I am Man. Male.

In This Bloutcher

• I am Man. Male.
• Announcements
  

I am Man. Male.

That means I don't ask. At least in public where I might be embarrassed for not knowing. I don't ask for help. Or anything else that might hint at a handout. I figure it out. I am good at repartee, not disclosure. I'm the hunter. I capture or conquer. I provide.

I am a craftsman. I know how to make things--that's THINGS--and make them work. Homo Faber--Man the Maker, the fabricator. I don't whine. I solve problems. I'm a man. Male. And I am lonely.

Being Male means innovation, yes. It is practical. It has utility. Creativity, eh. Pure whimsy. What's its purpose?

Being Male inhibits my creativity. Creativity flows from vulnerability. From longing. From wonder. Not from solving but from touching the untouchable. Not from the hands or the brain or even from the wits, but from the firmament. Look up, O Male. Take in the stars. Close your eyes and see!

Please excuse the above rant--well, actually don't excuse it. I wanted to give you a sense of where one of my paintings came from. It speaks to the sources of inspiration. And the peculiar process of creating. I'm sure we have all experienced it at different times and in different ways.

Let's go back to the day I was leafing through a copy of The New Yorker and came across this photo.

It caught my attention for reasons I could not explain at the time so I tore it out and kept it in my studio for many months. Whenever I looked at the photo I couldn't escape the feeling that it was something more than a photo of a man running down the street in a suit. Perhaps he was Modern Man? Post Modern? Whatever that means. On the run in any case. But from what and toward what? And then he seemed so alone. I was also reading about and looking at the work of Spanish painter Francisco Goya at the time. And was both floored by and inspired by his painting The Dog (1820-23), a foreshadowing of post modern (whatever the hell that means) angst.

That is when I started sketching out some possibilities. Example on the right.

And then I moved into painting. I might stumble across something in the process, I thought. I didn't need an answer at the outset. I just needed to get started. Sometimes I have a title in mind before working on a painting and I keep it. Other times I end up changing the title. And still other times I don't have a title until the end, if even then. And then I change it. This one I called "Running Man" and I have kept it all the way through. The quote in the painting is from Ecclesiastes: "Running Man is like a breath...his days are like a passing shadow."



That doesn't mean I didn't run up against problems while working on it. In fact, at one point I was so frustrated that I made the above entry which kicks off this bloutcher (I am Man. Male.) in my sketchbook. Ouch. Did I really mean it? Do I really believe this? Does being Male limit creativity? Neuroscientists are discovering that creativity is a whole brain activity (versus an exclusively right brain activity) so perhaps creativity is enhanced through the union of opposites--the best and worst of male and female.

And what does the experience of creating the Running Man painting say about the creative process of living and life change?


Here are a few quick thoughts:

• Sometimes the best way to engage an idea is to separate from it. [Thank you Dr. George Klavens for this notion.] Instead of pursuing it, let it pursue you. Sometimes you simply have to let an idea float. It's not ready for prime time or for action.
• Creativity does not occur through thinking but when emotion and thinking combust with each other. When we are considering life change or are in it we need to listen to both our heads and our hearts.
  
• And, finally, when you and the idea are ready for each other it only means the work is just beginning.
  

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Announcements:

• On October 4th, 7 p.m., I will be speaking at University of St. Catherine, Jeanne D'Arc Auditorium, 2004 Randolf Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, sponsored by the pioneering organization SHiFT. Topic: What the Great Masters of Art Can Teach Us About Navigating the Second Half of Life with Vitality, Creativity and Meaning. Start time is 7 pm. Admission is free with donations accepted. For reservations simply email: DavidBuck4@gmail.com
• There is a movement afoot called Positive Aging. For those who are dissatisfied with the old model of aging as one of decline, stepping away and retreating then please check out the 4th International Positive Aging Conference in Los Angeles December 7-10. Go to the Life Planning Network website at: http://www.lifeplanningnetwork.org/index.cfm?action=main.conference10
• I will be speaking at the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE) on October 16th at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. http://www.arohe.org/conferences.php
  

Art & War

In this Bloutcher

• Announcements
• Art and War; and a Gentler Order of Feeling
  

Announcements:

• If you are in the Boston area, please join me at the Newton Public Library on September 13th, 7 pm, for an Author's Talk and book signing. I will be discussing Becoming a Life Change Artist; 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life. Get there a little early because I will have a special guest handing out some special goodies! Thank you to Discovering What's Next and the Newton Public Library for sponsoring this event.

• Anyone who cares about creativity and its importance in American life and business should check out the article in Newsweek that appeared a few weeks ago: The Creativity Crisis. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html. It's time to take this seriously. At the very same time that this article is sounding the alarm, the 2010 IBM CEO Study shows that CEOs identify creativity as the number one need in business leaders.
  

Art and War

All the recent news about combat troops leaving Iraq and the ongoing concerns about Afghanistan brings up for me the very strange relationship between Art and War.

For one thing artists such as Picasso have been credited with introducing camouflage into modern warfare. Now that's a strange footnote to military history! And Leonardo Da Vinci was the man who both painted the Mona Lisa AND invented prototypes of war machines such as the tank.









Leonardo's Tank


WWI Camouflaged Boat


But for me the most compelling story about art and war relates to a lesser known but remarkable French sculptor and artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

At the beginning of the last century he was unknown in his native France but hung out in London with some of the artistic greats such as Jacob Epstein and Ezra Pound. By the time he enlisted in the French army at the age of 22 at the outset of WWI he had already produced over 120 sculptures and 2000 works on paper including pastels.

Gaudier-Brzeska sent several letters from the front in which he describes the day to day scene around him. "Human masses teem and move, are destroyed and crop up again. Horses are worn out in three weeks, die by the roadside. Dogs wander, are destroyed and others come along. The bursting shells, the volleys, wire entanglements, projectors, motors, the chaos of battle do not alter in the least the outlines of the hill we are beseiging." Trench warfare was brutal, often fought hand to hand. Corpses laid in the wasteland between the two encampments.

At one point Gaudier-Brzeska wrestles a mauser from a dead German soldier and takes it back to his trench during a break in the battle. In a letter he reflects: "It's heavy unwieldy shape swamped me with a powerful image of brutality. I was in doubt for a long time whether it pleased or displeased me. I found I did not like it. I broke the butt off and with my knife I carved in it a design, with which I tried to express a gentler order of feeling which I preferred."

In the midst of this horrific devastation the young Gaudier-Brzeska finds it within himself to reconfigure a weapon of killing into a "gentler" form.

Two months after he sent this letter, Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in battle. He was 23 years old.

Art and War. Artist and Soldier. Creator of life and Destroyer of life. How do you explain this side by side capacity for brutality and gentelness? Where does it come from? These opposites contained within us?

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