Art as Invitation

Joseph Campbell’s observation that pictures are invitations to pause and reflect highlights a core aspect of art and art-making that I’ve been thinking about for some time. 

All art is an invitation to pause and consider and be available to revelation and reevaluation. 

When I make a photograph I invite the viewer to give their attention to my framing of the world, to limit their attention to what’s within the photo, to consider what’s in the frame and without too. 

If my photo holds the attention of the viewer, the photo is successful.

How is this done? How is attention elicited by art?

Works of art, artifacts of the material world, assembled, crafted, are organized into recognizable forms and patterns that are significant to the artist.

And what is the significance? 

Significance is what the artist proposes and the viewer decides. This is the invitation. 

This dialogue between object and subject, artist and viewer, is where the meaning is realized. This dialogue, this connecting of object and subject, artist and viewer is the work of art.

Fundamentally, art connects the material world to the immaterial world.

Artworks become an idea in the human mind.

For Joseph Campbell, dreams are the gateway into the world of mythology. Why do we dream? What do dreams mean? Clearly, dreams are stories about the world, but are dreams of the world? Dreams pose immediate questions about the world. We can ignore them, but we can’t escape them. 

The nature of artmaking involves connecting objects, connecting colors with a brush, organizing objects with a camera lens, shaping stone, all physical acts in the material world that become successfully or not, ideas and concepts that exist in the mind. How is it that a statue of marble can make one feel pride? How does a painting affect a viewer emotionally? 

This mystery is what we explore when making art. Art is a ritual that enquires into the significance of ten thousand things.

The experience of music highlights this possibility to connect and communicate ideas, the immaterial, through the material, musical instruments. How are sound waves able to communicate the deeply complex, nuanced, and universal feelings of sadness, joy, surprise, finality?

With music, harmony is achieved through consonant and dissonant soundmaking. Consonant sound is pleasing to the ear. Dissonant sound is not pleasing to the ear. Organized through musical composition and performance, consonant sounds and dissonant sounds together elicit in the mind of the listener all manner of human emotional experience. 

Music is an invitation to experience and consider the full range of human subjective experience.

So it is with all art. Art mediates, negotiates, moderates, and reconciles object and subject.

Art-making is inquiry into meaning. Art poses questions and responses to our most important concerns.

And how does an artist know where to begin? How does an artist know when to stop? How does an artist know when to abandon a work or to complete a work?

There seem to be innate human understandings. 

Beauty and love and harmony are as universal as their opposites. 

While yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is wide agreement on between the eyes of us all. 

Particular artists aside, particular artworks aside, beauty exists in the world and is recognized universally. There is harmony among humanity about the beautiful. 

The endless debates about the nature of beauty emphasize that beauty exists for us all. 

We know in ourselves when we are in the presence of beauty.

We hear harmony, knowing within ourselves, in our minds, when a dissonant chord is resolved beautifully, finally. Musical harmony experienced together 

When I am making photos it seems as though there is something within that intuitively responds to particular locations and perspectives. When that something captures my attention, I pause and consider how to represent that something with my camera. Which lens? Which exposure? Should I return at another time or day or year? At times there is no internal dialogue and other times, plenty of internal dialogue. 

Working these questions out in practice is part of why art-making is meaningful to me. 

Recently I’ve been working on curating my own work within the Big Sur mountains that communicates the significance of what I am doing. 

There is beauty in those mountains, and it’s worth preserving and it's worth preserving access to those mountains to explore the beauty there. 

I’ve included a few photos below. Feedback welcome.