Written by Eshaan
Many people have tried to come up with an answer to the question -‘What is art?’ This is a great exercise because the answer can be both right and wrong at the same time. However, as artists, we need to define this word for ourselves at some point. The journey of discovering this ever-changing answer is what some people call ‘art’. Other people call the things we make on that journey ‘art’. However you spin it, this dynamic and malleable word, some way stones along the journey are always welcome.
There are a few pieces of art that have really helped and transformed my journey. Books, movies, pictures, stories…there are remnants of other people’s journeys that have enriched my own. While I could keep going on and on about these nuggets, I have curated a list of five pieces that stand out to me at this moment in time. I share these with the hope that you might find a way stone in your own journey.
The Art Spirit — Robert Henri
“Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.”
This is a book of letters, lectures, and essays compiled by Henri’s students. He himself was a visual artist and a teacher. This book talks about philosophies on school, education, practice, discipline, and craft amongst a plethora of unsaid ideas. This book, right from the get-go, sets straight the fact that there is no ultimatum. Henri, like all good artists, knows that there is no singular path that would work for every individual.. Even though I am a musician, the words on this page have helped me with my own ideas of composition, practice and food for thought to help me distill my own view point. If you’re still not excited about reading this book, take Maria Schnider’s word for it — a composer of legendary proportions and the one who recommended this book to me.
Maybe You Should Talk To Someone — Lori Gottlieb
“But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself — to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.”
Mental health in the arts has thankfully recently come to attention. We journey through our lives as artists, being our own boss and employee. We take our emotions and wrap them up within a piece, sending them out into the world to be accepted or rejected. The constant loop of feeling something — turning it into artwork — doubting yourself, and then overcoming that doubt is ever-present. This book is an approachable account based on the author and psychotherapist, Lori Gottlieb, which documents and follows her therapy session with five of her clients.
As you read further, you start seeing shades of yourself in all of these people. I saw that my struggle was not my struggle alone. Everyone, in some way, shape, or form is going through something similar. This book helped me restart therapy and work through a lot of things that I thought stemmed from my artistic practice. It linked them to a lot of other life events that were the root of those problems. Don’t get me wrong, this book is not a substitute for therapy but it is a good primer if you are on the fence regarding therapy and trying to figure out if it is for you.
The War Of Art — Steven Pressfield
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
This book brought to the forefront another hidden feeling I could never name. You know that voice in your head that tries to dissuade you from making things? It will give you whatever reason you want to hear. “This won’t be as good”, “I have to first clean my studio then I can write”, “this next project is too hard, maybe I should do something easier”. Pressfield clubs all of these feelings under what he calls the ‘resistance’. According to him, the job of an artist is to fight resistance everyday for things to start happening. The latter-half of this book gets into some spiritual ideas that I do not prescribe to, however, the first half is quite interesting. Moreover, this book is pretty short; if you get the audio book, you could finish it in about a couple hours.
The Ethics Of Jazz — Herbie Hancock
This one is not a book. It is a six-part lecture series that Herbie presented at Harvard University. These six lectures have influenced me way more than any other singular piece of media. Herbie starts with his time spent in Miles’s band and all the great things he learned during his time in the second quintet. He then moves on to talk about his experiences with racism and some stories that are really heart-wrenching. He had experienced heavy racism from a very young age and to see him overcome those challenges was pretty inspiring.
He also talks about his love for technology and his personal journey with Buddhism. However, most of all, his last lecture showcases a staged rehearsal that completely exemplified the ethics of jazz. This rehearsal alongside Lionel Loueke, Terry Lyn Carrington, Josh Ari, and Herbie were the turning point in my life — one where I decided I wanted to be part of this community of musicians. If it wasn’t for this lecture series, I still might be a bass player playing rock and metal, but instead, I leaned toward my interest in playing and exploring improvised music on the guitar now.
The Power Of Ten — Charles & Ray Eames
This is a very short film. You can find it on YouTube with a quick search. The film shows the scale of the universe by first zooming out in powers of ten and then zooming in at the same rate. I saw this video for the first time when I was 15 and have continued watching it over the years. There is an amazing phenomenon that happens when you watch this movie. It shows you how massive the universe is, and simultaneously shows how complex even the smallest part of your own body can really be. I’ve had an affinity for physics ever since I was a small kid. At age 7, I remember learning from some book that stars and humans were made of the same dust as the big bang.
This video really helps put into perspective how tiny we are on a universal scale but for a single atom in our body, the ratio is pretty similar. And however small we may be, just as it’s important for the atom to do its part in our body, it is important for us to do our part in the grand scheme of things. This film helped me alleviate a lot of the pressure from my life. This pressure is not unique to the field of the arts; however, I feel as artists, we end up confronting it pretty often. It is the pressure of figuring out why we exist and what our purpose is. Why do we do what we do? This video is not going to answer any of those questions, but it is definitely going to help put things in perspective.
While all of my annotations may give you the impression that these pieces of media are not for you or regarding a particular thing, I would still encourage you to check them out for yourself.
I saw what I wanted to when I looked at these works, and I have an inkling that you will too!