Heart and Soul and Chemical Highs

INNENRAUM, Anselm Kiefer, oil acrylic and paper on canvas,1981

To my mind's eye, Kiefer's work has what I am seeking: heart, soul and authenticity.

ASCHENBLUME , Anselm Kiefer, oil, emulsion, acrylic, earth, clay, ash, wire and sunflower 1983-1997

It's been a while since I have had an experience of heartfelt inspiration in a gallery but this autumn's major Anselm Kiefer retrospective at the Royal Academy most definitely hit the spot. Kiefer's is one of several current shows that are a celebration of the glorious possibilities of paint. I had fully expected that it would be Rembrandt's Late Works, at the National Gallery, that would provide me with that heart-stopping high. Rembrandt's buttery, sculpted impasto and dark translucent shadows have always stopped me in my tracks but this time it was Kiefer who had the greater and most enthralling impact. 
My favourite series of works on show at the R.A. are the huge paintings of Nazi-Era architecture. Kiefer, often spending several years on individual canvases, manages to evoke the crumbling of an entire empire. These are vast monuments to hubris and decay, made in oil, emulsion and acrylic, ash, earth and clay. They are an exquisite expression of the weight of history on the German psyche.They take my breath away. 

Detail: THE JEWISH BRIDE, Rembrandt van Rijn, oil on canvas 1667

BRAINSTORM, Natalie Sirett, oil on wood, 2014

As part of the research and development process for a new artwork, THE MIND MANAGEMENT CLOSET, I have recently been reading about Neuroscience, specifically the field of Neuroaesthetics which explores what happens in the brain when we view an artwork that inspires. It is now established that a pleasurable reward occurs in the form of a chemical change. In his book, The Splendours and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity and the Quest for Human Happiness (John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2008), Neuroscientist Semir Zeki. connects this change with a subjective experience of perfection that both viewer and artist are seeking.

It doesn't surprise me that a chemical change is involved. When I describe my viewer's response to Keifer, the language I use is about physical sensation: heartfelt, breathtaking, heart stopping... At a certain moment when I am making a new work, I become infatuated with it, I am drunk on its possibility, my heart races, I am on a high. Then there is the real downer when I start to see it as just something else I made. Semir Zeki cites Lucien Freud on this subject. "A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation and disappears towards the completion of the work...Were it not for this, the perfect painting might be painted, on the completion of which the painter could retire. It is this great unsufficiency that drives him on...The process is habit forming."

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Art appreciation is subjective; as the saying goes, we all 'know what we like', but what is it exactly that we know?

Any artist reading the less than glowing reviews for Maggi Hambling's show, also at the National Gallery, will have winced at the viciousness of some critics. Hambling drew accusations of what many of us fear the most: inauthenticity, expressed (in the case of Jonathan Jones), in some of the most furious language I have ever read from a critic. I am yet to see the show, but I know that my experience of it cannot be identical to Mr Jones' because that's not how it works. 

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It has been an interesting first year as a blogger. Articulating and sharing my experiences as both artist and viewer is sharpening my thinking. Here's hoping that we all have many heartfelt highs in 2015.