kylekukshtel-com-mvggiq.txt (8286B)
1 [1]kyle kukshtel 2 [2]About [3]Projects [4]Blog [5]Inspiration [6]Archives [7]RSS [8]Search 3 4 5 Cultivating A Space For The Doing 6 7 An average Tuesday begets strangely connected threads 8 9 May 16, 2023 10 11 Tagged: [9]Art [10]Practice 12 13 Francis Bacon. Painting. 1946 | MoMA 14 15 Creative Meditation 16 17 Apropos of nothing I found myself circling the painter Francis Bacon today in 18 more ways than one. It started a bit with [11]discovering this piece on him: 19 20 What would have happened to Bacon’s career had he been subscribed to nine 21 podcasts? Had he been posting his work to Instagram, and Facebook, and 22 Twitter? Pressure would have leaked from the pressure cooker and the 23 violence of his work would have dissipated. We can debate how much the 24 violence would dissipate, but I’m utterly convinced that it would have to 25 dissipate—other things equal. 26 27 I’ve been working slowly in the background on what’s next after Cantata so the 28 notion of “sharing process” has been on my mind as a marketing technique. When 29 to start? How to start? Should I show stuff? 30 31 But this acted as a pit of a nice pill to swallow, this idea of sort of 32 cultivating your pressure cooker of ideas. In Bacon’s case it was his studio 33 (also some funny parallels here to my own online identity), but as someone that 34 has a full family now and no ability to just hide in darkness for hours, I’m 35 thinking a lot about the ways of making what’s next and how to cultivate that 36 sense of space around me. 37 38 I remember some really great photos from [12]Might & Delight’s studio: 39 40 img 41 42 img 43 44 img 45 46 It then seems obvious that the games they make look like this: 47 48 Picture of a small village during night 49 50 Picture of a bridge surrounded by trees with green leaves 51 52 And not like 53 54 Netflix’s Gears of War will shoot for The Last of Us’s video game TV adaptation 55 crown | British GQ 56 57 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is like an open-world, playable Game of Thrones | The 58 Verge 59 60 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 61 62 This isn’t meant to be some mediation on interior design, but just sort of 63 musing on both the psychogeography of where [13]the doing is actually done, but 64 that there is also a permeating sense of the creation (some may call this The 65 Vibe) that also needs to be cultivated as it shares the space between your mind 66 and where work is actually done. Cue [14]Bacon again: 67 68 Engineer for yourself the smallest possible environment, concentrated as 69 densely as possible with only the highest quality inputs; explicitly 70 re-route all potential distraction-avenues back to one’s chosen craft, such 71 that even when you’re momentarily doing something else you cannot escape 72 the focus of your craft. 73 74 It’s almost a bit like making yourself a conduit for the work, and that it can 75 flow free into and out of you. That it can feel safe moving between those 76 spaces. Gentle thoughts will dissipate in loud spaces, just as loud thoughts 77 may vanish in quiet ones. Bacon’s art very much tuned to his studio: 78 79 The clothes in Francis Bacon’s paintings are as fascinating as the subjects | 80 British GQ 81 82 Studio | Francis Bacon 83 84 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 85 86 The morning’s HN browse [15]then put this article on my radar (“Artists must be 87 allowed to make bad work”), which contains some video interviews of Bacon I 88 started watching but then realized I needed to get a lot of work done and would 89 have to postpone. Their own quote though is relevant to the “pressure cooker” 90 idea from above: 91 92 There is a tendency in our society to be wedded to the new, to be wedded to 93 the excitement of novelty. I think at the present moment that there’s a 94 tendency — which I think we’ve got from America, and which I think is a bad 95 tendency, to measure every artist by his last exhibition. “So and so’s no 96 good, look at his last show!” The fact that he had five previous shows, 97 which were very good, doesn’t seem to matter. It gets forgotten too 98 quickly. And somehow the snap judgement on what one has just done, this 99 kind of pressure it puts on is very dangerous, because artists must be 100 allowed to go through bad periods 101 102 Again this sense of cultivation but also resiliency, that the practice and 103 doing (thanks Jay!) needs to be more about sustainability and craft instead of 104 practice-as-art. 105 106 I remember reading or hearing something recently about someone that was very 107 anti studio-tours from similarly articulated reasons. They sort of feel good in 108 the moment but are a distraction and start to produce weird forces onto the 109 space itself. From the earlier article: 110 111 Bring in nothing but the finest inputs, and focus every possible 112 attentional pathway back into the work at hand. 113 114 Studio visits are bad inputs. Social media validation is a bad input. 115 116 To quote the perpetually-inconvenient [16]adn: 117 118 Game Quality is all that matters 119 120 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 121 122 From here we take then a final trip to our Bacon rodeo with a recent episode of 123 the 301 Permanently Moved: [17]Embrace Cadence, Find Rhythm. Again, very weird 124 that this whole sort of thought circle happened in the span of a few hours, 125 without me proactively following up on any of it. Just a few different 126 independent browse-seshes that resulted in parallel thoughts. 127 128 Now [the artist plants] a garden. 129 130 For it is there the work can flourish on home soil. Let their creations 131 grow roots in persistent mediums. Deep soil of blogs and web domains. The 132 artist can plant seeds here and watch them flourish. It is from this garden 133 sheltered from virtual storms that the artist can do the work that 134 transcends popular concern. 135 136 Do not let the garden be overrun by weeds, The needs of retweets, likes and 137 follows are unhelpful allies. Resist the siren’s call of engagement from 138 beyond the sea. Pursue authenticity. Know thyself; for in the depths of 139 you, the purest art is born. 140 141 The work at first may flourish. Bear generous fruit, enjoyed by both the 142 artist and the audience. But beware, however long or brief the blooming, it 143 will lose its lustre. Guests will leave and once again the artist will find 144 themselves all alone. They must return to work, sowing and pruning, finding 145 fulfilment in the doing. 146 147 Do not tolerate visitors seeking to grade and critique, for in ones own 148 garden there is never best in show. 149 150 Happy Tuesday everyone! 151 152 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 153 154 Published on May 16, 2023. 155 156 Tagged: [18]Art [19]Practice 157 158 [20] 159 subscribe to my newsletter 160 161 References: 162 163 [1] https://kylekukshtel.com/ 164 [2] https://kylekukshtel.com/about 165 [3] https://kylekukshtel.com/projects 166 [4] https://kylekukshtel.com/blog 167 [5] https://kylekukshtel.com/inspiration 168 [6] https://kylekukshtel.com/archives 169 [7] https://kylekukshtel.com/feed.rss 170 [8] https://kylekukshtel.com/search 171 [9] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/art 172 [10] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/practice 173 [11] https://www.otherlife.co/francisbacon/ 174 [12] https://www.mightanddelight.com/ 175 [13] https://www.thejaymo.net/2022/10/15/301-2237-the-doing/ 176 [14] https://www.otherlife.co/francisbacon/ 177 [15] https://austinkleon.com/2023/05/07/artists-must-be-allowed-to-make-bad-work/ 178 [16] https://a327ex.com/posts/game_quality 179 [17] https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/04/30/301-2315-embrace-cadence-find-rhythm/ 180 [18] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/art 181 [19] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/practice 182 [20] https://buttondown.email/kylekukshtel