A little while ago (12 October to be precise) I touched on the subject of memory in art, and I’ve been returning to this over the past few days. I’m just about finished with a piece in my new bout of engagement with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. On the whole I’m quite pleased with it, but in that period during which things I’ve painted sit on the easel and I wait for them to pronounce themselves absolutely finished, several thoughts have come to mind relating to this larger question of memory.
The piece in question relates to the point in the poem at which Eliot plays with the image of the encounter of the disciples with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. The idea I’ve taken up is the image of two people walking along, and perhaps becoming aware that a third figure is walking with them. As I’ve insisted on previous occasions, I am not setting out to provide a kind of “graphic novel” based on the gospel story. Rather I am using the image as a prompt emailing me to explore something in my own memory. It cannot be an attempt to represent memory literally, so the picture has taken on a metaphorical aspect. Neither is it a direct representation of an autobiographical incident. I suppose that in some respects I have to admit that I am concealing as much as I am revealing here. I know that it works for me. The trouble is that I find myself asking whether and in what respect it will be intelligible to others who view it.
This is, of course, a general problem for artists….or perhaps not a problem as much as a simple characteristic of what it means to draw inspiration from personal experience. Sitting here, reflecting on the question, I find myself thinking about Caravaggio, and the way in which his experience of deadly violence gives dramatic force to several of his pictures without ever attempting to describe directly any specific incident in his life. It is probably true to say that one of the main tasks of the artist is to use personal experience as material for creativity without their work ever becoming simply documentary. The challenge is to retain the force and directness of the originating experience while signalling its general interest and relevance.