Inspiration

Falling Water at Horseshoe Bay

Inspiration is something that all creative types live with. Either the inspiration tap is dry or it is flowing too much and the overspill causes a bit of internal havoc. 

Inspiration is such a hackneyed but necessary concept that the word is part of our daily conversation, whether we are talking about studio work or what to make for dinner.  Yet we don’t really know what it means. For most people it is that trigger solution to make things better or happier. I used to see artists in their studios flipping through art magazines or scrolling online to find just the right image or the new image that could talk to them.

For many, inspiration is a creativity prompt, and these days the process is digitally enhanced.  Creativity consultants, whatever that is, now recommend combining or “jamming” opposite or asymmetrical ideas to see what emerges. It is a way of getting by the stolid gatekeeper who only recognizes visual ideas from yesteryear. All interesting stuff, but the problem is that such initiatives are mental efforts that ignore a few basic truths.

First, art comes out of the body. You paint, you sculpt, you create things with your body, and there is a definite specific awareness that travels between hand and brain. Of course there is digital creation, but the more we get away from the role of the body in creation, the farther we get away from art that enlivens us. It would take an entire essay to argue the point, and even then there would be some who would remain unconvinced. I know this because many years teaching brought me “older” students in their thirties or forties who were convinced that the next stage of evolution was the cyborg. Nature would be superseded. 

Secondly, art comes out of and feeds the feelings. By feelings, I am not referring to mushy emotions or sentimentality, which I see as a category of weak thinking and not an aspect of feeling. And one thing we can definitely say about feeling is that it is engaged with the body. And the body, in turn, is engaged with Nature.

You don’t have to make art about Nature. But our bodies are part of a natural process called birth and life, and that process needs Nature to survive. Stuff like air, food, water. That natural process is our mother.  Not your actual mom, though as a human being she is a part of this too, but the sustaining pattern of all life. And Nature sustains not just your bio-mechanical organism; it sustains and enlivens your consciousness, your feelings, your instinctive and intuitive responses. So to make art and pretend that it has nothing to do with any of this seems unreasonable.

But not just that. The root of the word inspiration comes from a Latin word that means to breathe in. From Classical times right through the Renaissance and into the early Enlightenment age, the idea of inspiration depended on an understanding that images and ideas were spiritual and “lived” in the air, so to speak. The ancient Greeks believed that the Muses would visit those who were properly prepared, reverent, and worked hard. Doing mindful breathing exercises along with some form of meditation or prayer put the artist in the frame of mind to receive help from the muses. That help was inspiration. Inspiration never replaced hard work or talent, but its existence allowed something special to take place. Greek myths are full of stories about humans who tried to take sole credit for some creation. But it is the power and presence of the god that allows for the creation to take place. The myth of Arachne, a superior weaver, and the goddess Athena, is one such story. For failing to have reverence for the god, Arachne is turned into a spider. 

Of course we no longer live in a time when we believe that gods fly around and magically empower our work. Put like that, the idea seems embarrassing. But it is certainly not just ancient or just Greek. The great artists of Persia, India, and Asia all had similar notions. The Japanese brush masters, even in the twentieth century, had the concept of “Muga”  (it is not I who do this). Similarly, Chinese brush masters of the modern period, like Lin-Chin-Shek (for example), believed that every stroke had to be conscious and alive, and they could detect, just by looking at a painting, which strokes were “throwaway strokes.” And we can think of modern and contemporary North American and European artists, who are part of the canon of accepted great work, and who acknowledge help from Above or within. Artists talk about working hard and at a certain point getting out of the way.

Yet discussions about art seldom have room in them for exploration about what contemporary notions of inspiration might be.  There is a lot of sociology and deconstruction and theory but very little actual nutrition. 

It would be interesting to see what practice artists could develop or have developed whose purpose was preparation to create and inspiration.  What do you think?