boito’s version is better.) Faust is saved by his uttering of the one phrase Mephisto dreads to hear: “Stay forever, precious moment, for you are lovely.” (Sacro attimo fuggente, arrestati, sei bello!) The instant in which beauty is recognised, and acknowledged for what it is, is the moment in which Faust is redeemed. It is worth thinking about that.
In the past I believe that I have tended to value more greatly those aspects of my work that attend to enduring symbolic images. Now, however, I’m not so sure.
*These are not yet reproduced in my “galleries” because I have not had them photographed yet.