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Yellow and Blue, a la Rothko

March 2, 2025 by redtreetimes

Mark Rothko –Untitled (Yellow and Blue) 1954

“You might as well get one thing straight. I’m not an abstractionist… I’m not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.”

― Mark Rothko, 1956 Interview with Selden Rodman

I used a representation yesterday of the colors of the flag of the Ukraine that was actually a detail, shown above, taken from the large Mark Rothko painting shown at the top. I had used this detail before in a post around this time in 2022, one which drew a lot of attention yesterday. Enough so that I went back to check out that post which I am sharing again today as the quotes in that post from Rothko speak so clearly to a lot of things that I have been focusing on recently, on both this blog and in my work.

And since it is Sunday, I am also sharing some Sunday Morning Music at the bottom. In light of what is taking place in this country, the calming effect of Gnossienne No. 1 from Erik Satie seems like the right choice to accompany Rothko as Satie’s work followed similar paths of deep expression and silences. The version I am sharing is a mesmerizing performance from celebrated Finnish guitarist Otto Tolonen.

Busy morning ahead with painting and plowing from what I hope is the last snowfall of this winter. But I thought I would share a Mark Rothko painting (the image at the top is only a detail of its lower section- the whole painting is shown here on the left) and a video on it from Sotheby’s auction house (where it sold for $46.5 million in 2015) along with several Rothko quotes.

Rothko (1903 -1970) was a big influence on my early work. The idea of expressing the big human emotions through simplified forms and color really spoke to me because I never looked at painting as a craft but more as a means to express those forms of emotion that well up inside because they are sometimes too difficult to express in words and voices.

Another aspect that attracts me to Rothko is that he, like Kandinsky, was often eloquent in speaking about his work and art in general. And in those words I found that my own already developed perspectives often largely meshed with and echoed both of these artists’ words and views.

For example, in the quote below the idea that a picture lives by companionship is one that is central to my work.

“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.”

Here a few more that also speak to me, things I have often written about here, about the need of emotional expression in art and of the searching for silence.

“It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.”

“When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them.”

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Oops!

March 1, 2025 by redtreetimes

“…I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.”

– Mark Twain, “Foster’s Case,” New York Tribune, 10 March 1873

I guess I was a little quick on the trigger in writing about Trump’s betrayal of his voters and many other Americans. If I had known that less than twelve hours later that he would be betraying our allies and the established world order, I might have held off. 

It was the most hideous spectacle I have ever witnessed from an American president as he and his toady VP ambushed Ukrainian President Zelensky in the White House. I am not going to go into the details of the event. You have to see it for yourself and not depend on the milksop coverage from the media. If you can watch Trump’s performance yesterday– and that’s what it was, a performance– and not feel a combination of revulsion, anger, shame, and dread then we are living in two very different countries.

Maybe even on different planets.

I’ve been around awhile and have seen some things. I have been proud of this country and what it has come to represent at times. And there have been a few times when I have been less proud. But there has never been a moment when I felt what I am feeling now. Words fail to express my anger and shame at what we have become.

But even worse is the dread that came with them. This betrayal of our longtime allies and all democracies around the globe was so brazen and obvious that it made me worry that these people– if I can call them that– believe that they have everything in place, or nearly so, to stay in power indefinitely. 

They have pretty much deconstructed all guardrails and oversight that might check their acquisition of absolute power.  With their total control of all agencies and branches of government nearly at hand, they no longer need to keep up the pretense that they are obligated to faithfully serve anyone other than themselves and their authoritarian partners abroad. They answer to no constituency other than themselves. 

They operate now with open hubris, believing they are untouchable going forward. 

I get irked and sometimes laugh when I hear journalists or politicians talk about approval polls or the need to find a way to work in a bipartisan manner with this government. I believe that they feel that they cannot be defeated at the ballot box now, that they have the ability to either produce the results they desire or, if not, have the authority and means to overturn undesirable results in upcoming elections. When voting no longer matters, they don’t have to try to win over voters or keep the empty promises made on the campaign trail.

