The Hidden Flaw
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- Graham Phillips
- UK, nostopher@gmail.com
- It depends on form to be definable, Its definability requires some form. Without form it still remains dependent on form. Form is forming and somehow the dependence is less acute. In both cases there is no requirement, But does the requirement for a thought Defining it, require the appearance of form?
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The Hidden Flaw
I want the subject of my painting to be the mind of the viewer. I want to paint mirrors but that’s not possible. A lot of painting functions through the past, you look at it like a window to the past. Maybe because you like the painting, maybe because you romanticize about the act of the painter, or perhaps because you see something that you recognize and this makes you feel recognized and solid. It proves your existence.
The painting is in isolation from the painter but if you look at it in a gallery there will be a name close by of the paintings creator. Gods name a meter away! Then you will know weather god is a man or a woman. Of course you only look at the name if you like the painting. You like the painting because you think it is “good,” you look into the past and if the painting is good you’ll look at the name of the artist and decide that he or she is a good painter.
I don’t think this is the first thing that happens when we look at a painting. We get distracted from the first thing. I don’t know what the first thing is but it isn’t something that looks into the past. When we look into the past we even think it is the painters past; i.e. that it is an objective past outside of us, which is kind of true because this is how removed from reality it is. Maybe we don’t even get the first thing – we judge a painter and we fix. Its not wrong to judge a painting, this is what we do and this is one aspect of what a painting allows us to look at. And if it’s a painting that harmonizes with us, i.e. a “good” painting, we might see the first thing.
If it’s a really good painting we might realize that what we’re looking at isn’t a window into the past its something more like a mirror. And if we recognize our own mind as the subject there is an imence clarity, a pervading space. We might walk away from the painting without looking at th artists name, and then we come back to our selves as a window with a fixed view and “remember,” i.e. we become distracted from the first thing. And run back to look at the name. Perhaps we then look at the painting again as we walk away, and as we walk away we are totally distracted by thinking about the painting and how we will describe it.
A good painter makes it impossible to think about a painting with any certainty, so we need to remember the name of the painter because it was them who introduced us even though they weren’t there. When you saw it that way the painter didn’t exist but the painting only exists because of the painter, but if your looking at the first thing it doesn’t matter so much. Its only when we’re distracted that it matters.
That we become distracted from the first thing by trying to remember the first thing is the hidden flaw that stops us from ever coming to any real certainty. We will go round and round looking for it, or trying to describe it, until we realize that its here all the time, even without the painting because that isn’t what we were looking at.
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