My favorite novel EVER is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I first read it when I was 17 and since then have probably read all 1000+ pages at least 13 more times. To say read is a bland statement - I devoured this book. I flipped the pages to my original copy so many times, it fell apart and I had to literally bandage it back together with band-aids and duct tape (the only thing available at the moment at hand). To my ever-living regret, I loaned this copy to a 'friend' and never got it back. I now have a new copy whose spine it beginning to fall apart with each flip of the page.
I do have a point..I think...wait for it....
The general premise of this book is 'what would happen if all the productive people who drive society, from artists to engineers, quit?’ What happens when the 'motor of the world is stopped' as John Galt works feverishly to do in the novel. What would happen if Titian Atlas, who carries the weight of the world on his mighty shoulders, shrugs and upsets the order of things?
Now Ayn Rand sets up the characters in this novel as almost super-humans - uber-rich, uber-smart, uber-sexy and faced with decisions and consequences which are supremely magnified from anything we tiny readers might ever face. But what she also does with these characters and others in her novels is create a group sensibility of morals and ethos: productivity, integrity, honesty, justice, independence, pride - also known as 'The Objectivists Ethics'.
In Atlas Shrugged, Rand says of Objectivism:
My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
Here is my quandary...or point...I have lived by or tried to live by this philosophy all of my adult life and thinking back was probably introduced to many elements during childhood. I am productive, work hard, play hard (probably a throw back to my Lutheran/Protestant childhood). I believe in selfishness and self-servingness - I mean really who if not myself knows what is the best thing for me? And if whatever decision made is not the best, then there is no one else to take responsibility but me. Reason and logic are my absolutes. Scientists raised me and I have two degrees in the sciences - order and understanding systems is mandatory in my world.
As an artist do you see a problem with the above statement? I do. That is to say not the entire statement - it is the reason part that as an artist I am having supreme difficulty with. There is a certain logic that should be abandoned when making art, or a logic that is created within a piece as it is being realized. I have a very hard time abandoning reason, logic and the WHY of art in my process. A=A, the law of identity.
Ken asked me to create a visual timeline of all the work I have made as far back as I could go so we could then sit down and look at it in progression and discuss the evolution of my work. I have as yet not had time to do this, but the idea sparked something. I have created this visual timeline in my head and tried to figure out the common link - the one distilled idea that all my pieces at their core have. The one word, concept, idea which I come up with is struggle. My physical struggle with chosen materials, my emotional struggle with personal and intimate relationships, my struggle with my place in society, my struggle with my sex, my struggle with opinions and options associated with my gender, my struggle with rationality, my struggle to find my voice as an artist.
This next week I am being reviewed for advancement in the program. I am showing 3 (maybe 4) pieces that have been made this past month. I began with taking apart a vintage quilt and the question became what to do with it...rational, remember. Influenced by Bill Woodrow's deconstruction/reconstruction pieces, I decided to make a heavy bag out of the quilt remnants. I take kickboxing classes at a local gym mainly for stress management - sometimes it really is a wonderful thing to just take a swing. I began to think about the purpose of the bag - it takes abuse. And so if I made an object to take abuse then what about the object which gives abuse, or in this case the tool...the gloves. So logically I made gloves. These two pieces function in a conversation and don't feel so random. The third piece takes inspiration from the first two and the talk that Ken and I had and the conclusions I came to about my reoccurring theme. It is an undefined form held and bound by restraints - a straight jacket of sorts to my inability to let go of reason. The final piece, which I have not decided to show, is a video piece of deconstruction/reconstruction of the quilt. Stepping back from the work, I can see that there is struggle within almost every element from the materials used, the emotions felt when creating the work. I really hope the presentation of these pieces is not as dry as this writing seems to have gotten......
So as I do a little reflection on my work and get ready to defend it to my advancement committee, I come up against myself as Atlas - the weight of rationality and logic weighing heavy on my shoulders. However, in my case, Atlas does not shrug, he struggles with A=A.
