The following comment was made by Elatia Harris in response to the posting Bathed in Milk and Honey:
Could it be that the “bathed in milk and honey moment” or better still the “eye-painting moment” for a work of art in the West is the moment it is exhibited before a public? We long so for that, feel that it anoints the art and the artist, and legitimizes her efforts like no other process can. As if by showing art where it can be seen and media-acknowledged we have given it realness, at least the realness of the tree that fell in the forest with someone to hear it fall. In candor, we might say that the important time we spend with our art is the time of summoning something from nothing — creation. And yet it lacks that final realness for us until it is beheld by others, certain others. Maybe we do indeed know the eye-painting moment, and have transferred its power away from ourselves.
This suggests some parallels from an interview with the painter Alex Katz in Metonymy:
I expect other people to tell me what I have painted. I know what I’m trying to do, and the technical aspects of what I am doing, but a big part of the painting, if it’s any good, comes from another part of your person. You create a process that will engage your whole being and release something. When I started out, I had no idea my painting would seem “Oriental,” or calm. I thought they were very lively. In one of my first reviews, Frank O’Hara said the paintings had an Oriental calm. I was shocked at that, but I guess he was right. That ‘s part of my personality that I couldn’t see. It is a bit like a person’s handwriting.
