Art, Possibilities, a Little Jazz, and Change

Wildlife Viewing Tips
copyright 2023, Molly Larson Cook
10″ x 8″ with mat
Mixed media collage on illustration board
$50

I’m back this week with Robert Henri’s fine book, The Art Spirit, to which I return often for his wisdom and generous thoughts about art and artists.

Henri did not write about abstract art or collage, but he did write about how artists work and that has not changed in most ways since the book was first published in 1923, 100 years ago. I have no idea what he might have said or thought about art created by AI, but I imagine he would not have been a fan. And neither am I.

For Henri, the artist and the art were so closely connected that, for him, technology could not have created genuine art. I write that not as a Luddite, opposed to all technology, but as a human artist who supports the idea that art is a human activity that involves much more than technique. Anything else is just fooling around. Call it what you will, but please don’t call it art.

Henri was a teacher as well as an artist and his view was that an artist’s education does not come from the schools he or she attended. He believed that an artist’s education “was in his (or her) own hands. All education must be self-education.”

I believe Henri was not diminishing the value of classes and schools of art, but was enjoining would-be artists, and even already established artists, to continue to learn, to experiment, to grow as artists.

The idea of “life-long learning” does not come out of the empty air. Reading the biographies of those who’ve lived very long lives almost always includes a line about continuing to learn and try new things. In other words, people with very long lives never feel “finished.” They keep exploring and finding new ways to be in the world.

I can vouch for this first hand from my grandmother who lived to be 103. Her body declined as bodies will, but her mind was sharp to the end. When she was close to 100, we talked about some work she was doing on family genealogy. She had learned that there were computers at the library which could be helpful, but she was not computer literate like many another older person. And she asked me to explain them to her. I foolishly prefaced the explanation by saying, “Grandma, you don’t have to be afraid of them…” to which she puffed her tiny self up, looked at me sternly and said, “I am not afraid of them. I just don’t know about them yet.”

Yet.

As artists and other creatives, as humans living day to day, it is well to keep the doors and our minds open to new possibilities. For artists, it is perhaps a different medium, a different palette, a new body of work, or something as simple as a new way to set up the studio.

You don’t know how it will work out, and you never will if you don’t give it a try. Possibilities and change…with a little improvisation to keep it interesting.

Jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke once said: “One of the things I like about Jazz is I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” Exactly right, Bix. Exactly right.

And for your listening pleasure, here’s Bix himself…Enjoy