The Song of the Bird by Paul

Henrickson from the estate of E. Paul Torrance

ARTiSTS, HARD TIMES and OPPORTUNITIES
by Paul Henricksont tm. 2014
I came across the thesis that the appearance of
the work of Margaret Bourke White describing
the misery of the years of economic depression
may have been appreciated by the public at the
time because some shared experience, that is, the
comment suggested, that the appreciating public
and the sufferers were the same

It is very difficult for me to imagine that those
depicted as starving, wearing ragged clothing and
physically unclean would have the ability to stand
aloof from those describing them is such a
degraded fashion to comment What an effective
photographic image! Lets buy it for our
collection!
What the functioning topic of the article really
was, however, was the importance of
communicating the truth for falsehoods lead to
tragedy, diminishment of value and loss which
was pointed out in the results of a research
project reported originally in the early 1970s and
is currently available on www.scribd.com under
the title The Perceptive and Silenced Minorities

I should like to see the end of the idea that great
art emerges from great suffering. It would be
correct, I believe, rather to state that the process
of creative production itself, without the additions
of physical deprivations and social torments
supplied by the environment, very often involves
the anguish of manifesting what isnt yet extant. It
might be better compared to giving birth, I should
think. Although. I must admit that the art of
Edvard Munch is to a very great extent nourished
by his experiences with sickness, death and social
hypocrisy


There is on Youtube a highly and intriguingly
informative film on Munch, his life, hi work, social
and political environments. It attempts, rather
successfully, to weld these various factors into, for
the observer, a wholly comprehensible portrait of
a man trying to sort out from the stew in which he
finds himself a way out to some haven where,
who he may essentially be, might develop and
mature in relative safety. The following is, I
believe, the URL for this film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUBh3oN3OA

In his mature work there was a consistently
developing an optical separation, in the formal
sense, of the pigment on the canvas from the
subject it represented. There was, in fact, then, a
rejection of an aim to describe an object (in the
background or environment of the subject) and to allow
the facts of the pigmented stain and artists
gesture to become more immediately evident in
their own right. This can be more readily seen in
the work of Paul Jenkins with, I believe, less
significance either philosophically or aesthetically.
Paul Jenkins
With Munch this development was as though
there had been a divorce from literal
representation, as an exercise in a visual
discipline, from symbolic import. It is entirely
possible, of course, that Jenkins viewed his work
as some sort of preparatory exercise in visual
vocabulary building, but, in so far as I know there
is no work in which such visual explorations have
been reincorporated into a presentation of a
message . Jenkins work is basically entertaining.

In one sense one might say that there had always
been this interplay between the representation of
an object and its meaning and with it the
reminder that an artist is not a dutiful
craftsperson and obedient. In short, the Muse will
assert its presence, will not be denied and that
the artist is, possibly, a vehicle for occult
messaging and that this interpretation seems to
becoming more plausible as time moves on. A
current example might be the present idea that
there is no material substance, that what appears
solidly material, is not, and that other nano
particles can pass through the apparent material
such as Christ is reported having done after his
crucifixion when he suddenly appeared before his
apostles.
However, I will emphasize that there are subtle
differences in how message and method
interplay.
I have no reason to doubt that Margaret Bourke-
White was emotionally moved by the conditions
but she possessed the funds necessary for the
film. And, in consequence, her passion was more
attached to the recording what she saw as
opposed to alleviating it....somewhat like,
Aligheris tourist view of hell or a trip through a
steaming tropical jungle in an air-conditioned bus

The reference I found which initiated this whole
trend of thought was one by Dorothy Spears and
entitled Tough Times call for Shrewd Artistsand
it prompted me to consider that there was, quite
probably, considerable reason to accept the thesis
that an art the public is not ready to accept, and,
perhaps, may never become ready is certainly not
one the public expects, or thinks it wants, or had a
thought of rejecting , and, therefore,
automatically, does not support it. This will, of
course, create economically difficult times for the
artist...if he depends on that source for his
support. Of course. Ms. Spears is correct in
assuming that if the economy is not doing well,
and some experience financial difficulties, any
market, art or some other, will suffer.

