Arts & The Craft: Maxine Miller

Foreword

by Nick Bantock

Writing about the relationship between art and magic is brave—witches have been burnt for less.

Every day we’re flooded with images. From computer screens to billboards, we’re constantly being hit with fast pictures, transient representations not designed to linger or be carefully examined. And the more images we consume, the less time we have to ponder their content and meaning. Little by little we’re letting the magic of our sight diminish.

Andy Warhol knew what he was doing with his “Marilyn” silkscreens. He was making something that could be seen in a glimpse: art that didn’t need in-depth observation; an icon for an icon, designed to minimize. That kind of self-conscious cynicism has led some to suggest that the second half of the twentieth century has seen commerce replace the magic in art.

Imagine if you were living five hundred years ago. Your exposure to images would have been occasional at best, so if you found yourself in a villa or church, standing in front of a painting by Raphael, you were hardly likely to give it the same cursory glance that you’d give a Marilyn. You’d almost certainly take an eon or two to examine the picture, to assess what was within.

I think we are losing our ability to slow down long enough to fully comprehend anything but bling, and that frantic pace is robbing us of our capacity to see that art can liberate us and give us

a means of self-expression. Sadly, knowing that we are encouraged to have the attention span of sparrows, artists are discouraged from producing art that requires time and is complex in symbol, narrative, and alchemy.

When I first began reading about alchemy, I was confused. The language seemed evasive and elliptic. Then I began looking at alchemy’s imagery, and it became immediately clear that the images were the real vehicle of the philosophy, speaking as it did directly to our visual perception. This, of course, made sense if the alchemists were to avoid the literal-mindedness of the heresy laws.

Artists and poets have always tended to make kings, emperors, and the patriarchs of organized religion nervous, with their ambiguous language and their tendency to pose awkward questions about truth and reality. It’s no accident that the rulers felt a need to predetermine artists’ subject matter, to prop up the status quo. Yet whatever restrictions were imposed, artists found ways to subvert those limitations. Secrets and subversive ideas could be hidden in plain sight, coded messages turned into symbols for those with a keen eye and mind.

Orwell’s 1984 notes that by reducing vocabulary, you can reduce people’s capacity to think for themselves. What he doesn’t mention is that by dumbing down visual literacy, a similar effect can be had on our ability to be intuitive.

Magic is the learned ability to “see” that which hovers just in and just outside our peripheral vision. An artist’s job is to capture the unseen; they are alchemists simply because once they are immersed in a painting, the boundary between the artist and their art disappears, time stands still, and the present becomes eternal.

In my experience, when art is restricted and pigeonholed, it wilts. All through my college years, we were heavily encouraged to narrow our “style” and subject matter, to make our work recognizable (brandable). But I found that ethos suffocating, I didn’t want one head and one mouth; I wanted tongues for as many voices as there were inside me. I began searching for a means of expression that was inclusive, not exclusive. For me, the marriage of word and image opened the door to a landscape that allowed symbol and sign to wander in freedom.