And as far as working with them in a bipartisan way, when you’re dealing someone with total power and no fear of reprisal from within or without, there is no compromise that they will accept except for total subjugation to their demands. 

And as for hoping to shame them with the hope they will do the decent and right thing, that went out the window in Trump’s first term. Actually, before that to some degree.

In short, what we saw yesterday is the most obvious demonstration yet of what is to come. As awful as it was, it might well not be the worst we will see.

I hate to say this and don’t want to believe it, but I don’t feel we can stop them electorally. I don’t really know what that might end up meaning. However, I can say with some certainty that however it goes, good or bad, it ain’t going to be pretty.

Let’s start working so that decency and humanity wins at the end of the day. 

I apologize for not being able to distract you or make you feel better or allay any fears you might have today. I would love to do just that, to write about art and literature and music, and will attempt to do just that in the near future. I read somewhere about James Baldwin speaking about how he felt he had a mission to inform that kept him from staying silent on those things that disturbed him. I think I understand and answer to a similar feeling at times like this.

 

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Betrayal/ Mystery Train

February 28, 2025 by redtreetimes

Elvis in the Wilderness (2006)

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

–Greil Marcus, Mystery Train (1975)

I’ve been reading all sorts of stories across the media about people who for whatever reason voted for Trump, cheerleading him on while thinking they themselves would be spared from his rash actions, that punishment would only be meted out to those they felt deserved it. You know– the others.

These same people have discovered in the past 38 or so days that they are not immune from the reckless gutting of America that is taking place. Many have lost jobs that they thought were safe and are left to wonder why. After all, they believed and supported Trump and knew they were honestly doing useful, necessary jobs that supported their families.

They weren’t the problem with America– it was the others.

Or there are stories of the Trump supporting retirees or families who depend on Social Security and Medicare or Medicaid who are realizing that the lifelines that were in place throughout their lifetimes might suddenly be dramatically slashed or even taken completely away. Or that these agencies’ staffs would be cut to the point that they would be able to function properly, if at all.

Then there are the military veterans who in many cases have sacrificed their time and wellbeing to serve this country who are learning that the support that was solemnly promised to them was going to be carved away willy nilly.

There are many other stories like these coming to light from across America. From farmers and private agencies that selflessly help those in need. From small businesspeople and scientists and researchers who have developed the medicines and technologies that have protected and grown this nation.

I’m working off the top of my head here so I am not going to list them all. I couldn’t do that even if I were better prepared. There are too many cases across nearly all fields that are beginning to feel the pain.

All people who thought they would be safe because they knew they weren’t the problem.

It was the others.

And now they feel betrayed and abandoned by the Trump/Musk band of gangsters. And they have been betrayed. As we all have. I have some sympathy for them but could certainly have more had they themselves not been so willing to betray and punish the others, who turned out to be their fellow citizens who, like them, were honestly doing useful work that served this nation. People who most likely share a love of this country, for the better angels so often extolled.

I am not saying that there wasn’t a need for reforms or greater efficiency in our government. Of course there is. But that’s not what we’re witnessing. This is more akin to a hostile corporate takeover where a group of investors– corporate raiders— comes in with little or no interest in running the company. They only want to tear it down and sell it off for parts.

And as it is in such cases, it is the little people who bear the brunt of the damage done. In this case, it those same people who unwittingly voted for this takeover. They betrayed not only the others but themselves and their own self-interest.

And America.

I am sorry to vent this morning. I am trying to stay away from such commentary, if only for my own mental wellbeing. But I am tired of hearing these stories of people surprised that the Grizzly Bear they were feeding suddenly ripped off their arm. There are no stories about those folks who clearly saw this coming for years and years, only to be continually ridiculed and told they were crazy or hyperbolic.

