Dorothy Dunnett

"Facts are the soil from which the story grows.  Imagination is a last resort."

Dorothy Dunnett

Scottish Novelist, Portrait Painter

1923 - 2001

A story should be rooted in reality.  The reader needs to be able to relate the characters to the world that he knows.  Consider the novel, Watership Down, by Richard Adams.  The story is about rabbits and yet, we identify with them because of their human characteristics.  Dorothy Dunnett was a writer of historical novels who did immense research to place her stories in historical reality.  But facts are never enough.  It is in the imagination that the story takes wings and flies far from the facts to spin a story that touches the minds and hearts of the readers.

Have you rooted your stories in the reality?  Have you used your imagination to carry the stories to the heavens?  How about your paintings?  Is there something in the work with which we can identify?  Does the painting carry us beyond the facts into another world?

Frida Kahlo

"I paint my own reality.  The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration."

— Frida Kahlo

Mexican Painter

1907 - 1954

Do you paint the world as you see it or do you paint the world as it really is?  Can we as artists and writers know the world as it really is?  Or do we only experience a version of the world?  Only what our eyes, ears and nose tell us is out there.  Is the world we experience internal or external?  Is the world we remember internal or external?  

Roots (1943)
Sold for $5.6 million (2006)

Do you paint whatever passes through your mind?  Or do you censure what you paint because you think others won't like it or won't appreciate it or won't buy it?  Our minds often serve as judges who tell us what we should or shouldn't paint.  Our minds often limit us and hold us back from producing the art we want to produce.  Frida Kahlo was not that type of artist.  She painted the pain she felt.  She did not limit her art because she felt others wouldn't like it or understand it.  She painted the world as she saw it.  

Here is the movie trailer for the great movie of Frida Kahlo starring Salma Hayek.  If you have not seen this movie, you need to see it today.

Rico Lebrun

"True lines do not exist in nature; we invent them.  They are poetic fiction."  

— Rico Lebrun

Italian Artist

1900 - 1964

Turtle

All creative works of art are fiction.  They do not exist in reality.  Even the most realistic painting or novel have no existence in reality.  They approximate reality.  A painting of a rose is never going to match the real rose in the garden.  Human creativity does have limits.  We can not create the world in which we live.  And this is okay.  We are not gods.  We are not perfect.  Sometimes it is best to accept our limitations than to become frustrated in our attempts to overcome our limitations.

Pierre Auguste Renoir

Self-Portrait, 1910

"There are some things in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is essential."

Pierre Auguste Renoir

French Artist

1841 - 1919

On the Terrace, 1881

All art (painting, sculpture, literature, music, etc) has something that cannot be explained, identified or understood.  A work of art is greater than its creator.  A work of art is greater than the sum of its parts.  When you look at a painting what do you see?  What do you not see?  What is the soul of the painting?  When you read a story what do you feel?  What do you not feel?  What is the heart of the story?  When you listen to music what do you hear?  What do you not hear?  What is the spirit of the music?

When I write a poem, I don't always understand it and others may understand it even less.  The poem has a life of its own — a meaning of its own.  I will come upon it weeks, months and even years later and it has been transformed into something I do not know.  Some days I like it and some I don't, but it is beyond my control.  It laughs at me and demands that I leave it alone.  It never thanks me for bringing it into existence.  It accuses me of locking it in a closet.  It says I was a terrible parent.

Diego Rivera

"Only the work of art itself can raise the standard of taste."

— Diego Rivera

Mexican Artist/Muralist

1886 - 1957

People talk of taste as if it was real.  It is an illusion of judgement.  Every work of art, every poem, and every story has value.  When people begin to label art as good or bad, they are creating false categories that are based on artificial judgements.  What the majority label as good today may be considered bad tomorrow.  You may like something or not like something which in itself is okay.  Liking or disliking reveals something about you.  There is nothing inherently bad or good within the work of art itself.  The sense of good or bad is in the eyes of the beholder.  Any judgement made about a work of art is actually a judgement of the person who made the statement.

While there may only be one person today who likes your art, it does not make the art bad.  Two hundred years from now the majority of people may consider it a masterpiece.  Taste is fickle and useless.

The Flower Carrier

Diego Rivera, the great Mexican Muralist,  painted a number of murals in the United States during the 1930's.  Edsel Ford hired him to paint a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts which is still on view today.  John Rockefeller commissioned him to paint a mural in New York.  Since Rivera was a communist, he included a portrait of Lenin in the mural.  When Rockefeller demanded that he remove the portrait from the mural, Rivera refused.  Rockefeller had the mural destroyed.  In the 1930's, a portrait of Lenin was unacceptable to the American public taste.  A work of art was destroyed because the subject matter was unacceptable.  Three hundred years from now, most people probably will never had heard of Lenin and nobody will be offended.  Remember public taste is fickle and arbitrary.

Alexander Calder

"The universe is real but you can't see it.  You have to imagine it.  Once you imagine it, you can be realistic about reproducing it."

— Alexander Calder

American Sculptor

1898 - 1976

Untitled, 1968

Centro Cultural de Belem

Lisbon, Portugal

Art and literature are created at the point where the universe meets the imagination.  The way we know the external world is through our senses.  Our minds interpret what they see, feel, hear, smell and taste and create the world we imagine to be there.  Even the most realistic painter or novelist interprets the world he sees with his imagination.  Even the most imaginative artist finds the beginning of his creation in the universe.

What is the universe that you see in your mind's eye?  What fantasies do you imagine to be real in your mind?  Art is always an interpretation of the world.  It is never the world.  It is never reality.  It is a pretend world that we believe to be true.

Pablo Picasso

"Art is the lie that reveals the truth."

— Pablo Picasso

Spanish Artist

1881 - 1973

When we stop and think about it, we realize that art is not real.  It is an attempt to create  reality, but it will never be reality.  As Picasso says, it is a lie.  Whether you are a writer or a painter, the world you are creating in your stories and pictures is not real.  But this lie can reveal the truth of the world that cannot be perceived in reality.  Now there is the paradox:  the lie reveals the truth.  

The question you must ask yourself:  Does my art reveal the truth?  Or is it only an illusion?  Only a lie?  Art that does not reveal the truth remains a lie.  What is the truth in your writing?  In your painting?  What insight do you have into life and living?

Here is one of my favorite Picasso paintings.  I have written a poem, Sing A Sad Song, about the painting and the truth that it reveals.

The Old Guitarist, 1903, Oil on Panel, 122.9 X 82.6 cm. Pablo Picasso, Spanish (1881 - 1973), The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection, 1926.253.