Dennis Hollingsworth

Art and Authencity

On the way to the studio this morning, listening to BBC/Melvin Bragg's In Our Time episode Authenticity.

Notes on the fly:
1. I thought of Ryman when the discussion turned to Heidegger, about how the singularity of his brushstrokes mirrors the singularity of being. Good for analysis of the signal but we live in a myriad. You might be able to make music from a single note but it will have a short horizon of interest. On the other hand, by isolating color, Ryman illuminates facture, the multitudinous qualities of brushstrokes, each as different as snowflakes.

2. Many times I thought of the Duchamp interview while listening to this podcast. His emphasis on avoiding the bonds and integration into society is about the individual and free will and how art can be extinguished by the mechanism of taste and the herd mentality.

3. When the discussion turned to Simon de Beauvoir and the development of self in childhood , I thought of art school and the need to simultaneously champion the authentic within each student and help pilot them into a world very different from the falsely comforting fantasy of trend compliance and utopian dreams.

4. In the mornings when my wife and I are preparing to get on with the day, she asks me, "What will you be doing today?" I reply with a half ironic wink, "I'm going to make something that people will remember and love for hundreds of years to come, Bebe." Temerity is an artists' occupational hazard, after all. But if an artist isn't swinging for the bandstand as the idiom goes, what are they really doing in the studio? At least don't make something that's a dime a dozen.