I guess a story about betrayal is far more attractive than an I-told-you-so story. To be honest, there’s not much comfort in either story. Both will feel the effect of this betrayal, along with countries and people around the globe.

Most likely, for a long time to come. Betrayal has a lingering effect.

The quote from journalist Greil Marcus at the top from his wonderful book, Mystery Train, on the link between America’s growth and that of rock and roll culture set this all off this morning. Here’s the iconic version from Elvis Presley of the song of that same title. The song was written and originally recorded in 1953 by the great Junior Parker.

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The Inner Eye

February 27, 2025 by redtreetimes

Where the Road Ends— At West End Gallery

We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth.

–Helen Keller, Light in My Darkness (1927)

I came across the passage above from Helen Keller and felt it pretty much summed up what I often try to describe here about the inner landscapes that we create within ourselves, those places that I attempt to represent in my work.

This passage comes from a chapter called Opening the Inner Eye, where she writes of how the limitations set upon her by her disabilities forced her to find compensations that allowed her to function in the outer world. More than that, it opened up an inner landscape to her, a place where she could be her best self. This allowed her to realize that happiness or self-contentment has little to do with outward circumstances but comes from within.

She writes of those who are not physically disabled, people who are living without limitations which has made them “mentally blinded” to this inner world. They are never forced to seek new capabilities within themselves and, as a result, resist anything– society, church, etc.– that expects them to display what Keller describes as nobler things from them.  She adds that they then stumble through life with their mental blindness, saying in effect, in her words, “I will be content if you take me for what I am — dull, or mean, or hard, or selfish”

It makes me wonder if perhaps the great divide in this world right now is between those who have opened their inner eye and those who are mentally blind, sometimes willfully so. Might it be a conflict between those who seek to grow into those nobler things and those who refuse to recognize– or are blind to– their lack of them?

Just wondering this morning. I don’t know that there is an answer. In my inner landscape, that’s okay.

Here’s a wonderful piece of music for strolling through that place. This is Cavatina as performed by guitarist John Williams. It was written in 1970 by British composer Stanley Myers (no relation!) for the film The Walking Stick. This version from Williams is better known as the theme for the film The Deer Hunter.

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Arresting Motion

February 26, 2025 by redtreetimes

The Resistance– At West End Gallery

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

–William Faulkner, Paris Review interview (1958)

Faulkner perfectly captures something I have been writing about here for years, the urge to leave something behind as evidence of your onetime existence in this world. It’s the driving force behind creation of all sorts, from human procreation to multiple forms of artistic expression, from the caves of Lascaux to the Sistine Chapel to the simplistic image of Kilroy left all over the world by American soldiers in WW II. Graffiti, which might be the purest form of saying I was here, has been around as long as mankind.

For the artist, it is an act of faith that your work will somehow survive into the future. You can never know with any degree of certainty. Oh, it may well make its way into museums or collections that span generations. It might well exist.

But will it be truly seen? Will it stay relevant, will its voice clearly speak in the future? Will it still maintain its movement, its life?

This idea of relevance– or rather irrelevance– is not a concern that only applies to the future for the artist. As an artist, after decades of creating work, I often question the relevance of my work at any given moment. Is it alive in this present, let alone the future?

I don’t know that you can fully know the answer to that question for anyone but yourself. Your relevance, now or a hundred years in the future, is not something you have a lot of say in.

The best you can do is to focus only on creating something that feels alive now. If it captures the motion, the feeling, the voice, and the humanity of our existence, it might well escape oblivion and might make its presence known in the future.

If it does, great. If not, you at least created something for this moment in time. And that’s great in its own right.

I chose the painting at the top, The Resistance— currently part of the West End Gallery’s Little Gems show– not only because of the obvious motion of it but because so much of what we do as humans is comprised of acts of resistance, of fighting to be heard or not relegated to some form of oblivion, one where we have no control over who and what we are.

