Just get to work
A recent post at 43 Folders, the productivity blog, begins with a quote from painter Chuck Close: “Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.â€
It’s a post that’s targeted to those of us in creative fields whose output can be hindered and limited by our own personalities and bad habits. It’s interesting to read how Chuck Close’s signature “building block” style is the result of how he has evolved his methods to overcome his own creative blocks. Working incrementally, and finding a shortcut, or lifehack, as author Brian Oberkirch puts it, freed the artist from his own impatience and laziness.
If you can create a process that short circuits some of your own worst habits, and you really believe in that process, eventually you’ll get a sweater, a nine-foot painting, chicken enchiladas, a Web site, a marathon.
Read Working in Close
“Chuck Close’s signature “building block†style is the result of how he has evolved his methods to overcome his own creative blocks.”
By “creative blocks” do you mean being a quadriplegic? Cause that’s why/how he evolved his style. Saw a fascinating biography of him on OvationTV…really inspiring.
No, whawha, of course not. I refer to this quote from him: “I’m a nervous wreck. I’m a slob. I have no patience. And I’m rather lazy. All those things would seem to guarantee that I would not make work like I make. But I didn’t want to just go with my nature.”
I think it’s really useful to read about another person’s process and how an individual can devise work habits that get around their shortcomings. And Chuck Close does give some sense in the NPR interview about how exactly he did that. But I don’t know if his comment “inspiration is for amateurs” really relates to that. It was odd to see it on Drawn — the place for “daily doses of inspiration.”
That comment makes me want to get all snarky and say something like, If “inspiration is for amateurs” maybe that’s why R. Crumb says, “The best art is done by amateurs.”
As far as I could tell, neither Drawn nor 43 Folders actually quoted the part of the interview where he out and out talks about how, aknowledging his shortcomings, he devised a way of working that allowed him to be productive anyway. And in the absence of that quote, this “amateurs” comment gives a false impression, I think.
For the full point to be made I think it’s necessary to also quote him from immediately after the slob comment — [15:30 in the NPR audio linked to 43 folders:]
“But I felt I didn’t want to just go with my nature and say, Well, that’s the way that I am, I can only make big, sloppy, nervous, quick paintings. I thought [that] to construct a situation in which I couldn’t behave that way was also to address my nature.
“… I found that one of the nice things about … working incrementally, is that I don’t have to have to reinvent the wheel every single day. Today I did what I did yesterday and tomorrow I’ll do what I do today. You can pick it up and put it down. I don’t have to wait for inspiration: there are no good days or bad days. And everyday, essentially, builds positively on what I did the day before. … And the advantage … [is that] it allowed for a way to just keep working … And I think, given my nature, it was very good for me to have a way to work in which I was able to add to what I already had and slowly construct the final image out of these little building blocks. …
“Patience is a funny thing. I used to work every day and make a painting every day. And now, I work every day and I make a painting every several months. But work is work and it doesn’t seem to take any more patience to keep working on one piece than it did to make a different piece every day. And the big difference is that I used to enjoy painting, I loved the activity, but I didn’t care very much about what I made and now I have a way of working which is essentially a positive building on what I already have and eventually I get to something about which I care a great deal more. So for me that was a very productive trade off.”
I like the way he talks about inspiration here. He makes it sound like something valuable but not necessary in a situation where all he needed to do was persist in what he was already doing. Nothing wrong with that: he’s just saying his work as a professional doesn’t require inspiration.
At the end of the NPR interview, without naming it, he talks about inspiration at a time when he did need it, in relation to the problem of finding his own voice as an artist. He says he started out as an abstract painter and his idea to go representational and paint “heads” came from his effort to overcome the influence of De Kooning’s style on his own when he was a student.
(28:20) “I didn’t start making representational art because I was against abstraction. As a matter of fact, my favorite work was usually abstract, often very minimal, and often sculpture….You know, I was a big, big fan as a student of De Kooning — who I still think was the greatest American artist of the 20th century. I loved him so much and I painted way more than my share of De Koonings. In fact when I met De Kooning late in his life I said it’s very nice to meet someone who’s painted more De Kooning’s than I have.
“One of the problems of being a good student, and I was a good student, was that I knew what art looked like and I could demonstrate that I knew what it looked like, but it must look like someone else’s art or it wouldn’t look like art. And I couldn’t find a way to work out of De kooning and out of my heroes without making weak impersonations of their work. And one of the wonderful things about having purged … my work of all those influences and driving myself into my own idiosyncratic corner where no one else’s answers would fit the questions I was asking myself was that ultimately over the years I found a way to get a lot of that De Kooning color and some of the marks and things I loved so much back into my work. But now I get to use De Kooning color and make a Chuck Close instead of using De Kooning color and making a De Kooning.”
It took an initial inspiration or imaginative leap to arrive at his own style. Here he describes himself in a quandry. He knows how to distinguish existing art from what’s not art but he doesn’t know how to get to the place where he produces something new and his own. He “couldn’t find a way” he says. He was stuck and couldn’t get free. He needed inspiration.
And he also describes the process of inspiration he used to get free. He purged his work of all influences and so drove himself into a corner. He asked himself questions that nothing he already knew could help him answer.
And then what? And then boom. The unscheduled, the disorderly thing happened. It had to, he’d taken himself out of the everyday. What happened was he had a novel idea. It came to him — somehow. He was inspired. If instead of driving himself into that corner he had simply applied his “go to work everyday” ethic and simply persisted in what he was doing, he would have done weak impersonations his whole life.
So, I’m sorry to go on like that but I thought those extra quotes would clarify what he was saying and present more context to his attitudes toward both process and inspiration.