This is one of those late Sunday night I’m-overtired-and-starting -to-get-a-wee-headache-but-this-is-such-a-great-confusing-idea-I-need-to -ask-my- friends-about-it blog.
In the future I am going to feature Anna Berezovksya and what she sees as bringing together techniques unique to realism, abstraction and surrealism. Her paintings are colorful, imaginative, and a delight to the sensibilities of us all. Here is one of her pictures:
Okay. If you can get past the initial shock of weirdness about it, it’s really finely done: the faces, the detail, the texture.
If you want to take a bit and “study” the picture, what is it saying? People following each other to the edge of the cliff (that’s my first thought). Okay. Different personalities are reacting differently. One has a movie camera, one is dangling their feet, one is a sailor, one is a king.
What does the seagull have to do with it? The fish skeleton? The apple? Why is the crescent moon hiding in those long braids? What is the book the king is holding? Why is the sailor wearing a hoop earring?
Okay Okay. Those questions are neither here nor there. We can interpret this painting however we wish. I’m sure Miss Berezovksya has her own explanation, too.
Here comes the spacey thoughts.
I am a writer. We are taught to be thorough (though not lengthy) in our explanations and descriptions. We have to create mood, atmosphere, and rhythm in our writings.
How would I explain this picture? Or the story of this picture?
This is in the same stratosphere as describing a Jackson Pollack or a Juan Gris painting.
I believe there is an explanation for everything. A reason for everything. From why cacti have needles for spines to why a spider has so many eyes. So there is an explanation for Abstract Art, Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Conceptualism.
Some paintings are crystal clear. A portrait. A landscape. A Still Life. And many modern styles need no explanation — they are more of a tool to elicit response and emotion rather than make sense.
But I wonder if some are not meant to be understood.
Writing always has to make sense. Otherwise you will follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole never come out the same. You would be like “what did I just read??” Your brain would scramble to make sense of sentences and tenses and made up words.
So the question of the day is — how do you describe the indescribable? The nonsensical? The busy and the confusing?
As you can see, it’s way past my bedtime…..