What distressed me about her analysis was the
emphasis on the entrepreneurial ingenuity
required for an artist, at such times to eat.
I believe she has mixed the roles being played in
this monopolistic game of economic one-
upmanship.

To begin with artists do not eat, the man eats. I
know it will be difficult for, perhaps all of us, to
dissect the meaning here. But the nourishment
that feeds the art is not the comestible placed on
the table. That nourishment is not of a material
order. That part of the being that is man needs
food on the table and, of course, by extension so
does the society in which he lives. The part of the
being that is the artist thrives on awareness and
the by-product of awareness is a new reality or a
better formulation of the present one and when
that reality is shared we get a society, a
civilization...ultimately, at any rate, we get one
with all its benefits and possible inadequacies,
well formed, or not.

While the foods we eat from one century to
another may remain basically the same the way
we function creatively touches upon a different
order of reality. Reality has many faces. Margaret
Bourke-White showed us one and Munch
another. What the contemporary criticism of
Munchs work did was to focus on the how he
said what he said and ignored the subject.

This social preference for the manner, or style,
often inhibits the transfer of meaning when the
developments in style (which also includes the
evolution of appropriate symbology to enhance,
elaborate ,paraphrase and make into a
metaphor)introduced by the artist The Sick
Child by Edvard Munch, and as clearly explained
in the film mentioned demonstrates that any
appropriate technique for a work is not what one
learns in school and applies to a project, but what
one which evolves, often unexpectedly, as the
need arises. In its origination and its application
such technical variations are appropriate. It is the
obligation of the observer to figure it out.

Ms. Spears and a host of others have suggested
that the solution to an artists economic problems
is for the artist to paint what the public wants and
that solution is totally unacceptable for a creative
to submit to, but much easier for the man.
This Spears comment seems to indicate she does
not know, or perhaps does not care to know,
what motivates creative thinking,
There is another practical problem as well and
that is, in the main, works of art must be seen
before an evaluation can take place even if one
applies as a rule that an artist must do what he is
told. In the creative arts such behaviour is
inappropriate. To do otherwise would amount, on
the part of the obedient, to accepting the
prohibitions and thus the suicide of independent
thought.
The lie, however, does not work.
In the 2003 Simon Cellan Jones film Eroica the
triangle of attitudes toward role playing, (how one
plays ones assigned role) that is of the defined roles
as society outlines them, has been clearly
delineated by the remarks of the Jack Davenport,
character, Prince Lobkowicz, the ruler stating the
composer (Beethoven) has broken the rules, while
Franz Joseph Hayden, the established and
celebrated and conventionally approved
composer,( played by Frank Finlay), describes, but
does not condemn the rule breaking stating that
decorum has been breached and that music shall
never be the same. Beethoven, the culprit in all
this rule-breaking, (played by Ian Hart) describes
himself as not being very good at suppressing his
personal responses. It is at this point we must
recognize the truly responsible character here. Is
it the Prince, another composer, or the one doing
the composing?
However, there still remains the matter of
evaluation.
Now, let us turn to another enigmatic
figure....Paul Cezanne
In my view the major characteristic that elevated
Paul Cezannes efforts to admirable and admirably
controlled heights was his, (what I identify as,) social
phobia and it was this, as well, which in some
enterprising young woman who may have
discovered a degree of erotic shyness in a man
that she might manoeuvre into a compromising
position saw in Paul a likely candidate for a
passive candidate willing to house his son and his
wife by chance in exchange for keeping
house...and the jar de Buffon while common
enough for the class and the period was no mean
shack.





The general development of Cezannes work, as I
understand it, was from the painful exposition
from the conceived and alleged and imagined
thrill of the erotic as explored in art to a steady
and finally vacuumed , passionless, and analytical
study of light as it bounces off the nano particles
of pollen and wind-blown dust.
Drink as much lemonade as you wish, Hortense,
just leave me to paint The Cezannes separated
and lived apart and the painter left his entire
estate to his son .which made their marriage
seem something like a botched parthogenesis.

