183 lines
8.1 KiB
Plaintext
183 lines
8.1 KiB
Plaintext
[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
|