My Creative Experience: Finding Voice, Finding Silence
by Patrick Beldio
Patrick Beldio is a professional artist. He studied sculpture and art in Indiana, Rome, Italy, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. He has a B.F.A. in sculpture with a second major in philosophy from Notre Dame, an M.F.A. in sculpture from the George Washington University, and an M.A. in Catholic theology from the Washington Theological Union. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. in religion and culture from Catholic University of America. His work is in private and public collections across the United States. His studio is on the grounds of the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC.
When I finish a sculpture there is a double sense of triumph and humiliation. It brings me a tremendous feeling of joy to see not only the finished piece, but to share it with the ones for whom it is made and watch them accept its presence in their world. This joy is complex for it is also mixed with humility. I realize that I am smaller than a creative process that seems to use me for something larger and this larger process reduces my personal fears and worries, my personal desires and dreams, to exiguity.
On the one hand, the satisfaction of seeing a finished work that has succeeded in some way to accomplish its task of communicating what is intended is intoxicating and it is one reason I have become obsessed with being an artist. Because of that high, I can spend a lot of time just gazing at the finished piece, as I do while I am in the creative process, trying to pour my intention, my care, my deliberation—really, my love, into the form. I am also trying to take in the feeling of joy, and to reckon with humility as it temporarily dissolves my desires and fears. The satisfaction of seeing the work in its finished form grabs my attention and I just gaze, like a lover into another’s eyes, captivated by shapes that awaken deep levels of my being.
Patrick Beldio, The Woman Clothed with the Sun, 2013, gold and passadium leaf on bronze, 24″ high, detail
On the other hand, the satisfaction of seeing a finished work coexists with a creeping disappointment that increases over time. I can notice this more keenly with my sculptures that have not found a home and are therefore destined to be with me in the studio. I return to them with a dual sense of pride and anguish. They remind me that my creative skills were not up to the task, I did not dream large enough, or I did not express what I really meant, or maybe I did, but I am no longer the person who means those things. In other words, I am in anguish because I did not express my self—fully. As I look at that old piece of artwork, an awkward sensation of being a misfit comes over me, because I would not make that piece that way now. I would learn new methods, refine my skill, make different decisions, choose other materials, and find another context for its existence. I might not even try to address the theme embodied there. Viewing my old work with others is like putting my adolescence on display for others to see. It is like preparing for a musical performance and giving the audience one of the rehearsals instead of the integrated and mastered version.
I cannot escape the cycle of failure of my art to express myself fully because I change in the very process of making a work. I am another kind of human being on the other side of that artwork, and the work cannot come with me in my new way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. In a certain way, the sculpture sits there as a vestigial expression, a fossil of my past thought forms, one that has outlived its usefulness. This is not to say that it is not useful in other ways, just not in the primordial way of self-expression. Failure, immaturity, and adolescence are my constant companions as I make provisional victories in this experiment of self-expression. I have found, however, that I can choose to make this experience of failure a kind of fulfillment if I deconstruct my previous attempts and then come up with another form of limited self-expression that is somehow truer and more complete.
One of the internal debates that also has been a constant source of anguish for me as an artist, especially as a young person, was coming to grips with the “selfishness” of this life. It is the selfishness of sacrificing, failing, or otherwise ignoring other very valuable forms and people in my life in order to concentrate on an apprenticeship in art. What I have learned is that this tension is central to being an artist and to learning how to tap the creative potentials within myself. I have learned that to be faithful to the future of my career, I must pay a cost of other things, opportunities, and people. When I make these sacrifices—so that I can being an artist—the money, time, and energy come to me in diverse ways to support the work, and these are always surprising, sure, and safe. Sacrifice cannot be made, I have found, however, for narrowly defined selfish ends. It must be done with what I might call an other-centered selfishness, for it is done others or at least for a reality beyond myself (my client, a community, my ideal self, perhaps) with the expressed intention of maintaining and extending the work. Thus, it is an other-centeredness that is central me and my growth. It is very difficult, though, to discern what is “narrowly defined selfishness” from “broadly defined other-centered selfishness.” It is not always automatic, and I have found no external moral compass capable of guiding with perfection. Morality and religion give some general principles, but no concrete way forward. This discernment is really done on a trial and error basis that hones an intuitive grasp of how to proceed. As such, I always come to and out of this process an errant. The deeper trick seems to be to make errancy a tool for growth, for in my experience, errancy is certain when trying to be an artist, and when trying to balance this role with others. I might as well make that errancy fuel for the way forward into maturity.
