Dear Squad,
I venture into this month's topic with trepidation, not because I have nothing to say, but
because as a practising sculptor I have views that are perhaps too strongly held. I believe
that an artist needs the arrogance to judge what does and what does not have quality, for if I
am unable to sort the high quality from the dross in the work of others, then I am unlikely to
succeed in creating quality work myself. Because I recognise how little I appreciate in the art
created by others (I recently got a refund on a huge book on sculpture, basically because
there was almost nothing in it that I liked) I have to grapple with the issue of quality in a way
different to Pirsig who seems at times to assume that everybody knows quality when they see
it. I have argued before that when we get to the intellectual (and artistic) level, quality is a
function of experience and training as much as of perception, and that human beings have a
seemingly inherent tendency to branch out into more and more arcane pursuits where they
are masters of esoteric quality in a world of the uninitiated.
I think Pirsig's statement that "Rotisserie assembly is actually a long-lost branch of sculpture"
is crap, and I am surprised that it comes from someone who both taught writing and actually
wrote one very good book. David B has pointed out that Pirsig is "a mystic, but he's also a
mechanic, a chemist and a philosopher." Not an author? Perhaps not an artist then.
The error in Pirsig's attempt to link technology and art (and, yes, I am sure there are links,
just not very interesting or important ones), can be seen when we compare sculpture with
another very human occupation; that is gardening. By this I mean chiefly the decoration of
the areas around our homes. The person mowing his lawn is refining a surface no less than
the sculptor. When he goes to plant a tree, he is grappling with the placemant of masses and
voids, the more difficult as the plant will change in size and character as it ages. His edging
of a garden bed is a definition of form. Every aspect of the process of creating sculpture can
be found in the average suburban garden, though it may be that truly high quality outcomes
are rare. And while it is nowadays unpopular to say so, the other things that really bind the
two occupations of sculpture and gardening together are the sheer practical uselessness of
both, and the potential for intense pleasure when either is done well.
David B makes clear Pirsig's fascination with precision ideas. There's nothing wrong with
mechanics. But why try to conflate it with either science or sculpture. As a one time student
and teacher of science, who still reads a bit of philosophy of science for mental stimulation, I
find limited insight into what science is about in Pirsig's writing. His real interest is in
technology, and he writes well about that. He's at his most convincing when he talks about
mechanics and gumption traps. In ZMM Ch 22 Pirsig's tearful recognition when he sees the
"edges match perfectly in a kind of harmony ... to produce a complete structure of thought
capable of uniting the separate languages of Science and Art into one" is preceded by pages
of discussion of Poincare and the selection of facts by scientists to fit the elegant harmony of
their ideas. Unfortunately, this is only half of the story of science; but it is his treatment of art,
approached through his understanding of quality in the art of rhetoric, that leaves me most
dissatisfied. "Art", he says (in Ch 21), "is high quality endeavour. That is all that really needs
to be said. Or, if something more high-sounding is demanded: Art is the Godhead as
revealed in the works of man ... the two enormously different sounding statements are
actually identical."
If I try to come up with a verbal definition of art I am not able to do it. The struggle to create
quality sculpture is not easily defined. There is, of course, a mass of background material
that influences how I proceed. I must be aware of practical issues to do with the material,
how the finished work will be supported, and so on. I draw on a huge cultural conditioning as
to what is considered artistic (once I could have used the word 'beautiful' without being
thought quaint), and that conditioning can be studied independantly of my own individual
encounter with it, as art appreciation, aesthetics, and so on. But I can have all this and not
produce good art. At the core, I think I am drawn to a few rather intangible 'ideals' (I can't
think of a better word) which in my case have to do with simplicity, elegance, flow, balance ...
how feeble and contrived the words look! Perhaps I am really concretizing some ephemeral
wisps of visions, fleeting as cloud shapes, that tug in my unconscious. Where they come
from I don't know. Some change, while others seem more constant. Henry Moore talks of
walking on the beach, and how he picks up an occasional pebble that appeals to him. Each
year they are different, though perhaps in quite subtle ways. That seems right to me. I attend
to what has quality for me. I have no doubt Moore did too. Yet there are very few of his works
I like, perhaps one or two I admire. There are a few artists the bulk of whose art I admire.
There are others who achieve one or two great works, and many who seem to be close to
something that still eludes them. How personal and ambiguous this all is.
I guess I haven't kept to the topic very closely, but I've felt deep dissatisfaction with the input
to date. I would like to think that this dissatisfaction is the shadow of the appreciation for the
'rightness' of quality when it is encountered. What has been said in this month's discussion
so far just doesn't seem 'right' to me. Somehow it's missing the point.
John B
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
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