Is the path is clear in front of you?: on reacting to uncertainty.
Taking ownership of your narrative does not mean trying to control the outcome.
A mentor of mine and good friend once told me that if the path is crystal clear in front of me, I might be taking someone else’s path.
This was antithetical to the perpetuation of clarity [mainly in careers] and the answer I prepared to the “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” question (spoiler: probably still doing art). I’m sure you relate when I tell you about the discomfort in being lost and the journeys we take trying to get to a semblance of an answer. But her comment makes a lot of sense, and gave a new perspective to the individuality of the journey of life we take.
This reminds me of when John Ruskin, an art critic in the Victorian era, wrote:
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts: the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. Not one of these books [of a nation’s deeds, words, art] can be understood unless we read the two others, but of the three the only trustworthy one is the last.
Ruskin juxtaposes the objective and the subjective of human life in his quote, and tells us that human stories, while can be told in their words and deeds, can only be derived from their art; which I feel like also implies their lives in of themselves are the artworks captured in that book. Which might’ve seemed logical in Ruskin’s time given how it still revolved around the formal and the aesthetic of an object and has descended into illegibility over the years, making art today a way of talking about the complicated and increasingly unstable world in which we live in.
I think this uncertainty parallels really well with standing in front of a Cezanne’s “a Man smoking a pipe” and understanding that it is what it is, then looking at any of Pollock’s works and questioning whether we consider a splatter art. Cezanne knew he was drawing a man smoking a pipe, but did Pollock know what he was doing?
This can be seen as art slowly losing its meaning, because we no longer understand what art is trying to say with every movement making it harder to see what’s illustrated let alone understand what its trying to say, as if life couldn’t get more uncertain..
That is the thing, sometimes you just don’t know what you’re looking at. Life is confusing, chaotic, and artists reflected that in different movements. You can never know people, you can never know what’s next, in the same way you can know the history of a piece of art but not have any clue how its significant or how does it exhibit its supposed “meaning”.
This is not saying you shouldn't be introspective, quite the opposite actually, but it should be coming from a place of acknowledgement of the uncertainty and embracing it. This makes for a much more proactive reflection rather than seeking an absolute truth with the piece. Similarly to how we’re trying to set an absolute life plan or seek the right career or partner or what have you as if right has a universal meaning, but it’s relative. A Rothko might not resonate with me but might bring you to tears.
Ben Easthem, a contemporary art critic, puts it in a lovely way that resonated with me:
Works of art are not fully knowable any more than people are fully knowable.
Our paths are unique in their own right, with variables that we work with that might lead to a lot of confusion, but I feel like introspection is a privilege that is gained when embracing uncertainty.
I might not figure it out, but as long as I reflect and recalibrate I think I’m creating an abstract painting worth viewing; a microcosm of my own life in pretty colors.
Signed,
Sarah
For more reading on how confusing art is, check out Ben Easthem’s The Case for Embracing Uncertainty in Art .