It is in this regard , that is of seeing, in contrast to
the conventional college dicta, the entire
development of the history of the arts as a very
slow process of enfranchising the artist and his
escaping the controlling dictates of those with the
funds to patronize , the state, the church, the
bully, the procrustean personality.

I will say this, at this point, in a qualified defence
that it was the church, specifically the Roman
Catholic Church which had the foresight to use
the emotions to keep the flock together when the
idea of reformation became a threat. The qualifier
is that the nearly unrestricted emotional content
of the Baroque style was forcibly, by dictum,
imposed upon the producers of aesthetic
products of the time sets of requirements laid
down by the church for the churchs purposes. It
was not a personal search for identify, the
boundaries of selfhood, as demonstrated, later,
by the youthful Rimbaud. That kind of
psychological independence was not to be
encouraged. The forces of social control create
the need for a recognition of the authorship of
behaviour in the other (generally themselves) and
not the self.
Bernini

It does frequently appear that a human being
experiences the need to express strongly
seemingly irrational emotive behaviour, either
directly, as in relationships, or projectively and
symbolically as in theatre.

There are other ways of dealing with this passion
as may be seen in the development of Paul
Cezannes subject matter and technical execution.
From technically clumsy, responses out of control
in a passion to put into icon form the
phantasmagorical imaginings of an erotic outburst
to where the environment is clean, pure and
untroubled by the passions of mankind and
persons sit like lifeless mannequins restrained by
that lifelessness from interfering with the serenity
of an ordered universe, or contributing to an
overly lively one. This dead zone was Cezannes
haven.

Perhaps it may also be seen in the methods used
by Albert Pinkham Ryder who, at times, seemed
obsessed with the attempt to physically force out
of the material (oil paint and canvas) a morph only
possible via the means of symbolic injection. The
fact that even after a century his having painted
over and over and over again has, as yet, made it
impossible for the paint to dry, seems to indicate
some sort of problem he was having with the
nature of the medium itself (in terms of what he may
have expected of it)as though he felt it necessary to
impose upon the paint a behaviour he felt it
obliged to perform,. This, in great contrast to
Cezannes ultimate release of feelings of the
constraint imposed by erotic urges.

We cannot, I think, attribute this irrational
behaviour, on Ryders part, to a lack of
intelligence, but it may be possible for us to see
this effort as an expression of his belief in what
the paint should be doing, or expressed another
way, how an image should be built. Ryder was
not, like Marsden Hartley engrossed in painting
images that gave him an erotic kick. Would it be
appropriate to express the difference as spiritual?
The answer elludes me.
One of the more intriguing aspects of Ryders
work rests with the delicatly rendered delineation
of a dead canary (above) which stands in shocking
contrast to the heavy, dark, somber forms of
planet earth as it relates to the ominouse,
unyielding and forboding heavens.might be
experienced in still shots from an on-going
apocalypse.

Only recently, relatively speaking, and rather
unevenly, it seems, have the personal aesthetic
responses of the artists been legitimized.

This new found creative freedom has, regrettably,
in some instances, given rise to the personality
eager for notoriety (sometimes at any cost) where he,
at times, very effectively really does look like
someone he wishes to emulate. It is called
pastiche making, or, sometimes, an illusion. Such
an effort is not unlike Simon Magus trying to talk
St. Peter into selling him the secret of raising the
dead.

This development, in turn, gives rise to the need
for yet another level of expertise where the very
astute observer is able to recognize the nuances
of signature every legitimate creator develops.
These are very few in number and, my estimate
would be that fewer than 3% of Gallery directors
have the ability. The artist who paints like
someone else is in his response to his
environment limited to emulating the accented
mannerisms of a , possibly, legitimate performer.
Not everyone who, like Bruce Chatwin, has the
reputation of immediately detecting the genuine
from the fake. Bruce Chatwin

