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April 2004 Contents
I. Beauty is truth, truth beauty...
II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room, and the Shrink’s Couch
III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
IV. Creative Links
V. Newsletter and Info: Sharing this newsletter, subscribing, and unsubscribing

I. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty…” Keats
            Somewhere in an early design course I was surprised at how a piece turned out. “It’s pretty”, I thought, in some confusion. I thought I was trying to make a statement.

          Even now, if someone says, “that’s a beautiful piece”, I am a bit surprised since I’m usually working from an idea, a concept, or something that has moved me. I am not focusing on aesthetic pleasure in any intentional way. In no way am I a conceptual artist (see sites below) but the question for me has always been “Does it work?” with that indefinable gut reaction that signals yes or no.

          But then it could be that our intentions are only a thin cover story to keep our minds busy so other parts of us can get on with the non-rational process of creating.

          Then I stumbled across a workshop title “Beauty: Where Your Life Becomes Luminous” To quote presenter, John O’Donohue, “Beauty has a dignity and poise that takes us beyond our smallness and negativity; beauty brings us to remembrance.”

          Well now, it seems to me that beauty as a vehicle for transporting one to a new place is a kind of meaning. But not an intellectual or conceptual meaning, more one of bringing the viewer to a new and desired state of being. Religious art has always aimed at this. Maybe beauty is the ecumenical version of what all those Madonna and Child images were trying to convey.

          Checking some references, in my bookish way, I find that I am not alone on this see-saw of beauty and meaning.  One art historian* says the first principle of art is vitality, the second beauty.  Piet Mondrian’s take is reversed with universal beauty the first aim of art, the second being esthetic expression of one’s self.

          For the working artist, it’s probably less intimidating to work toward expressing personal meaning than directly toward anything as big as universal beauty. Peter London** seems to think this when he says that beauty always implies a comparison, a comparison means being judged, and “the risk of being judged makes one hesitant in both art and life.”

          In contrast, the search to express meaning comes from a personal level without an initial comparison or judgment looming. Finding the “just right” visual form to convey your own experiences is tough enough. When done honestly and deeply, it may be a side effect is that some other people are touched by what they consider beautiful results, that a work “takes us beyond our smallness and negativity, to bring us to remembrance.”
     *Read, H. Icon and Idea. 1955.
       **London, P. No More Second Hand Art. 1989.
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II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink’s Couch
          A whole different take on what makes art beautiful or meaningful, comes from research labs and medical centers. Instead of asking why art moves us, they look at what the brain does when art provides that shiver of delight. According to Steven Johnson (See Friends in Print below) the brain’s circuitry for being in love, parent child bonding, runner’s highs, the rush of taking risks, and our appetite for novelty may all be involved. Some examples:

·                studies of the smiling response, a universal expression of pleasure, show that real smiles include the crinkling of muscles around the eyes. When that happens some of the pleasure centers in the brain light up.

·                different species have their receptors for various feel-good chemicals in different spots. When they overlap with circuits for forming attachments, the animals mate for life.

·                human brains light up differently, with more pleasure centers, when seeing pictures of loved ones vs. non-romantic friends,

·                and this is similar to brain activity of mothers listening to their infants’ cries, and

·                that of folks on cocaine.

          Finally, one researcher has focused on what the brain does when we get a “musical chill,” and finds that the chemistry around this auditory input is about a release of opioids, again similar to both the runner’s high and parent-child love.  It will be interesting to see if similar patterns occur with the yet-to-be-researched “visual chills” of images, or the “textural chills” of fiber art.
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III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
Click on amazon link for book details and to support breakTHROUGHArts.
Johnson, Steven. Mind Wide Open. 2004
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743241657/breakthroug00-20
            Johnson takes his readers on a wild ride through the various neurophysiological studies that show what the brain does when we are moved, distracted, focused, calm, etc. He personally went through various tests originally developed for medical purposes for the purpose of learning how his own mind works. Fun to read, without jargon.
          As a writer, he experimented with having MRI’s done while reading and while crafting sentences. When reading his own work, his brain lit up more than when reading someone else’s writing. When he could not concentrate, the brain activity looked scattered. When he worked at writing, a kind of “efficiency” occurred where the areas of the brain not needed got very quiet and those that coordinated his language work glowed hotly. A well-written introduction to how brain research applies to everyday life.

O’Donohue, John. Beauty: the Invisible Embrace. 2004
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060196432/breakthroug00-20 
            Poet O’Donohue writes lyrically of the many kinds of beauty that can move us. His meditations on nature and landscape can revive any artist’s flagging appreciation and his chapter on color is a rich feast for visual artists.
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IV. Creative Links.
www.imageandtext.org.nz  A virtual gallery of conceptual and minimalist art that includes access to writings about how these movements convey messages and are heavily dependent on context. Click Essays under Discourse.

www.artlex.com & http://en.wikipedia.org Online versions of dictionaries and encyclopedias that have good entries on conceptual and minimalist art. The latter has a fuller set of links to related entries.
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V. Newsletter Info 
E-mail changes. To change your e-mail address, subscribe, or unsubscribe please e-mail connect@dianereardon.com. If you use a spam filter, please add this e-mail address to your list of approved senders. This material is included on the breakTHROUGH Creativity Coaching website (www.dianereardon.com). All material is copyrighted ©, 31 March 2004, Diane Reardon. All rights reserved. Visit the website for back issues and details on scheduling a complimentary one-hour coaching session.
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