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+[1]kyle kukshtel
+[2]About  [3]Projects  [4]Blog  [5]Inspiration  [6]Archives  [7]RSS  [8]Search 
+
+
+Cultivating A Space For The Doing
+
+An average Tuesday begets strangely connected threads
+
+May 16, 2023
+
+Tagged: [9]Art   [10]Practice  
+
+Francis Bacon. Painting. 1946 | MoMA
+
+Creative Meditation
+
+Apropos of nothing I found myself circling the painter Francis Bacon today in
+more ways than one. It started a bit with [11]discovering this piece on him:
+
+    What would have happened to Bacon’s career had he been subscribed to nine
+    podcasts? Had he been posting his work to Instagram, and Facebook, and
+    Twitter? Pressure would have leaked from the pressure cooker and the
+    violence of his work would have dissipated. We can debate how much the
+    violence would dissipate, but I’m utterly convinced that it would have to
+    dissipate—other things equal.
+
+I’ve been working slowly in the background on what’s next after Cantata so the
+notion of “sharing process” has been on my mind as a marketing technique. When
+to start? How to start? Should I show stuff?
+
+But this acted as a pit of a nice pill to swallow, this idea of sort of
+cultivating your pressure cooker of ideas. In Bacon’s case it was his studio
+(also some funny parallels here to my own online identity), but as someone that
+has a full family now and no ability to just hide in darkness for hours, I’m
+thinking a lot about the ways of making what’s next and how to cultivate that
+sense of space around me.
+
+I remember some really great photos from [12]Might & Delight’s studio:
+
+img
+
+img
+
+img
+
+It then seems obvious that the games they make look like this:
+
+Picture of a small village during night
+
+Picture of a bridge surrounded by trees with green leaves
+
+And not like
+
+Netflix’s Gears of War will shoot for The Last of Us’s video game TV adaptation
+crown | British GQ
+
+The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is like an open-world, playable Game of Thrones | The
+Verge
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+This isn’t meant to be some mediation on interior design, but just sort of
+musing on both the psychogeography of where [13]the doing is actually done, but
+that there is also a permeating sense of the creation (some may call this The
+Vibe) that also needs to be cultivated as it shares the space between your mind
+and where work is actually done. Cue [14]Bacon again:
+
+    Engineer for yourself the smallest possible environment, concentrated as
+    densely as possible with only the highest quality inputs; explicitly
+    re-route all potential distraction-avenues back to one’s chosen craft, such
+    that even when you’re momentarily doing something else you cannot escape
+    the focus of your craft.
+
+It’s almost a bit like making yourself a conduit for the work, and that it can
+flow free into and out of you. That it can feel safe moving between those
+spaces. Gentle thoughts will dissipate in loud spaces, just as loud thoughts
+may vanish in quiet ones. Bacon’s art very much tuned to his studio:
+
+The clothes in Francis Bacon’s paintings are as fascinating as the subjects |
+British GQ
+
+Studio | Francis Bacon
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+The morning’s HN browse [15]then put this article on my radar (“Artists must be
+allowed to make bad work”), which contains some video interviews of Bacon I
+started watching but then realized I needed to get a lot of work done and would
+have to postpone. Their own quote though is relevant to the “pressure cooker”
+idea from above:
+
+    There is a tendency in our society to be wedded to the new, to be wedded to
+    the excitement of novelty. I think at the present moment that there’s a
+    tendency — which I think we’ve got from America, and which I think is a bad
+    tendency, to measure every artist by his last exhibition. “So and so’s no
+    good, look at his last show!” The fact that he had five previous shows,
+    which were very good, doesn’t seem to matter. It gets forgotten too
+    quickly. And somehow the snap judgement on what one has just done, this
+    kind of pressure it puts on is very dangerous, because artists must be
+    allowed to go through bad periods
+
+Again this sense of cultivation but also resiliency, that the practice and
+doing (thanks Jay!) needs to be more about sustainability and craft instead of
+practice-as-art.
+
+I remember reading or hearing something recently about someone that was very
+anti studio-tours from similarly articulated reasons. They sort of feel good in
+the moment but are a distraction and start to produce weird forces onto the
+space itself. From the earlier article:
+
+    Bring in nothing but the finest inputs, and focus every possible
+    attentional pathway back into the work at hand.
+
+Studio visits are bad inputs. Social media validation is a bad input.
+
+To quote the perpetually-inconvenient [16]adn:
+
+    Game Quality is all that matters
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+From here we take then a final trip to our Bacon rodeo with a recent episode of
+the 301 Permanently Moved: [17]Embrace Cadence, Find Rhythm. Again, very weird
+that this whole sort of thought circle happened in the span of a few hours,
+without me proactively following up on any of it. Just a few different
+independent browse-seshes that resulted in parallel thoughts.
+
+    Now [the artist plants] a garden.
+
+    For it is there the work can flourish on home soil. Let their creations
+    grow roots in persistent mediums. Deep soil of blogs and web domains. The
+    artist can plant seeds here and watch them flourish. It is from this garden
+    sheltered from virtual storms that the artist can do the work that
+    transcends popular concern.
+
+    Do not let the garden be overrun by weeds, The needs of retweets, likes and
+    follows are unhelpful allies. Resist the siren’s call of engagement from
+    beyond the sea. Pursue authenticity. Know thyself; for in the depths of
+    you, the purest art is born.
+
+    The work at first may flourish. Bear generous fruit, enjoyed by both the
+    artist and the audience. But beware, however long or brief the blooming, it
+    will lose its lustre. Guests will leave and once again the artist will find
+    themselves all alone. They must return to work, sowing and pruning, finding
+    fulfilment in the doing.
+
+    Do not tolerate visitors seeking to grade and critique, for in ones own
+    garden there is never best in show.
+
+Happy Tuesday everyone!
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Published on May 16, 2023.
+
+Tagged: [18]Art   [19]Practice  
+
+[20]
+subscribe to my newsletter
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://kylekukshtel.com/
+[2] https://kylekukshtel.com/about
+[3] https://kylekukshtel.com/projects
+[4] https://kylekukshtel.com/blog
+[5] https://kylekukshtel.com/inspiration
+[6] https://kylekukshtel.com/archives
+[7] https://kylekukshtel.com/feed.rss
+[8] https://kylekukshtel.com/search
+[9] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/art
+[10] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/practice
+[11] https://www.otherlife.co/francisbacon/
+[12] https://www.mightanddelight.com/
+[13] https://www.thejaymo.net/2022/10/15/301-2237-the-doing/
+[14] https://www.otherlife.co/francisbacon/
+[15] https://austinkleon.com/2023/05/07/artists-must-be-allowed-to-make-bad-work/
+[16] https://a327ex.com/posts/game_quality
+[17] https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/04/30/301-2315-embrace-cadence-find-rhythm/
+[18] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/art
+[19] https://kylekukshtel.com/tagged/practice
+[20] https://buttondown.email/kylekukshtel