Dina Bennett on the Mystery of Art

I have no understanding of the creative process that results in fine art.  As someone who, even with a ruler, cannot draw a straight line, I find myself particularly awed by painting and sculpture.  ‘How do you do that?’ I want to ask, every time I look at a finished work.  ‘How did you know that putting a dot of white right there, or carving away a bit of clay in that spot, would yield a sense of light or give a perception of shadow?’  

 We each look at things differently.  Standing at the Metropolitan Museum in front of a painting by Renoir or Manet (yes, I’m a sucker for Impressionists), I don’t know what that gentleman near me in the loose-fitting brown suit with too-long hair is thinking.  You know the one I’m mean...the one slouched into one hip, who was contemplating the painting when I arrived, hand on chin, eyes lost in the distance.  His stillness speaks of being engrossed, his crepe-soled shoes of a man who’s accustomed to contemplating art for hours.  I can create this myth about him from how he looks, but I can’t know what he sees.  We might nod to each other as presumed fellow aficionados, mutter “Beautiful,” or “Charming,” in a hushed tone.  Yet we just take it on faith that our common descriptive language works and that when we each say blue we’re identifying the same thing.  Yet what’s deep blue to me may be green blue to him.   We don’t really KNOW, do we?  And that’s where I lose it.  If I can’t even be sure that you’re seeing what I’m seeing, how can the artist know that what she’s creating will touch people, startle the viewer into thinking, looking, staying at least a minute or two to ponder the image.

That’s bafflement number one.  Bafflement number two stems for this:  Since I have no knowledge of what goes into painting or sculpting it appears to me that what I’m looking at has arrived fully formed.  One minute blank canvas, next minute sunny windowsill with cat dozing beside a pot of geraniums.  One day block of wood, next day woman combing snarls out of hair.  This creative process is such a mystery to me that it sparks a nearly insatiable craving which I keep at bay only because my mother taught me good manners.  What comes over me is an intense physical urge to touch the work, feel the oily sleekness of that wood, the rough surface of clay, the cool hardness of a bronze cast. I want to run my fingers over canvas like I did the cinder block wall of my elementary school corridor, when we marched single file from classroom to lunchroom. If no one’s looking I’d indulge my craving to push in those thick daubs of oil paint, the ones whose tough skin hide an interior as soft as buttercream frosting.  Perhaps by translating texture into words I’ll be able to discern method.

This craving to put words to the visual makes sense for me. I’m a writer, with a book out there on bookstore shelves and on people’s living room tables.  I've been asked the same questions about writing that I now pose about visual media:  “How did you do that?”  And I say “It took me years.  I studied and practiced. I went through lots of drafts.  I threw out thousands and thousands of words.  I got input from my readers and editors.  I read other books and parsed out what I liked about them, what they did well, what I found engaging.  Eventually the book was declared finished, and was printed, bound and sold.  But was it done?   Even now I can read through the manuscript and itch to change a sentence so the meaning is more precise, so the reader will have a clearer view of what I saw, and a finer sense of my emotions. 

When I read books I understand the process of creating them, because I’ve done it myself. Yet I never think about the craft of writing as I read.  I think only about whether the words on the page speak to me.   Ultimately it’s the same with art.  It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand the gift that allows an artist to transfer what they see in their mind to canvas via the medium of brush and paint.  And it doesn’t matter whether I am able to do the same thing.   What matters is if the piece I’m looking at moves me.  And it does.

Dina Bennett's memoir Peking to Paris:  Life and Love on a Short Drive Around Half the World is in bookstores now.