Uncle Sunstone Mud-Wrestles Art and Aesthetics

[Sunstone]

PLEASE NOTE: This journal dedicated solely to my thoughts about art and aesthetics, including painting, music, sculpture, architecture, poetry, writing, the nature and importance of beauty, and so forth.

 

[Sunstone]

The old man died at age 58 after a long fight with cancer. Before that, he'd been an inventor, a manufacturer, the business manager of his family's photography studio, and an in-demand portrait painter. In the 50s, he'd been earning 10k per portrait in oils at a time when the average annual household income was just a few bucks above 3k. When he died, he left behind a handful of unfulfilled commissions.

Below is a quick sketch he did of himself. I would guess it was a few hour's work for him, given it's 'draft' look. It's a mere likeness that does not say a whole lot about his character.

I think the main reason dad could ask for and get a small fortune for each portrait he did was because he could capture and express someone's personality or character in them. When you look at one of his paintings, you immediately know what sort of person the subject was. Sometimes, you even get hint or two of their occupation. Sadly, the 'selfie' reproduced below doesn't say a whole lot about dad as a person. At least, not compared to his oil paintings.

According to mom, dad would have most likely called the sketch below, "Good draftsmanship, but not art".

 

[Sunstone]

My dad's family did not consider him much of a photographer -- not compared to his brothers. So dad mostly handled the business end of the family studio, and did not take a whole lot of the photographs. But for some unknown reason, he himself did the poet Carl Sandburg's portraits. Here's my favorite one of the series:

Maybe it's just me, but whenever I look at the photo, I am reminded that Sandburg was the poet who described Chicago as "The city of big shoulders". I guess this particular take on the man makes me see how he'd perhaps be the sort of a man who would focus on strength, competence, brawn, etc. in describing a city.

 

[Sunstone]

I quit drawing or painting at age 16 when I took up writing. Then about seven years ago, I returned to painting as a hobby. Mainly portrait painting. This is perhaps my best painting (as opposed to my best portrait, which is not a painting, but a multi-media drawing).

I think of it as barely adequate draftsmanship. It's actually no more than a study I made in preparation for a finished work that, however, I never got around to doing. My ambition was to paint something really good for my psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen, but something -- I no longer recall what -- intervened and I was left with only this study to give him for his retirement present.

 

[Sunstone]

Now, here is the only portrait I've done in my later years that I am genuinely proud of. Proud of it because it shows a glimpse of the young woman's thoughts, and perhaps a bit of her personality and character. Anyone who says anything negative about THIS one gets to meet me at dawn on the field of honor at dawn -- squirt guns out and ready to squeeze.

She was a person I briefly knew some 20 years ago. She'd just the month before been rescued from a prostitution ring, and I believe you can still see how years of being raped for money had affected her self-esteem. She was only 17.

 

[Sunstone]

A curious story about my father is that, while he was studying art as an undergraduate at Yale, the university offered him a two-year scholarship to study art at the Louvre in France. At the time that was arguably the best Western-Tradition art school in the world. Had he accepted the scholarship -- and succeeded in school -- he'd have had his career made for him.

But his mother told him he was needed at home to run the business side of the family photography studio. A dutiful son, he declined the scholarship.

I've wondered if he came to regret that decision of his to 'do his duty' rather than follow his foremost passion in life.

 

[Sunstone]

In my opinion, the Japanese language is the best in the world for expressing aesthetic ideas and concepts. Not only does it have one of the richest vocabularies regarding aesthetics of any language I've heard of, but it has several features that seem highly suited to talking about aesthetics -- almost as if it was actually designed for the purpose.

Japanese contains words for a variety of aesthetic experiences that go unnamed in most languages. For instance, it has a word that means, "the sound a high-quality door makes upon closing". Another word means, "the combination of mild anxiety, embarrassment, etc that one is likely to experience when in an elevator among a crowd of strangers." In short, the language can get pretty precise about aesthetics.

 

[Sunstone]

Some years ago, I would get up an hour or two early -- around four or five o'clock -- so that I'd have time in my day to sketch nudes. I'd found an excellent book of photographs by Mark Smith called The Nude Figure that had been published for artists who could not afford -- or did not otherwise have access to -- live models.

For about a year I poured over that book daily sketching again and again every pose that interested me until in time I'd been over each one so often I was completely bored with them. If nothing else, the experience taught me the truth of the French saying, "The human body contains every line found in nature."

 

[Sunstone]

The relationship between beauty and love is quite curious. On the aesthetic level -- the level of sensuous experience -- the two might not only be inseparable, but they also might be indistinguishable.

 

[Sunstone]

Last night, an Australian acquaintance emailed me her voice recordings of four poems from my most recently published book. She has the sweetest voice! One of her recordings was of The Alchemist, which is the longest poem in the book. Because the central character in the poem is a 17 year-old girl, it was quite interesting to me to hear the poem read in a young woman's voice. A young woman not much older than the central character.

It was -- what's the word? "Striking"? -- how she choked up while reading certain passages. I'm going to take that as a compliment.

 

[Sunstone]

Aesthetics seems capable of having an impact on intelligence. One study I read of ten or fifteen years ago found that students who attended high school in more visually interesting buildings than other students averaged about 8 points higher on IQ tests after other factors were controlled for.

I guess that makes sense -- if your brain is being stimulated ("exercised") it most likely develops better than a relatively unstimulated brain.

 

[Sunstone]

What is poetry? How does it compare to prose?

I don't know. I've published two books of poetry, and I still don't know what it is.