The Fundamental Conversation

The creative tension between masculine and feminine is, I suggest, the fundamental conversation. I think of the opposites as two irreducible properties, like blue and orange, that color our every trait, such as strength or nurturing, but are not themselves these traits.

The essence of masculine and feminine is a mutual attraction that can be defined only by itself. Even though men are masculine and women feminine, each sex finds its identity by its inner dialogue with the other. Stereotypes stymie the flow of language. For example, the person who thinks that strength is “masculine” and nurturing is “feminine” will be limited in the kind of conversation he or she can invent. Each contrapuntal conversation is an attempt to release ourselves from stereotypical thinking.

Counterpoint begins where hierarchy leaves off. No matter how large or small, pale or bold, wild or tame the shapes in a contrapuntal painting may be, each is an independent visual melody listening and responding to the others. This kind of conversation is an act of creation between equals, however different they may be. The subtle movement from light to dark in a Rembrandt painting or Seurat drawing portrays a thinking process that appreciates nuance. Some ways of thinking, and some paintings, are better; that is, more truthful, more creative, more lifegiving, more pleasurable, more moral, than others. Dynamics are what make a shape or melody a whole, something with a beginning and end. They give it drive, impulsion, a reason for being.

Rhythm, melody, interval, and counterpoint are the tools of the trade. Yet how do such “abstract” terms become potent vehicles for human feeling, thought, and vision?

I think the artist transfers to the process of making a work of art the feelings, the attachment, that a patient transfers to an analyst in a successful therapy. Freud said this transference is a requirement for catharsis, for then the patient is no longer “just talking about” her problems, but rather experiencing them as real, as if the therapist were in fact tormenting her (as she felt her mother did) or thwarting her (as she perceived her father to do). The cure comes when the patient and therapist see the problems as their problems and resolve them with each other.

The work of art is born when the artist experiences the work as the locus of her problems and their resolution. Tradition, paint texture, subject matter, and scale become the anxieties that demand transformation. There is no other way for inanimate paint, worn-down brushes, or a piece of board or canvas to become imbued with nothing less than life, with all its complexities, sorrows, and transcendence. Art is not a kind of therapy, though therapy is a kind of art.