When “other-centered selfishness” is practiced, I find that the money, the opportunity, and the art come. When it is not, they do not come, or if they do, they come with undue struggle—a struggle that is more toxic—that increasingly warps all the forms involved: my art, the money, and energy that are gained. I do not notice this right away. It happens gradually and almost imperceptibly. If I am vigilant, I can see the distortions. What I mean by “warp” is that these forms become less perfectly able to function as instruments for the work that is intended. The intention is simply art that expresses the self in a sincere way, even though that expression may be a failure. By “warped,” I think of the Sanskrit word duḥkha, which is the word the Buddha used to describe what he meant by unhappiness or suffering. Duḥkha is really a compound word from the root words dus and kha that can be translated as something that has a “bad” (dus) “axle hole” (kha). It is an axle hole that is off-center from the circumference of the wheel in which it turns. It is the opposite of sukha or a “having a good axle hole” that is centered within the wheel, so it runs without any bumpiness.1 Sukha means “happiness” because it describes an axle hole in alignment with the circumference of the wheel, it contributes a noiseless and flowing movement, drawing no attention to itself. In duḥkha, because of having a bad axle hole, although the wheel turns and even though it functions to allow one to progress forward, it is done with a great deal of effort and pain as one bumps up and down upon a jittering trajectory.
Art that serves the end of drawing attention to my personal needs and wants creates a “warped” art, an art that perpetuates duḥkha, unnecessarily bumpy motion that is “noisy,” awkward, and painful. The friction of this bumpy movement would necessarily cause a change in the wheel’s shape, wearing it down, forcing another size in the wheel’s circumference.2 The wheel becomes smaller and would need to decrease in size in order to make the axle find its true center again.
The tools and gains involved in a creative expression that is of the nature of duḥkha become less able to carry on more work in the same field. They transmogrify over time and become better at other endeavors that seem like art, but really, they have lost that function for they have become “smaller.” In this distortion, the creative tools become better equipped at other functions, like mastery of physical media for its own sake, creating a philosophical discourse in visual form (“critical theory as art,” I would call it), extension of personal influence, or simply just drawing more attention to one’s personality, one’s brand identity. These are all important functions that must be learned in consolidating and mastering a personal ego, and they are certainly compatible with being an artist, for one must think through theoretical and philosophical issues, and further, one must market the work of his or her voice, once it is found. The main thing is to find the voice, however, to find it and keep finding it, as it is refined in one’s career. For me, functions of the personal ego are not the fundamental motivations in art if the art wants to remain a practice that communicates “noiselessly” the growth of self-expression, of voice. My art and I may move in growth when I use art only to draw attention to my personal preferences and brand identity, but they cannot move very well or very far in service to others. My art and I can flow in a noiseless movement forward with healthy growth, happiness, even delight when the art is used to draw attention to silence.
As I reflect on this notion of noise to noiselessness, I see that it is the process that I go through every time I make a work. I know a piece is finished when I don’t hear that unintended dissonance anymore, or sense it as I look at the form. I always begin with a noisy work—a clumsy grouping of discordant forms both visually and conceptually, and the trick is to integrate all this noise into a diapason that awakens silence in myself and in the viewer. In the process of making this happen, I must let go my personal preferences, which increase the narrowly defined selfishness. I must access something else within that is impossible to define.
Roles of Artists and Functions of Art
As I describe this creative experience, I realize that it may seem like a far cry from what many other artists of my time and place are doing. I suppose I cannot classify myself as a thoroughgoing postmodernist because I use art quite consciously to talk about, well, things other than art or critical theories about art. I would describe postmodern art as art about art or about the absence of art, or art about the artist or the absence of the artist. It is art that seeks to find innovative ways to destabilize the meaning of “art” or “artist” as these might be defined by the wider society. These directions in art-making seem often to necessitate visual expressions of conflict characterized by anxiety, irony, and critique. These themes attract many well-known visual artists today. However, my work is not really addressing them, though I intimately understand the nature of instability in art and in the artist’s role. If, then, I am not expressing postmodern anxiety, irony, or critique about the identities of art and the artist, what “other things” am I trying to express? I am not sure exactly how to define them.
