Untitled (abstract), oil on canvas. 20×35".
I have sympathy for the Wrong. There’s a place in my heart for people throughout history who’ve stuck to some erroneous theory despite the evidence. Like Charles K. Johnson, President of the Flat Earth Society. Or astronomer Fred Hoyle, who couldn’t accept that the universe was expanding, simply because he hated the idea. He actually coined the phrase “Big Bang”, meaning it to be derisive, but others with different sensibilities thought it evocative and punchy and it stuck.
I’m not sure people generally deserve much credit for getting things ‘right’. What gets attributed to insight seems, more often than not, to be a matter of personal taste. Most atheists are not persuaded by logic so much as the idea of logic: they find it beautiful, in the same way that believers are seduced by the romance of religious faith. Obviously even atheism is a leap of faith. You’re operating on an assumption that you can’t know to be true. (That the universe is always logical, for example.) And that’s alright.
You’re guided by what seems proper to your personal sense of propriety, of elegance. If your mental image of a particular description of reality isn’t convincing – cathartic, possessing some terrible beauty – then you won’t be able to commit. If you find the concept of a spherical Earth inherently ridiculous and unpleasant, no argument will convince you. If the idea of the universe beginning with a dramatic, messy, asymmetrical explosion strikes you as ungainly and embarrassingly theatrical, you’ll spend your whole life finding excuses not to believe in it. All belief, all choice, comes down to aesthetics.
But I don’t know where one’s notions of beauty come from. I know my standards of physical beauty are constantly shaped and manipulated by external forces. I know I can teach myself to love certain works of art or certain faces over time. But when it comes to more abstract concepts of beauty, it seems more deeply-rooted, more innate, beyond my power to control.
I suppose truly abstract art is one of the few areas where, as a viewer, you’re encouraged to be irrational. You can indulge in your own unfounded prejudices because the artist isn’t making any pre-emptive excuses by giving you certain things to think about. There are no calls on your attention, nothing to mediate your instinctive feeling, nothing to temper your hate or cool your ardour – no story for you to consider, no narrative, no intellectual subtext. You either like what you see or you don’t. And sometimes it is an enormous relief to just look at a painting and say with confidence, “That is a total load of fucking cock."
That’s what’s scary about making abstract art. Your last line of defence – the artist’s intent – is down. If people don’t like it, you can’t pretend they just don’t get it. I’m getting over that fear. In the past, I’ve always felt apologetic about making paintings that have nothing to say for themselves, like I was pulling a stunt of some sort. If people liked it, I’d feel guilty, like I was getting away with some scam. But I’m over it. I liked making it, I still like it enough not to paint over it, call it a win.
