Subsequent to
the liberation of Romania from German forces in 1945, a drunken Russian
soldier entered my father's perfumery shop, cast a glance across the shelves
and demanded that he be given without delay a large bottle of perfume and
an enema. After receiving what he had asked for, the soldier poured
the contents of the perfume into the enema, brought the rubber hose closer
to his mouth and swallowed the perfume pleasurably while proclaiming: "ETA
Kultura", i.e. THIS is Culture. He was right of course. That too
is part of culture. This may even be art, for he created something spontaneous,
a short comedy, perhaps, without rehearsals; a stand-up show.
Forty-five years later,
I met another Russian, by the name of Anatoly,
who showed me another kind of spontaneous artistic creation, only this
time a painting: you take a white canvas, preferably glazed, fill it up
with a blend of paint he called "porridge" and you create with the use
of your brush and paints. Something had better come of this, which
in Anatoly's dictionary is called
a "picture", meaning a surface of paint which "does not jump at you", "sits
well", is "intriguing", in which there is some kind of "wholeness". |
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If you succeeded,
you might receive from him a positive grade, starting from "do not throw
out", continuing with "this is good", "you may want to keep it," "very
good" and ending with the superlative one receives only very seldom: "pas
mal". But assuming that you were not successful in creating a "picture",
because you were trying to imitate nature or spare the viewer the experience
of imagination, or you got the size of the canvas wrong and were leaving
areas blank, or because you had a bad day again - it is then when you will
get good advice from him. With a circular motion of his palm he suggests
that you erase everything and return to the "porridge", which might turn
out to be a good ground in a few months. A canvas, a painting, even
a rubber enema - all of these can create a sense of artistic pleasure,
if, and only if, we make good use of them (Duchamp, for example).
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