Am I in sympathy with an ancient or primitive mindset? This long period of human expression sought to use imagery ritualistically, in the words of Mircea Eliade, to connect human consciousness to the “paradise of archetypes” in order to escape the “terror of history.” This does not and cannot characterize any human being living, as I am in the United States of America, a place that seeks to master matter and looks quite consciously to reduce the terror of history instead of escaping it. Yet I cannot ignore that realm of spirit, that empire of the “archetypes” that stands behind history in a mythic and timeless present that orders the chaos of life in some personal, communal, and cosmic way. My art, therefore, does participate in a kind of ritual that seeks to take my viewers and me into a kingdom of the mythic forms of thought and feeling, even as I share my contemporaries’ love of technology, science, and medicine to improve this world and our bodies instead of trying to escape them.
Am I of the ancient or medieval mindset of Europe or Asia which sought, in the words of Ananda Coomaraswamy, an imitation of metaphysical principles, not physical appearances? Coomaraswamy calls this art “religious art.”
Religious art is simply a visual theology: Christian and Oriental theology alike are means to an end, but not to be confused with the end. Both alike involve a dual method, that of the via affirmativa and the via negativa; on the one hand affirming things of God by way of praise, and on the other denying every one of these limiting descriptive affirmations, for though the worship is dispositive to immediate vision, God is not and never can be ‘what men worship here.’3
This period of art that is devotional in nature is also delineating, binding the social, political, and religious identities of homogeneous populations. I live in a time and place of radical pluralism in which the only thing all people seem to share is what Edward Said called a “diasporic, wandering, unresolved, cosmopolitan consciousness of someone who is both inside and outside his or her community. This is now a relatively widespread phenomenon, even though an understanding of what that condition means is far from common.”4 Yet I cannot say that this diasporic condition fully opposes a feeling of unity for all peoples that may spark a devotional desire for a Divine oneness in a cosmic and social wholeness. This diasporic condition actually amplifies the longing for such a wholeness in ever more inclusive ways. My art, therefore, seeks to express this devotion and wholeness even as I celebrate pluralism, and even as I know and experience the fractures and loneliness of contemporary life.
Patrick Beldio, Tiqqun Chanukkiah, 2001, graphite drawing for possible commission for Jewish Community at Georgetown University, 18″ x 27″
Patrick Beldio, Tiqqun Chanukkiah, 2005, resin maquette with oil lamps, 4 ft. high
Am I in sympathy with the Renaissance, seeking to master the material world and duplicate its varied appearances in creative form? This has been achieved very well by so many others. Machines and their inventors are achieving it even more successfully such that science and technology have usurped the aura of this kind of art. The photograph, the video camera, digital scanning, 3D enlargement/printing, and every manner of digital media do it in such a perfect way that the very word “imitation” loses its meaning. What is the “original” and what is the “copy” when zeros and ones duplicate with such stable precision? The goal of physical imitation of nature has outlived its usefulness as being the normative goal of art, for technology has outstripped art’s ability in physical mimesis. However, I cannot say that meditating on the forms of nature and trying to imitate their movements, forms, and some element of their uniqueness is without deep value. In some ways, it is central to my creative process in sculpture.
Am I in sympathy with Modernism such that I have been enchanted with a critical turn to myself as a subject of knowledge seeking to understand the way I understand? This subjective turn in philosophy is mirrored in art by its own subjective turn. In my artwork, do I use art to interrogate art to find some pure essence of itself and myself? I cannot deny the depth of influence on the Western mind that the values of Modernism have wrought in all levels of human striving. The values of mastery of matter, the empirical and critical searches for stable origins, pure and non-historical natures, utopias, and rational means for sure progress are what define the personality of Western cultures. The massive failures to include all peoples in justice and to harmonize with the natural processes of the Earth, however, in these attempts for progress and utopia, give the most hardened idealist pause. However, in my own artwork, no matter how many times I fail to express myself—my ideal self that I want to be—I still try again to express it in another way, because something inside seeks perfection in spite of and really because of failures or errors.
