Putting Down the Indifferent Blade
Jennifer Reeves
Guesswork has
nothing to do with understanding abstraction. The personal associations we may
glean from an abstract work of art is ours to discover but only the appetizer
to a greater more singularly defined significance. This significance is concrete
and more in our bones than our bones are. Consequently, we are behooved not to
dismiss it lightly with theories of mimetics, impatiently throwing our hands
up in the air because we haven’t yet “got it.” There are times
when abstract art may seem to selfishly reference itself or serve primarily as
a type of vacuous decoration. At its worst, we can’t deny, this is what
abstraction is. At its best, the reason we have the gift of abstraction at all,
is because it is exclusively the clearest artistic expression of inner experience
brought to light that we have to offer. Spiritual life – emotional intelligence,
the workings of the unconscious joining hands with the conscious, “the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”(Hebrews 11), however
you want to explain it – is the subject matter specifically utilized in the art
of abstraction. These sublime psychological complexities reference the thickets
in our hearts and minds as well as in a third place, our souls. The soul. What
exactly is that? Let me attempt to define the term as it pertains to our conversation
here. When saturated in the contemplations of invisible shapes and colors, the
soul is the place in an individual where “aha” moments exist, where
revelations are nurtured. It is the place in thought where one learns how to
be better, the vestibule where spiritual maturation happens. And, in art, abstraction
is the manifest message-bearer particular to this unfolding.
One revelatory
reconstructionist, his feet firmly planted in the precisions of Minimalism, pulls
off the tablecloth of the outward sense of things in one fell swoop. During Robert
Grosvenor’s recent installation of sculpture at the Paula Cooper Gallery,
one could feel the continual centering of one’s sternum bone balancing between
one’s feet. “Feet” is the key word, because the sculptures live
from the stature of the horizontal. They shoot the mind beyond the limited context
of the four gallery walls, beyond the humdrum of immediate thoughts, into long
spills of stilled horizons. There is the immediate sense that one is in an inhabited
place of profound dimension. The inhabitants being the sculptures which pull
the mind slowly around them shyly glimpsing at you as you go. They speak of smooth
surfaces and have the hushed effect of muted colors before the dawn or after
the setting. Inwardly tilted, one figure tells a story of falling rectangles.
Suffering on stilts, he breaks the news to you gently with a silky warm brown
over a cold steel. His negative shapes cast your eyes downward in a slide that
won’t stop until the upper lashes reach the lower ones and your gaze lands
upon the floor to stay awhile. Nowhere to go but onward, your chin lifts to forward
you towards the big mother tulip shape centered upon a humble plywood platform
and beckoning from several feet away. Much larger than her spindly angled friend
and a light yellow, she fleshes out the somber mood with some humor. She is pregnant
with two circles like a distant laughter. Considerate, no harsh telepathy mars
the moment here. Each inhabitant has a perfect specific place and you, the viewer,
are included in the balance. A triangular composition of three made in a Miro
landscape of sky and ground but more somber in mood like the values of solitude
in a Morandi. To be in this place is to acknowledge severe trials and prefatory
joys – to feel the strength of vulnerability and clarity – to be there.
Such is the result
of Grosvenor’s attentiveness. With him not one detail is missed and every
centimeter of space is generously considered. All the arduous labor is understated
behind the scenes and brought to seamless emotional effect. Every care is taken
to subdue superfluous noise so as not to inhibit the free flow of deeper thoughts.
Here, the soul may safely be laid bare. And therein lies the heart of the matter
of Grosvenor’s work. Gentleness and kind attention are revealed to be powerful
spiritual laws. They are principles that serve to waken us from distancing dream
states – to draw close and take notice of what is. As an atypical case in point,
in the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, the hero prevents a fellow inmate from
killing another in a Grosvenor-like fashion. Breaking through the mesmerism,
he directs the panicked man, gripping his victim tightly with a blade to his
throat, to look at his victim’s neck – to see the fragile skin with its
pulsing vein barely beneath. To see the vulnerability of life displayed and remember
how amazingly and strangely beats our hearts. Likewise, this is the revelation
encouraged in the compositions of Grosvenor’s art. He reminds us to still
the rush and take notice of all the particulars beneath the surface we so often
ignore. The soft smooth contours of the soul where closer attention is paid to
living and putting down the indifferent blade.
To be attuned to
the possibilities inherent in the languages of abstraction one has to be awake.
One has to put down the blade and take a mighty leap into the abyss. There is
no formula to be followed but all our intelligence, work, and willingness of
heart, are required. If we are to see what abstraction as an art form can do,
we have to find out for what purpose it exists. Because, really, if there is
no purpose in it beyond escapism, or some such thing, then what are we doing
bothering with it? What are we fighting about? Perhaps, abstraction at its most
volumetric has to do with learning to love our undercurrents – loving the mystery
of them as well as discerning their inherent dangers. To do this requires us
to rise to the occasion and go to the vestibule where spiritual maturation happens
because this is the place where we can learn how to live and how to be present.
As The Shawshank Redemption’s steadfast hero proclaims, there is no choice,
we have no choice, but to “get busy living or get busy dying.”
