Why Talking About Art is So Difficult

And Why It's So Important.

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“Arthur Schopenhauer”. By Zach Mendoza. Oil on panel 11”x14”. 2015. Private Collection

“Thoughts die the moment they are embodied by words” -Arthur Schopenhauer

If everything about a painting could be adequately put into words, there would be no reason to paint it in the first place. Whichever medium the artist chooses is their platform for mining the psyche and translating the primordial, the contemporary, the eternal into whichever material or manner they have chosen.

It’s difficult for an artist to talk about their work in the same way it is difficult to tell your spouse why you love them. Each knows this is true but the words on the matter fall short every time. You can point to specific examples, reasons and reminders but a strong marriage seems to be the action of expressing love and devotion across time, two independent lives lived as one. And even that statement doesn’t get to the meat of it.

Words are all we have to share the abstractions that artists contend with. Writers of course, have chosen words as their medium and use the power of story and literary devices as a means to conjure images and illicit emotions in a readers mind. All media; written, verbal, paint, pixel, clay and so on, can then be thought of as a vehicle for getting to the place where we have no words.

As Picasso once said, “Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth”. The image is not that which it depicts as is suggested in Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe. On it’s face, Shopenhauer’s statement about ideas seems wrong when it comes to inspiring others. In a continued dialogue, artists, philosophers, poets and scoundrels contribute their thoughts to the collective unconscious and their initial words spur on future creatives. The written or spoken idea is the soil by which artists will till, water and care for the endeavors which will grow from this proverbial garden. Perhaps Schopenhauer is right on this front too, when the idea dies, its carcass becomes the fertilizer for future makers.