I guess that could be applied to creating unique work, as well. Here’s a performance that I shared here several years ago. It is Ukrainian guitarist Nadia Kossinskaja performing an Asor Piazzolla composition, Oblivion. Felt like it went well this painting this morning.

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Preferences and Possibilities

February 25, 2025 by redtreetimes

Completeness— At West End Gallery

We do not belong to those who only get their thought from books, or at the prompting of books, — it is our custom to think in the open air, walking, leaping, climbing, or dancing on lonesome mountains by preference, or close to the sea, where even the paths become thoughtful.

–Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)

Below is a poem from the late Nobel Prize-winning Polish poetess Wislawa Szymborska (1923–2012) called Possibilities. I featured it here back in 2015 but it struck my fancy this morning and I thought I’d share it again and maybe add a bit to the original blogpost. It is basically a laundry list of her personal preferences. Some are small and some significant but all contribute mightily to her wholeness as a person. We are all the totality of our own laundry lists of preferences that define our character and personality just as our DNA determines our physical characteristics.

It’s a simple yet thought-provokingly complex poem that leave me wondering about my own preferences, my own possibilities. What are those small things that give you shape, make you who you are? Do we rely solely on these preferences in making the choices that we face in this life? Or do we sometimes make choices that do not align with our own preferences?

There are a lot of Symborska’s preferences that strike a chord with me. For instance:  I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. That certainly has been my preference for most of my conscious life.

Then there’s: I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. Like writing poetry, painting can often seem like an absurd thing to do. I often find myself asking why I am alone in the woods smearing paint on surfaces. Is there a purpose or meaning in it?

But I have known the other side of that coin, living a life where I wasn’t painting, and that existence was far more absurd for me. Absurd to an unsustainable degree.

And that final line says it all: I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being. We may never know whether there is a reason for our being but that should not take away from the life we have here.

If this is all we get, live by the possibility of your own preferences and not those of any other.

Live as you are. As you want to be.

You might not agree with some of her preferences. That’s okay– they’re not yours to determine. She is simply giving us a loose outline of her individual nature, her humanity. And there’s poetry in that for any of us.

I am also including a song which was a favorite of Symborska, who requested that the version below from Ella Fitzgerald be played at her funeral. The song is Black Coffee and since being written in 1948 by Sonny Burke it has been covered by some of the great vocalists of our times– Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, k.d. lang and so forth. You could pick any as your preference and they are all special. It’s that kind of song. But this version from the great and grand Ella Fitzgerald is extra special.

POSSIBILITIES

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

–Wislawa Szymborska

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Two Angels

February 24, 2025 by redtreetimes

All of Time-At West End Gallery

My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:

My desire and thy desire
Twining to a tongue of fire,
Leaping live, and laughing higher:

Thro’ the everlasting strife
In the mystery of life.

Love, from whom the world begun,
Hath the secret of the sun.

Love can tell, and love alone,
Whence the million stars were strewn,
Why each atom knows its own,
How, in spite of woe and death,
Gay is life, and sweet is breath:

This he taught us, this we knew,
Happy in his science true,
Hand in hand as we stood
‘Neath the shadows of the wood,
Heart to heart as we lay
In the dawning of the day.

— Robert Bridges, My Delight and Thy Delight (1899)

I have things to attend to this morning, so I am sharing a simple trio that deals with something other than the state of the world or even the creative process. The trio today has more to do with love. I guess you could argue that love– or the lack of it– plays a vital part in both the state of the world and the creative process. So, maybe it is pertinent?

I don’t know. I just like this group and felt they all interwove well with each other, all dealing in a way with the theme of two angels. The poem above is from Robert Seymour Bridges (1844-1930) who was a British poet and the Poet Laureate of Britain from 1913 -1930. I was going to include just the first verse but the poem is not that long.

