Heart, hand and mind?

« Holy Contradictions », on view in Bromfield Gallery, Boston. What do you see?

What’s the meaning of art? And is "Heart, hand and mind" good enough to describe art?

In my exhibition « holy contradictions », I reflected on the process of mind, heart and hand after this quote by John Ruskin: « Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together ». Merleau Ponti also developped the idea. It is powerful to help an artist to distinguish their ideas, thier emotions, and the movement of the body while painting. It also allows to explain to spectators what an artist really makes. The result (a painting, for instance) is obtained through a process and finally only a small part of all the artistic work. Very often, a viewer asks "how much time did it take you to make the painting?" As if they ignored all the work that came before: the whole idea of an exhibition, its meaning, planification, sketches, writings, trials, mishaps. Not even taking into account the training of the hand, the life-long observations and the miscellaneous, framing, delivering, installing... It is never an automatic play of the hands over a few hours or few days.

Since then, I reflected again on the matter. Apparently St Thomas Aquinus wrote that the main movement of the artist is to look for a certain virtue in the making, a disposition to be able to create after a design. This virtue is art. The great interest of this concept is that it abolishes part of Ruskin's idea, which I found troubling. The trio "Heart, hand and mind" was used to describe a hierarchy between the worker (no heart or mind), the crafstman (no mind), and the artists (ultimatedly gifted with heart, hand, and mind). On the contrary, I would say that St Thomas describes art as a virtue that anybody can try and reach out for their own work. Then the analysys of Ruskin can help and figure out in which disposition the heart, mind and hand should be for this to happen.

There are many other interesting theories of art, some related with healing. It is apparently proven that art makes cortisol drop (stress hormone). Whatever you do, even hum a song or drop paint on a canvas, apparently makes people feel better. The reason I am not sure about this theory is that I made 10 years of music conservatory in France when I was younger and I don't recall much about feeling better afterwards. Until this day, I am not a big fan of music, and I never played it again! But I will come back to this subject of healing.

For this particular exhibition, I made a series of 10 watercolors. Starting in a meditative state, I anchor my mind in a few words and freely paint on the paper… The gestures are informed by all the photographic and geometric work of "The Penrose Project" and its 5-branch stars, and my reserach in abstract composition. My idea was to be in a detached, praying moment, where no foreign feeling could burden me. No painful anger, no agitating joy (or not too much :)). If I was stepping just a little bit behind the emotion, would it allow the spectator to better find their own interpretation of the art? Their own feelings? I was wondering: and you, what do you see? This is how "Holy Contradictions" were made. A huge part of it is still the poem of the exhibition, which is the subject I painted (read it here).

What do you think? Do you use art, or is it a profound way of life, a quest?