Postmodernism in art is that critique of critiques that refuses any Modernist manifesto of progress, any Renaissance style of physical imitation, any religious style of metaphysical imitation or devotional surrender to state, church, or social convention, and any cosmic need to use art as ritual to keep death, evil, and suffering at bay. Do I sympathize with this complex set of postmodern strategies to deconstruct socially constructed notions of “art” in the name of critical authenticity, understanding that all artistic language is, indeed, constructed language? I do not use art primarily as a hammer to fell the idols of past accomplishment as Nietzsche did in his Twilight of the Idols, but I cannot deny the constructed nature of language—verbal or visual—to create these idols and any form of past cultural achievement. I too cannot give my undying allegiance and sincere worship to these past forms. However, this unstable construction does not oppose an experience of the silence that remains unbroken by the noise of language or the destabilization of language’s cultural edifices. Though past forms fail to live up to their promise of dependable stability, they carry something that is still a reflection of that sought-after permanence. My work, therefore, is sincere in its celebration of that silence, even as it regards my creative forms as provisional.
In the end, I do not know what kind of artist I am, what kind of art I make, and what it is that motivates me to grow beyond my own limited personal preferences, but my ignorance is what spurs me on. Paradoxically, ignorance and instability are internal frictions that are central for my search for wisdom and permanence. Just as there are natural internal frictions in any “good axle hole,” as the axle turns the hole and wheel around, there are native internal frictions that move my creative process forward in growth. Ignorance and instability motivate my restlessness to keep creating new works of art as I view the failures of past attempts. I realize, as I look at an older finished piece, I mistook silence for noise and so the art is still incomplete, still a discordant self-expression. I have to admit, possibly to the horror of some, in fact, the creative process continually destabilizes my sense of self and I am never sure who I am. I have learned to live in limbo—a threshold between provisional identities—and over time, out of sheer necessity of sharing a world with others who are not artists, I learn to be a thespian in order to play a role of stable-person-in-the-world. Inside, I know that my role, my knowledge, and my skills add up to a provocative show, and these clothes I wear are items of a costume. Performers and actors know this experience quite deeply. This instability, however, does not cancel the thrill of the ride, the joy of the work, or the pride in the accomplishments. The need to create in some stable way an expression of my true self is met with a life that disturbs any equilibrium I may temporarily achieve. The restless nature of trying to move forward in self-expression, however, creates a curve of development that I can now begin to see has a form and shape that negotiates postmodern critiques, modern ideals, religious beliefs, and primordial rituals.
Two people that have named my experience in my own attempts to bring the axle hole into alignment with the center of the wheel—to create a noiseless art for my contemporary context—are Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) and his spiritual companion, the Mother (1878-1973). These two gurus used the arts as a means for spiritual growth. Like Walt Whitman before him, Aurobindo created his master artwork, his epic poem Savitri, over a period of many decades, organizing, editing, and substituting lines even up until his last days—close to 35 years (from 1916-1950).
Savitri is a work by itself unlike all the others. I made some eight or ten recasts of it originally under the old, insufficient inspiration. Afterwards, I am altogether rewriting it, concentrating on the first Book and working on it over and over again with the hope that every line may be of a perfect perfection.5
The creative pattern Aurobindo describes is familiar to me. Though I make many forms in sculpture, I feel myself to be reworking only one piece for all of this life, one sculpture that expresses fully “a perfect perfection.” Each version I have made so far is a failure and in need of deconstruction. Each one is an experiment seeking to formulate a hypothesis of myself that is so reliable that it becomes fully verifiable. Each sculpture strives to embody a form that is so complete and perfect that it becomes transparent to light, it becomes noiseless to silence. I want to make a work such that the attention of the viewer is on the light, in the silence, not on me as the artist, or on the work as the art. In this endeavor, am I involved in a permanent experiment or an experimental permanency? Both? Aurobindo and the Mother would say both until the knot is undone and the veil is rent that separates the lower self from the higher. z
NOTES
Patrick Beldio is a professional artist. He studied sculpture and art in Indiana, Rome, Italy, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. He has a B.F.A. in sculpture with a second major in philosophy from Notre Dame, an M.F.A. in sculpture from the George Washington University, and an M.A. in Catholic theology from the Washington Theological Union. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. in religion and culture from Catholic University of America. His work is in private and public collections across the United States. His studio is on the grounds of the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC.
