'Binx',
photos by Gary Dobry
Picasso, according to
De Zayas (quoted in Dore Ashton's, A Selection of Views), said that Art is "not
truth". Picasso said if he "pursued a truth on his canvas, he could paint a
"hundred canvases with this same truth. Which one, then, is the truth? And what is
truth - the thing that acts as my model, or what I am painting? No, it's like everything
else, Truth does not exist".
Dore Ashton's A Selection of Views is a pretty good read. One of
Picasso's most famous quotes is in there. When asked about the "search for
truth" in painting, Picasso said that, "I don't search, I find!"
This quote is from the same artist who was quoted, in the very same book, as
saying, "Truth does not exist." A Selection of Views is full of these
kinds of contradictions from Picasso.
Cezanne said, and philosophically Picasso is indebted to Cezanne,
about truth in painting, that one does not "copy nature", rather... one must be
"in-tune with" (or "work like") nature. In explaining this idea
Cezanne used this analogy (paraphrased):
If one were to take a leaf, for example, and render a drawing of
the leaf so life-like that one couldn't tell which one, the drawing of the leaf, or
Nature's leaf, was the actual leaf, it would require the wind to blow by to reveal the
truth! Nature's leaf will be blown away, but the wind will have
absolutely no effect on the drawing of the leaf.
This demonstrates, irrevocably, that a drawing, or a painting, of a
leaf has nothing to do with a leaf ! It is an abstraction, a lie! And…if Art
is anything, Art is truth!
I disagree completely with Picasso when he says, "Truth
does not exist". What was it that Picasso was finding when he told us,
"I don't search, I find"?
Like Picasso, I have no interest in abstract art, yet
philosophically, the artists I agree with most are the abstract expressionists,
particularly Hans Hofman. Which leads me to my Lipstick Paintings.
Over the past three years I've worked on a series of paintings
called The Lipstick Paintings. My concern? Truth in painting.
Picasso's suite about the Artist and Model had a profound effect
on me. It's funny that this suite of etchings was done by an artist who told us that
"truth doesn't exist." To me, the artist/model relationship is no more than the
classic voyeur/exhibitionist relationship. The truth , as Cezanne told us, doesn't lie in
the rendering/copying of the model. The truth lives. The truth
is expressed when we flow like a river or fall like the moon, meaning... when we work like
Nature works; when we express ourself as Nature expresses
itself.
In the Lipstick Paintings, the model expresses herself, on the
canvas. She marks the canvas with her painted lips. She is the exhibitionist. She
moves on the canvas as naturally as clouds rolling across sky. The artist is the voyeur.
This artist/model, voyeur/exhibitionst, relationship is as natural as sun and rain. The
voyeur takes in the exhibitionist. His indigestion results in ectasy. The artist takes in
the model the same way, his indigestion results in art! In truth! After all, what
does one do after one breathes in? One breathes out! This is the
nature of things. "Art works like Nature does".
After the model has marked the canvas with lipstick, after she
has expressed herself on the canvas, and the artist has taken it all in, just as the
voyeur does, the canvas serves as an under-painting onto which the artist
will express himself, relieve his model indigestion.
Truth in painting, as Cezanne said, isn't found in the copying of
Nature or rendering a model into an abstraction. Truth is the circuitry from head to heart
to hand... indigestion that is relieved through expression.
To be God-like on canvas is to be
telling the truth as God/Nature tells it; to create as God creates. Art must be addressed
in philosophical terms because Art is philosophical. The Artist must
live life as truthfully as those clouds rolling across the sky or a newspaper being blown
across the grass. For every 'yes' there is a 'no', for every 'up', a 'down', for every
'exhibitionist', there is a 'voyeur' and for every 'artist', there is a 'model'. No two
snowflakes are the same and each model is a snowflake, each painting is a snowflake. When
we tell the truth, we get closer to God. We are then, one with Nature.
Gary Dobry
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