{"id":3091,"date":"2010-03-10T12:53:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T17:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2010\/03\/the-gift\/"},"modified":"2010-03-10T12:53:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T17:53:43","slug":"the-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2010\/03\/the-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gift"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

One of the reasons, if not the<\/span> reason, "conceptual art" has never found purchase in my mind is, I think, because of the very presence of the artist as the source of the conceptual puzzle. It seems to me such an obvious conceit and therefore, regardless of scope or complexity, small.<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Garrison Kiellor observed, "A poem is not a puzzle that you the dutiful reader is obliged to solve." Is it not so for all artistic endeavors?  Does the work register? resonate? provoke or evoke a feeling without our first thinking about it?<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Many artists, myself included, sense that there is something more that results from our creative efforts, usually without being able to precisely describe what that "something" may be.<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

 Lewis Hyde addresses this notion in his book, The Gift: "…along with any true creation comes the uncanny sense that "I," the artist, did not make the work."  And, wrote D.H. Lawrence. "Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me." I heard this referred to recently as: "….the secret strangeness that lies beneath the world of appearances."<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

One is almost inclined to believe that trying to pin down this elusive quality of artistic expression may result in the destruction or dissolution of it's power – better not to know.  Perhaps it's akin to the curious physics principle that the very act of quantifying the speed or mass of a subatomic particle actually changes the particle.<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

Or maybe Louis Armstrong said it best when, asked what's jazz replied: "If you have to ask, you'll never know."<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the reasons, if not the reason, "conceptual art" has never found purchase in my mind is, I think, because of the very presence of the artist as the source of the conceptual puzzle. It seems to me such an obvious conceit and therefore, regardless of scope or complexity, small. Garrison Kiellor observed, "A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}