When I finish a sculpture there is a double sense of triumph and humiliation. It brings me a tremendous feeling of joy to see not only the finished piece, but to share it with the ones for whom it is made and watch them accept its presence in their world. This joy is complex for it is also mixed with humility. I realize that I am smaller than a creative process that seems to use me for something larger and this larger process reduces my personal fears and worries, my personal desires and dreams, to exiguity.
On the one hand, the satisfaction of seeing a finished work that has succeeded in some way to accomplish its task of communicating what is intended is intoxicating and it is one reason I have become obsessed with being an artist. Because of that high, I can spend a lot of time just gazing at the finished piece, as I do while I am in the creative process, trying to pour my intention, my care, my deliberation—really, my love, into the form. I am also trying to take in the feeling of joy, and to reckon with humility as it temporarily dissolves my desires and fears. The satisfaction of seeing the work in its finished form grabs my attention and I just gaze, like a lover into another’s eyes, captivated by shapes that awaken deep levels of my being.
Patrick Beldio, The Woman Clothed with the Sun, 2013, gold and passadium leaf on bronze, 24″ high, detail
On the other hand, the satisfaction of seeing a finished work coexists with a creeping disappointment that increases over time. I can notice this more keenly with my sculptures that have not found a home and are therefore destined to be with me in the studio. I return to them with a dual sense of pride and anguish. They remind me that my creative skills were not up to the task, I did not dream large enough, or I did not express what I really meant, or maybe I did, but I am no longer the person who means those things. In other words, I am in anguish because I did not express my self—fully. As I look at that old piece of artwork, an awkward sensation of being a misfit comes over me, because I would not make that piece that way now. I would learn new methods, refine my skill, make different decisions, choose other materials, and find another context for its existence. I might not even try to address the theme embodied there. Viewing my old work with others is like putting my adolescence on display for others to see. It is like preparing for a musical performance and giving the audience one of the rehearsals instead of the integrated and mastered version.
I cannot escape the cycle of failure of my art to express myself fully because I change in the very process of making a work. I am another kind of human being on the other side of that artwork, and the work cannot come with me in my new way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. In a certain way, the sculpture sits there as a vestigial expression, a fossil of my past thought forms, one that has outlived its usefulness. This is not to say that it is not useful in other ways, just not in the primordial way of self-expression. Failure, immaturity, and adolescence are my constant companions as I make provisional victories in this experiment of self-expression. I have found, however, that I can choose to make this experience of failure a kind of fulfillment if I deconstruct my previous attempts and then come up with another form of limited self-expression that is somehow truer and more complete.
One of the internal debates that also has been a constant source of anguish for me as an artist, especially as a young person, was coming to grips with the “selfishness” of this life. It is the selfishness of sacrificing, failing, or otherwise ignoring other very valuable forms and people in my life in order to concentrate on an apprenticeship in art. What I have learned is that this tension is central to being an artist and to learning how to tap the creative potentials within myself. I have learned that to be faithful to the future of my career, I must pay a cost of other things, opportunities, and people. When I make these sacrifices—so that I can being an artist—the money, time, and energy come to me in diverse ways to support the work, and these are always surprising, sure, and safe. Sacrifice cannot be made, I have found, however, for narrowly defined selfish ends. It must be done with what I might call an other-centered selfishness, for it is done others or at least for a reality beyond myself (my client, a community, my ideal self, perhaps) with the expressed intention of maintaining and extending the work. Thus, it is an other-centeredness that is central me and my growth. It is very difficult, though, to discern what is “narrowly defined selfishness” from “broadly defined other-centered selfishness.” It is not always automatic, and I have found no external moral compass capable of guiding with perfection. Morality and religion give some general principles, but no concrete way forward. This discernment is really done on a trial and error basis that hones an intuitive grasp of how to proceed. As such, I always come to and out of this process an errant. The deeper trick seems to be to make errancy a tool for growth, for in my experience, errancy is certain when trying to be an artist, and when trying to balance this role with others. I might as well make that errancy fuel for the way forward into maturity.