The song, Two Angels, is a longtime favorite from Peter Case. The painting at the top, All of Time, is at the West End Gallery. It’s one of those pieces that stick in my mind, maybe because its creation didn’t come easily. I began it then set it aside for a long time, often looking at what was there and wondering what the next step would be. It was a bit of an enigma. I was finally able to complete it so that it both pleased me deeply and found its own voice. That’s always satisfying.

The hard-fought ones often leave the deepest impressions—in painting as well in love and in life.

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Ecozoic or Techozoic?

February 23, 2025 by redtreetimes

Twilight Time–At West End Gallery

If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human.

–Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (1999)

I came across the passage above this morning from Thomas Berry (1914-2009), someone who I have to confess I didn’t know anything about before this morning. But I found much in reading about him that piqued my interest.  Berry was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, and scholar of world religions who, later in life, studied the confluence of geology, ecology, and evolution. I came across one article that described him as an ecologian, or ecotheologian though it is said he preferred geologian.

There was one paragraph from his Wikipedia article that really struck a chord:

Berry believed that humanity, after generations spent in despoiling the planet, is poised to embrace a new role as a vital part of a larger, interdependent Earth community, consisting of a “communion of subjects not a collection of objects”. He felt that we were at a critical turning point, moving out of the Cenozoic era and entering into a new evolutionary phase, which would either be an Ecozoic Era, characterized by mutually-enhancing human-Earth relations, or a Techozoic Era, where we dominate and exploit the planet via our technological mastery.

With the astounding speed which AI ( along with the huge ecological cost that it requires) is infiltrating every aspect of our lives along with the ability of Big Tech to surveil us in most every way, it seems that Berry was prescient in his predictions when he first formulated this theory in the late 70’s and 80’s about the possibility of our entrance into a Techozoic Era. With everything that is happening at such an accelerated rate, I fear that an Ecozoic Era is moving quickly out of the realm of possibility.

And in the passage at the top, Berry warns that a decision to further exploit the planet will create a harsher environment for all living things, potentially causing us to lose those many things in the natural world we take for granted. Bees. Birds. Clean water. And much more. Things, that if lost, diminish the quality of our existence. I

Anecdotally, I know that when the woods around the studio are filled with the sound of birds, I am a much happier human being. When I was working in my first studio further up in the woods, I loved to hear the buzz of the bees in spring and summer as they made their hives in the hollows of trees. That sound is gone now. Seeing more a handful of bees at a time now, let alone hearing them, is a rare thing these days.

But who knows? Maybe there will be a turnaround at some point, a rejection by the citizens of the Techno Masters and a return to a gentler relationship with the Earth.

A rebirth of sorts where we and all the other living beings so affected by our decisions rise from the ashes like the mythical Phoenix.

I will maintain that hope.

That leads us into this week’s Sunday Morning Musical selection. This song, Ascending Bird, is based on the Persian version of the Phoenix myth, of a bird who flies higher and higher toward the sun until it is engulfed in flames. It falls back to the Earth then rises from the ashes as a new creature.

Ascending Bird is a traditional Persian folk melody, played here by the Silk Road Ensemble which is a large and loosely knit group of musicians, including the great Yo-Yo Ma, who hail from along that fabled route and play many of the traditional instruments. The Silk Road was the network of ancient routes that traders used in linking the Eastern and Western worlds over the centuries, transporting both goods and ideas from China through the Middle East to the Mediterranean.

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Nonno’s Poem

February 22, 2025 by redtreetimes

O Courage, could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell,
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?

— Tennessee Williams, Night of the Iguana

The 1964 film Night of the Iguana was on TCM yesterday and I listened along as I painted yesterday. Based on the 1961 Tennessee Williams play, the film is one that has slowly become a favorite of mine.

By that, I mean it was hardly a favorite when I first saw it many years ago. Not sure I even watched the whole thing then. It felt grim to the younger me who wanted a neater and tidier story with sharply defined protagonists and an ending that tied up all the loose ends in a satisfying way. The younger me didn’t see any of that in this film then.

