As I reflect on the beginning of my artistic journey and the evolution of my blog, I am often reminded that beginnings often express all our longings for what ought to be and, in many ways, summarize all that may proceed. Below is an article I wrote for the journal AziMuth. AziMuth was a collaborative effort by a group of artists, all at the early stages of their development. It was a pleasure to work with all of them, mining an artistic vision that had yet to fully emerge.
Language of the Artistic Journey
[Originally published in AziMuth, a journal of the arts, Spring, 2000]
“There is a splendid land, a land of Cockaigne, they say, that I dream of visiting with an old love. A unique land drowned in our Northern fogs, that might be called the Orient of the West, the China of Europe, where heated and capricious fantasy is given such free rein and has so patiently and persistently adorned it with its learned and luxuriant vegetation.”
(Invitation to the Voyage, Charles Baudelaire, trans. Cosman, Little Brown and Co.)
The beginning of any pursuit must inevitably start with an invitation, whether it be an outward or inward call to action. Charles Baudelaire describes the artistic journey of the poet/painter as an Invitation to a Voyage, a voyage embarked upon by what he calls correspondence. Correspondence identifies the relationship between the artist and his subject in the natural world and its mirrored relationship in the imagination. This deep feeling of connectedness evoked by the subject spawns in the artist a journey into the imaginal world. It is here a dialogue takes place in archetypal terms between the soul of the artist and the corresponding image of the subject.
This journey could be described as a quest in all its fullness. It is a sort of search for a “holy grail” or the “alchemical gold,” one in which the artist is transformed as much as he is transforming his subject. It is a call to “know thyself.” In Baudelaire’s prose poem, An Invitation to a Voyage, he describes this imaginal world in terms of its transformative powers. It is a place where,
“The treasures of the world flow…It is a unique land, superior to others, as art is to nature, where Nature is refashioned by the dream, where it is corrected, recast.”
But what is to be gained on this quest in this “unique land?” Baudelaire states in An Invitation,
“I have found my Black Tulip and my Blue Dahlia. Incomparable flower, rediscovered tulip, allegorical dahlia, it is there, is it not, in this lovely land so quiet and so dreamy that we should go to live and flower?”
(Invitation to the Voyage)
It appears that the rediscovered tulip is the longed for creative impulse, the vital need for inspiration, for a “spark.” And it also appears that the blue dahlia becomes the “poetic Image,” the elusive object sought after in the imagination. These two aspects, the creative impulse and the poetic image, have an internal dialogue within the imagination, providing the artist with the energy and material for the poem/painting.
The artist returns from this world, this journey, enriched, inspired by the image, which is a token of authentic contact. An “event” has taken place within the soul. This event, this powerful experience, calls for a language appropriate to the scale and geography of the imagination. One cannot bring back the experience itself; it has already passed. One can only bring back an equivalent, an analogy for what has taken place. Analogy, therefore, becomes the appropriate language of the artist. There is no other way to communicate—the French 19th-century writer, René Daumal, has directly titled his last novel Mount Analogue, reflecting this theme. Early 20th-century American photographer Alfred Stiegeltz titled his lifetime work on cloud formations, Equivalents. And in regard to painting, Eugene Delacroix, in his journal, puts it this way:
“The figures and objects in a picture, which to one part of your intelligence seem to be actual things themselves, are like a solid bridge to support your imagination as it probes the deep mysterious emotions of which the forms are, so to speak, the hieroglyph…”
(Journal, Delacroix, Phaidon, 1995)
Analogy becomes the language or symbol (symbol in terms of visual imagery) whereby the artist can create the poem/painting. Characteristically, the analogy is independent. It becomes the work itself. It retains a vitality beyond the confines of the creator. Because of this independent life of the symbol, the work can be accessed by all. Analogically, there is a repetition of the original journey of the artist, whereby the work becomes the subject in the natural world, allowing the viewer/reader to find their own correspondence. Through analogy, we can travel to someplace- Mount Analogue or Cockaigne– in the imaginal world. Although this journey has signposts of the artists’ original voyage, everyone must travel inevitably by a different road. The corresponding event, the search for the “Blue Dahlia,” or the “Alchemical Gold,” will be individual and personal. The artist allows for this possibility by leaving a lacuna, described by Baudelaire as a gap, an incompleteness in the artistic work, to allow a place of entry for the imagination.
Tied up with all of this is the artist’s own nostalgia for a revisiting. The poet/painter takes on the role of the viewer/reader in this case. The independence of the analogy takes on another character in the artistic journey of the poet/painter. Therefore, for the artist as well as for the viewer, all “great work,” the “treasures of the world,” become mine. They are mine personally, as well as collectively. I possess them all and am able to dialogue analogically with all the artists, past and present, as well as travel to all those “unique lands,” allowing myself to be personally transformed by each and every work.
“Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.”
(The Art Spirit, Robert Henri, Harper and Row, 1923)