When “other-centered selfishness” is practiced, I find that the money, the opportunity, and the art come. When it is not, they do not come, or if they do, they come with undue struggle—a struggle that is more toxic—that increasingly warps all the forms involved: my art, the money, and energy that are gained. I do not notice this right away. It happens gradually and almost imperceptibly. If I am vigilant, I can see the distortions. What I mean by “warp” is that these forms become less perfectly able to function as instruments for the work that is intended. The intention is simply art that expresses the self in a sincere way, even though that expression may be a failure. By “warped,” I think of the Sanskrit word duḥkha, which is the word the Buddha used to describe what he meant by unhappiness or suffering. Duḥkha is really a compound word from the root words dus and kha that can be translated as something that has a “bad” (dus) “axle hole” (kha). It is an axle hole that is off-center from the circumference of the wheel in which it turns. It is the opposite of sukha or a “having a good axle hole” that is centered within the wheel, so it runs without any bumpiness.1 Sukha means “happiness” because it describes an axle hole in alignment with the circumference of the wheel, it contributes a noiseless and flowing movement, drawing no attention to itself. In duḥkha, because of having a bad axle hole, although the wheel turns and even though it functions to allow one to progress forward, it is done with a great deal of effort and pain as one bumps up and down upon a jittering trajectory.
Art that serves the end of drawing attention to my personal needs and wants creates a “warped” art, an art that perpetuates duḥkha, unnecessarily bumpy motion that is “noisy,” awkward, and painful. The friction of this bumpy movement would necessarily cause a change in the wheel’s shape, wearing it down, forcing another size in the wheel’s circumference.2 The wheel becomes smaller and would need to decrease in size in order to make the axle find its true center again.
The tools and gains involved in a creative expression that is of the nature of duḥkha become less able to carry on more work in the same field. They transmogrify over time and become better at other endeavors that seem like art, but really, they have lost that function for they have become “smaller.” In this distortion, the creative tools become better equipped at other functions, like mastery of physical media for its own sake, creating a philosophical discourse in visual form (“critical theory as art,” I would call it), extension of personal influence, or simply just drawing more attention to one’s personality, one’s brand identity. These are all important functions that must be learned in consolidating and mastering a personal ego, and they are certainly compatible with being an artist, for one must think through theoretical and philosophical issues, and further, one must market the work of his or her voice, once it is found. The main thing is to find the voice, however, to find it and keep finding it, as it is refined in one’s career. For me, functions of the personal ego are not the fundamental motivations in art if the art wants to remain a practice that communicates “noiselessly” the growth of self-expression, of voice. My art and I may move in growth when I use art only to draw attention to my personal preferences and brand identity, but they cannot move very well or very far in service to others. My art and I can flow in a noiseless movement forward with healthy growth, happiness, even delight when the art is used to draw attention to silence.
As I reflect on this notion of noise to noiselessness, I see that it is the process that I go through every time I make a work. I know a piece is finished when I don’t hear that unintended dissonance anymore, or sense it as I look at the form. I always begin with a noisy work—a clumsy grouping of discordant forms both visually and conceptually, and the trick is to integrate all this noise into a diapason that awakens silence in myself and in the viewer. In the process of making this happen, I must let go my personal preferences, which increase the narrowly defined selfishness. I must access something else within that is impossible to define.
Roles of Artists and Functions of Art
As I describe this creative experience, I realize that it may seem like a far cry from what many other artists of my time and place are doing. I suppose I cannot classify myself as a thoroughgoing postmodernist because I use art quite consciously to talk about, well, things other than art or critical theories about art. I would describe postmodern art as art about art or about the absence of art, or art about the artist or the absence of the artist. It is art that seeks to find innovative ways to destabilize the meaning of “art” or “artist” as these might be defined by the wider society. These directions in art-making seem often to necessitate visual expressions of conflict characterized by anxiety, irony, and critique. These themes attract many well-known visual artists today. However, my work is not really addressing them, though I intimately understand the nature of instability in art and in the artist’s role. If, then, I am not expressing postmodern anxiety, irony, or critique about the identities of art and the artist, what “other things” am I trying to express? I am not sure exactly how to define them.