Now, it is at this point, my professional focus
comes into play. At this point in time, the ability
of the artist to give expression to his emotional
responses to lifes encounters and societys
exercised and informed support of that form of
freedom of speech may well become the healing
balm for what ails us...all of us The artist in the
role, once again, of the psychic tribal seer
I have seen it work on the individual level, but,(on
the sad other hand) have seen the passion for control
over creative production as exercised, (in 1984, by
the Scandinavian Film Institutes )
In that instance the mentality of Prince Lobkowicz
was enhanced by the procrustean efforts of then
director of the Swedish film Institute and Finn
Aabye the director of cultural affairs for Denmark.
Such a position seems to contain, if not the
promise then, at least the expectation, that the
one holding the position could make choices
approximately matching those of 51% of the
population. If not that percent, or more, than the
entire concept, as structured, is fraudulent,
unless, and this is an important unless the real
purpose of the position was to manage the
availability of choices the other 49% might likely
make given free access. In reality, however, those
theoretical percentages do not exist in practice it
is much closer to the 5%ruling the 95%. Even if
such a duplicitous arrangement could be
successfully made the real result, if not the
purpose, is to elevate for public view and as an
example of authorized opinion the uncontested
decisions of one as a spokesman for the entire
population.
In this writers opinion there are no, (and there can
be none), official, governmental or private
organizations, capable of functioning as aesthetic
or intellectual filters for the population.
The only practical explanation for their existence
is a desperate recognition that that at any time
and anywhere some alert creative mind will assert
its superior vision and influence public response
so, consequently it might be the better part of
political wisdom to cap that development and to
redirect its energies into the support of the status
quo...hence schools and covert censorship.
.
In my opinion the only really creative act was the
award I commissioned from the American
sculptor Bradford Smith which in honor of the
purpose and the occasion I named The Hammer
of Thor. It is now, I believe, shared by Sven Wam
and Petter Venerrud who, at that time, directed
the films produced by Mefistofilm
as pictured on a ticket for the event. The original,
now in Norway, is abour 16 tall and made of cast iron and sterling silver.
As official government agencies the various
Scandinavian Film Institutes behaved very badly ,
in the moral sense, and rather stupidly, in the
area of social behaviour, giving many observers
the indication that it was only the power to decide
whose film work should be promoted and that
power they didnt want to give away.
It was this idea which the note below may have
tried to convey when Daniel Mayer Selznik
indicated his appreciation for the idea but
doubted, because of conventional mentalities it
would fly...and he was certainly correct, much to
the misfortune of the creative minds in
Scandinavia and to my dismay.

This does occur, but it does not work in the way
intended, it not only deprives the population of
the growth it subconsciously seeks it prepares the
chosen individual, the cultural Czar, as it were for
a self assessment that is probably warrantless.
Unfortunately, and likely, they may never get to
know it.

What came out of that experience was yet
another, and very strong, example of the
differences in mind set between the creative
minds of film directors and the passion for other
peoples obedience on the part of government
bureaucrats who are able, it seems, to
conceptualize only in terms of definitions. such as
those inherent in these are the rules .

It has defensively been expressed that inhibitory
rules actually assist in the production of creative
works by providing the artist with a motive for
resistance. I seriously question the logic allegedly
supporting that concept on two grounds. The first
of these is that a creative mind does not need to
have obstacles placed in his path in order to think
creatively and secondly the argument is a vulgar
scam to make people think a vice (control of others)
is a virtue .

What was not detailed in the film, although it was
suggested, that Beethovens contribution to music
was the development of music into a more
effective language of communication. It is this
point; it seems to me that might serve as a sort of
joint-hinge to open a discussion to my work.
In retrospect, it seems to me, to have taken a long
time for me to understand what it was I wanted
to accomplish.
At his point in time, after numerous decades of
experiences and trial I am attempting to braid
together my interests in creative production,
experimental psychological research and forerays
into attempting to get the world to behave as I
think it ought. Sometimes I have seen lightning
strikes of success

The above is the resurrected The Creativity
Packet after the original having been
criminally murdered (as it were) by the then
ISP Melita ONVOL of Malta.
The back ground for this claim can be
researched in the following documents
available on www.scribd.com:
Symptoms of a National Pathology
The Third Eye of Malta is Blind
A Cause for Concern
The Current Status