Finding art
/A photograph was posted on Twitter last week that struck me in its power, so I saved it to blog about it today.
Let’s assume for a moment that we know nothing about the actual subject matter (which we’ll get to in a moment). What is this?
We might think that this is one gigantic art installation, and isn’t it amazing? The powerful, broken figures, the variation on the theme of pylons, the vast landscape used to provide us with that sense of Ozymandias’s grandiose brag: “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
It’s a monument of desolation, of the hard fact of entropy. And yet — and I think this is the purpose of MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT — the artist has uttered their barbaric yawp: “Here I am. I was here. Eventually all this will disappear, but I put it here. I organized the universe, pulled all this together out of the chaos, and MADE THE THING THAT IS NOT.”
It’s the kind of thing you might expect to see out on the playa at Burning Man (if it weren’t for the grass and earth modification and if Burning Man’s ethos were a lot more negative). If you’re particularly ambitious, it probably inspires you to think about doing something similar, though certainly not on such a gargantuan scale.
Even if you’re not ambitious, didn’t your brain start tickling itself with the possibility of doing something like this? Hold that thought.
The photo is by Nadav Kander, published in his Dust, and it’s of an abandoned Soviet nuclear test site in Kazakhstan. Knowing that probably informs and amplifies your reaction to it, and now we have to understand that the MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT is Nadav Kander’s, not some artist with an insane vision and budget to match.
So, our two lessons:
When you see an artist’s work that intrigues you, STEAL FROM THE BEST and see what it is that intrigues you — then incorporate that into your own work.
Pay attention to the world — even if it’s not some unworldly locale like this. You can turn what is in front of you into the THING THAT IS NOT: photograph it, paint it, sketch it, write a poem or a story, turn it into Hamilton.*
Next Monday, I’ll give you an example from my creative life, a project that I’ve started that may very well come to nothing — but if I can pull it off I SHALL WIN ALL THE THINGS.
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* That opening squeal? It’s a squeaking door hinge.