Am I in sympathy with an ancient or primitive mindset? This long period of human expression sought to use imagery ritualistically, in the words of Mircea Eliade, to connect human consciousness to the “paradise of archetypes” in order to escape the “terror of history.” This does not and cannot characterize any human being living, as I am in the United States of America, a place that seeks to master matter and looks quite consciously to reduce the terror of history instead of escaping it. Yet I cannot ignore that realm of spirit, that empire of the “archetypes” that stands behind history in a mythic and timeless present that orders the chaos of life in some personal, communal, and cosmic way. My art, therefore, does participate in a kind of ritual that seeks to take my viewers and me into a kingdom of the mythic forms of thought and feeling, even as I share my contemporaries’ love of technology, science, and medicine to improve this world and our bodies instead of trying to escape them.
Am I of the ancient or medieval mindset of Europe or Asia which sought, in the words of Ananda Coomaraswamy, an imitation of metaphysical principles, not physical appearances? Coomaraswamy calls this art “religious art.”
Religious art is simply a visual theology: Christian and Oriental theology alike are means to an end, but not to be confused with the end. Both alike involve a dual method, that of the via affirmativa and the via negativa; on the one hand affirming things of God by way of praise, and on the other denying every one of these limiting descriptive affirmations, for though the worship is dispositive to immediate vision, God is not and never can be ‘what men worship here.’3
This period of art that is devotional in nature is also delineating, binding the social, political, and religious identities of homogeneous populations. I live in a time and place of radical pluralism in which the only thing all people seem to share is what Edward Said called a “diasporic, wandering, unresolved, cosmopolitan consciousness of someone who is both inside and outside his or her community. This is now a relatively widespread phenomenon, even though an understanding of what that condition means is far from common.”4 Yet I cannot say that this diasporic condition fully opposes a feeling of unity for all peoples that may spark a devotional desire for a Divine oneness in a cosmic and social wholeness. This diasporic condition actually amplifies the longing for such a wholeness in ever more inclusive ways. My art, therefore, seeks to express this devotion and wholeness even as I celebrate pluralism, and even as I know and experience the fractures and loneliness of contemporary life.
Patrick Beldio, Tiqqun Chanukkiah, 2001, graphite drawing for possible commission for Jewish Community at Georgetown University, 18″ x 27″
Patrick Beldio, Tiqqun Chanukkiah, 2005, resin maquette with oil lamps, 4 ft. high
Am I in sympathy with the Renaissance, seeking to master the material world and duplicate its varied appearances in creative form? This has been achieved very well by so many others. Machines and their inventors are achieving it even more successfully such that science and technology have usurped the aura of this kind of art. The photograph, the video camera, digital scanning, 3D enlargement/printing, and every manner of digital media do it in such a perfect way that the very word “imitation” loses its meaning. What is the “original” and what is the “copy” when zeros and ones duplicate with such stable precision? The goal of physical imitation of nature has outlived its usefulness as being the normative goal of art, for technology has outstripped art’s ability in physical mimesis. However, I cannot say that meditating on the forms of nature and trying to imitate their movements, forms, and some element of their uniqueness is without deep value. In some ways, it is central to my creative process in sculpture.
Am I in sympathy with Modernism such that I have been enchanted with a critical turn to myself as a subject of knowledge seeking to understand the way I understand? This subjective turn in philosophy is mirrored in art by its own subjective turn. In my artwork, do I use art to interrogate art to find some pure essence of itself and myself? I cannot deny the depth of influence on the Western mind that the values of Modernism have wrought in all levels of human striving. The values of mastery of matter, the empirical and critical searches for stable origins, pure and non-historical natures, utopias, and rational means for sure progress are what define the personality of Western cultures. The massive failures to include all peoples in justice and to harmonize with the natural processes of the Earth, however, in these attempts for progress and utopia, give the most hardened idealist pause. However, in my own artwork, no matter how many times I fail to express myself—my ideal self that I want to be—I still try again to express it in another way, because something inside seeks perfection in spite of and really because of failures or errors.