But with age, you realize that life is never neat and tidy, try as you might to make it so. The brokenness of the main characters in this film that once turned me off now seemed more pertinent to the world I now know, taking on a much deeper reality and meaning for me. Like much of the work from Tennessee Williams, it deals with broken people trying to make their way through this world. His work is seldom an easy thing to take in. But it is usually worth trying and over the years, I have myself growing into this film. 

I am not going to go into the story or the film here this morning. Nor am I endorsing this film for you. It is certainly art and is therefore subjective. Where I see light or hope in it, you might see darkness and despair. 

That’s art for you. As it should be.

I only mention the film this morning because I wanted to share the poem from the old poet, Nonno, who has ended up at the seedy Mexican resort where this takes place with his middle-aged granddaughter, who is an itinerant painter. She is played by Deborah Kerr who is an absolute favorite of mine. They have been traveling for a long time as he attempts to complete a poem that he has long labored over, one that deals with having a feeling heart in a corrupt world. 

The final version, in the video at the top of the page, delivered beautifully by Nonno, portrayed by Cyril Delevanti, is a wonderful scene and I thought it deserved to be shared. I also added the text of the poem below as well as a song, Night of the Iguana, from Joni Mitchell.

How calmly does the olive branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair,

Sometime while night obscures the tree
The zenith of its life will be
Gone past forever, and from thence
A second history will commence.

A chronicle no longer gold,
A bargaining with mist and mould,
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth; and then

An intercourse not well designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The earth’s obscene, corrupting love.

And still the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair.

O Courage, could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell,
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?

— Tennessee Williams, Night of the Iguana

 

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Buber/Pole of Goodness

February 21, 2025 by redtreetimes

Chaos & Light — At Principle Gallery

It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another…We must begin by doing away with this convention.

— Martin Buber, Good and Evil (1952)

The idea of polar opposites has been a subject here on this blog many times over the years. Light and dark, right and wrong, positive and negative, etc. I had always included good and evil in that list, thinking them as two sides of a coin or two poles of a magnet that pulls one in their direction.

But reading the passage from philosopher Martin Buber (1875-1965) that contained the quote above made me rethink that. We are not inherently either good or evil.

Both are simply directions available to us.

But one, Goodness, is more like a pole in that it is a destination that must be worked toward. There must be an awareness of it in order to set one’s course for it. It requires dedicated work and conscious decisions. It often entails sacrifice and service, as well a willingness to accept one’s responsibilities for one’s own actions and how they affect others.

To seek goodness means that you set a course for it and work hard to stay on that path. It might be well described as having a moral compass.

Evil, on the other hand, is simply the absence of direction. No moral compass nor desired destination.

As a result, evil thrives in all its many forms where goodness is set aside as a destination. The virtues of goodness are diminished then. There is then no sense of responsibility nor sense of shame. Empathy, compassion, and self-sacrifice are lost, and are viewed as weakness when they do appear.

I wrote the above a year or so back. It sat in the draft section and I would periodically pull it up and read it. Never felt like it was the right time to use. Wasn’t sure there was a right time. But this morning it reminded me of how I sometimes refer to our human existence (and my painting) as a balancing act between chaos and order.

I hadn’t thought of that chaos as being simply an absence of direction– a rejection of goodness that goes along with a lack of a moral compass to follow– that has the potential to morph into some form of evil.

It’s a simplistic point, probably disputable by finer minds than mine, but one that felt illuminating this morning for me.

How that illumination can be applied to the reality of this world is another thing altogether. It’s certainly beyond me this dark, cold morning.

This post did remind me of some of my paintings, such as the one at the top, that deal with my concept of the chaos present in this world. Here’s a 1989 song from David Byrne called Good and Evil such to fill out our dance card. I only became aware of this song recently but find a lot to like in it. As with most things from David Byrne, it is interesting.

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