Is it Necessary? Mud and Van Gogh's Ear

A friend of my husband's recounted that as a young man he had intended to go to The Art Student's League in NYC, but when he got there everyone was sitting on the floor, and this convinced him it was not the place or the career path for him.  He became an engineer instead.

left: Terrible Tragedy, porcelain paperclay

Last week, in making what will be my new batch of porcelain paperclay, I expressed my dislike for sticking my hands into the thick slurry.  Another clay artist there offered her own hands, saying how much she loved that feeling, how it brought back the happiness of playing with mud as a child.

Did I never play with mud?  All I can remember about mud is how we used it as a balm after bee stings.  My sister and I would rush to the hose, blast it into the nakedest soil we could find, and make mud as fast as possible.  Then we globbed it onto the sting site, where it seemed to deliver some measure of relief.  It was necessary.

below:  Celadon Vase, porcelain paperclay.

That didn't work the time a huge bee landed near my eye.  I stood like a statue, supressing the inclination to outrun the buzzy beast, while my mother cautioned, "Don't run or it will follow and sting you; stay still and it will leave." I can personally attest to that plan being based on false notions.  The bee did leave, but only after stinging.  (Was it angry that my blue eye was not a flower after all?)  That sting caused my eye to swell shut like a tennis ball in a matter of minutes, just in time for the arrival of our dinner guests, two of whom were children.  Their stares told me this evening was going to be seared into their memories, years later coming back up in         conversation as, "Remember the time we went to that family's house and their daughter was a monster with a deformed eye?"  "Oh yeah, I remember that!  That was scary!"  Without the mud balm, it took a week for my eye to fully deflate.

But I digress.  I was writing not about swollen eyes and social disasters, but about whether an artist needs to get down and dirty or what it means to not do so.

My daughter, a budding artist, gets some measure of glee from getting coated with charcoal.  Black streaks smear across her face, hands and arms on a regular basis. It seems her way of proclaiming her artistry to the public.  Does physical intimacy with one's medium lead to better, more powerful art?  It sounds romantic to answer "yes", but I'm not convinced.  My husband has often reported to his colleagues that I could "paint in an evening gown without risking its ruin."  It is true that I rarely emerge from my studio covered in whatever I was working with, and were I to move out of my studio tomorrow, future occupants would likely have trouble discerning what the space had recently been used for.  The floor is not spattered with paint and there is no odor of lingering turpentine.  The main thing I'd leave as evidence is the hundreds of small pushpin and nail holes in the walls, but these are easily filled.

I have been considering the aspect of making art in a state of physical abandonment, but there is also always that sibling state to consider:  the state of mental abandonment.  Here we arrive at Van Gogh's ear.  The big Q:  Was it really necessary for him to experience those emotional imbalances in order to make brilliant paintings?  An artist/psychologist friend of mine who has extensively researched Van Gogh's creativity thinks not.  In fact, he took such offense at my offered birthday game, "Pin the Ear on Van Gogh", that he refused to accept it.  He found no kernels of humor in the game and scolded, "He did NOT cut off his ear!"  (Evidently and possibly only by accident,  he only injured the tip, which produced enough blood to launch the legend.)  The "PUBLIC" seems to desire a certain amount of emotional polarity in artists, and after all it is so much more interesting for a bio to read that an artist cut off body parts in a fit of instability than, "he/she led a calm and balanced life".  Of course, visiting the emotionally dark places is something we as humans must experience sometime, to some degree, but is it necessary for artistic brilliance?  I'm not sure...

If someone who likes to play in the mud is around next time I mix clay, I will again accept their willing hands to do the dirty work.  If not,...I'll get clay under my own fingernails, because it's a necessary step, and someone's got to do it.