Postmodernism in art is that critique of critiques that refuses any Modernist manifesto of progress, any Renaissance style of physical imitation, any religious style of metaphysical imitation or devotional surrender to state, church, or social convention, and any cosmic need to use art as ritual to keep death, evil, and suffering at bay. Do I sympathize with this complex set of postmodern strategies to deconstruct socially constructed notions of “art” in the name of critical authenticity, understanding that all artistic language is, indeed, constructed language? I do not use art primarily as a hammer to fell the idols of past accomplishment as Nietzsche did in his Twilight of the Idols, but I cannot deny the constructed nature of language—verbal or visual—to create these idols and any form of past cultural achievement. I too cannot give my undying allegiance and sincere worship to these past forms. However, this unstable construction does not oppose an experience of the silence that remains unbroken by the noise of language or the destabilization of language’s cultural edifices. Though past forms fail to live up to their promise of dependable stability, they carry something that is still a reflection of that sought-after permanence. My work, therefore, is sincere in its celebration of that silence, even as it regards my creative forms as provisional.
In the end, I do not know what kind of artist I am, what kind of art I make, and what it is that motivates me to grow beyond my own limited personal preferences, but my ignorance is what spurs me on. Paradoxically, ignorance and instability are internal frictions that are central for my search for wisdom and permanence. Just as there are natural internal frictions in any “good axle hole,” as the axle turns the hole and wheel around, there are native internal frictions that move my creative process forward in growth. Ignorance and instability motivate my restlessness to keep creating new works of art as I view the failures of past attempts. I realize, as I look at an older finished piece, I mistook silence for noise and so the art is still incomplete, still a discordant self-expression. I have to admit, possibly to the horror of some, in fact, the creative process continually destabilizes my sense of self and I am never sure who I am. I have learned to live in limbo—a threshold between provisional identities—and over time, out of sheer necessity of sharing a world with others who are not artists, I learn to be a thespian in order to play a role of stable-person-in-the-world. Inside, I know that my role, my knowledge, and my skills add up to a provocative show, and these clothes I wear are items of a costume. Performers and actors know this experience quite deeply. This instability, however, does not cancel the thrill of the ride, the joy of the work, or the pride in the accomplishments. The need to create in some stable way an expression of my true self is met with a life that disturbs any equilibrium I may temporarily achieve. The restless nature of trying to move forward in self-expression, however, creates a curve of development that I can now begin to see has a form and shape that negotiates postmodern critiques, modern ideals, religious beliefs, and primordial rituals.
Two people that have named my experience in my own attempts to bring the axle hole into alignment with the center of the wheel—to create a noiseless art for my contemporary context—are Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) and his spiritual companion, the Mother (1878-1973). These two gurus used the arts as a means for spiritual growth. Like Walt Whitman before him, Aurobindo created his master artwork, his epic poem Savitri, over a period of many decades, organizing, editing, and substituting lines even up until his last days—close to 35 years (from 1916-1950).
Savitri is a work by itself unlike all the others. I made some eight or ten recasts of it originally under the old, insufficient inspiration. Afterwards, I am altogether rewriting it, concentrating on the first Book and working on it over and over again with the hope that every line may be of a perfect perfection.5
The creative pattern Aurobindo describes is familiar to me. Though I make many forms in sculpture, I feel myself to be reworking only one piece for all of this life, one sculpture that expresses fully “a perfect perfection.” Each version I have made so far is a failure and in need of deconstruction. Each one is an experiment seeking to formulate a hypothesis of myself that is so reliable that it becomes fully verifiable. Each sculpture strives to embody a form that is so complete and perfect that it becomes transparent to light, it becomes noiseless to silence. I want to make a work such that the attention of the viewer is on the light, in the silence, not on me as the artist, or on the work as the art. In this endeavor, am I involved in a permanent experiment or an experimental permanency? Both? Aurobindo and the Mother would say both until the knot is undone and the veil is rent that separates the lower self from the higher. z
NOTES
- Sir Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2005), s.v. duḥkha and sukha.
- Assuming the wheel did not just break apart.
- Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art (New York: Dover Publications, 1956) 51-52; Coomaraswamy is quoting the Kena Upanishad, 2, 8.
- Edward W. Said, Freud and the Non-European (London: Verso, 2003), 53.
- Aurobindo, Letters on Art and Poetry (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 2004), 211. Walt Whitman crafted his Leaves of Grass over a period of 37 years (from 1855-1892), making sure that his poetry kept pace with the growth he experienced before, during, and then after the American Civil War.
