The theme of time prompts me to reflect on the process of learning, and teaching, and being taught. I start thinking of George, one of my old art lecturers, and a relationship or influence lasting over time. George is a big presence for generations of artists from South Australia, but his presence is not one of grandstanding or flamboyance. His work is dense, heavily layered. The surface (the objects, the encounter) often feels hermetic, closed, inaccessible. There is a muteness in the encounter which is quite peculiar, but a simultaneous sensation of intensely informed meaning and intention makes itself felt. And this is not a party trick, using aloofness to appear intellectual. It’s just that the vehicle or vessel for significance is restraint, and coding, and rigour, and discipline. And there is an added potency because of this.
He is astonishingly well read, not out of academic duty but from intellectual and human enthusiasm. As a teacher he was exciting because there was no disconnect between contemporary and past (I say this in the context of early 1990’s postmodernism, where many others were either surfing the past as pastiche, or conversely, rejecting postmodernism and not stepping out of the past to begin with). During tutorials he had a natural and easy access to artists and thought across history; what drew him was the rigour and ‘risk’ (his term) of the ideas exemplified in the art.
One concept he valued, and that has stayed with me, is that of ‘delay’, a device he used extensively in his own work. This referred to a slowing down of the encounter between the artwork and the viewer. Not everything was to be laid out in the first moment. This might be achieved in different ways. One might be the ‘muteness’ I mention above. Energy is quiet and muffled. Impatience from the viewer is absorbed and held.
What happens next depends on timing. The viewer (the student, the Uke) might be deflected if through circumstance and experience they lack any immediate point of connection, a way in, a way to engage. So be it. Perhaps they will return, perhaps they will not. The encounter may be experienced as boredom, or perhaps mild irritation or indignation (‘it doesn’t work, it’s the artwork’s fault’). Other reactions may be intrigue, or bewilderment, or despondency, or anger. But what is provided is an opportunity to feel your own expectations and perhaps, with persistence or reprise, get an intimation of greater significance. Throughout there is a quiet insistence that things needn’t be ‘got’ straight away, they can be worked at instead, in my case over decades.
George also encouraged us to recognise the discomfort and break-balance effect of delay in our own work, and its potential to shift the perception of the viewer. Obviousness (such as extreme beauty) needn’t be a bad thing either – it can well be used as a lure to draw someone in, while something else unfolds around them. The luring hands of Hanmi Hantach Ho Ryote Tori Mae Ho Ude Gaeshi Ura comes to mind, or the abrupt shock of the punch in Suwari Ho Mune Dori Ho Kote Mawashi.
A different lecturer, one of my first, said something that for some reason my seventeen year old self retained. He said that one of the great things about being an artist is that no one can tell you to retire. There is no end date. More than fifteen years later I think on this when Oyasamma speaks of the continuous journey of Aiki.
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“Go fast! But don’t rush.”
John Donohue, in Herding the Ox relates these words of his sensei, and likens them to Zen koan, seemingly insoluble riddles used to propel a student into enlightenment. He is discussing attempts by instructors to articulate an insight which must be experienced. As he says “such admonitions can bring trainees to the brink of despair” (1998, p46). I’ve been there. Maybe I can think of George’s difficult, remote, tantalising, but not ungenerous artworks as my own koan? One thing they certainly do represent to me is the insight and experience of a mature artist, connected to a heritage and demanding the most from it.
More practically ‘go fast – don’t rush’ sounds like the perfect mantra for me in my current moment of Aiki training. I am experiencing the miseries of missed timing and panicked movement (and parallel relief and pleasure when blending actually does occur). The reintroduction of weapons classes for kyu ranks brings into relief my tendency to ‘chamber’, that is, to back up, or to pull in my kamae before initiating movement. As described in Aikido Basics (Dang & Seiser, 2003, p. 148) (and also by our own helpful friendly Sempai), this slows down your technique and reaction time, and also telegraphs your movements. It should be easy – just move forward from your centre – but I don’t. I rush and go slow.
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Walking into a gallery darkened to protect archivally sensitive materials. Chinese landscape paintings from the fifteenth century onwards. In the dimness all I perceive is an impression of sameness, same vertical scroll format; mountains, streams, dwellings and inhabitants. I stand for a long time in front of the first painting, trying to find a way in, to comprehend the marks and perceive life and energy in them. It feels hard and muddled. Slowly my eyes adjust; literally to the light, but also to movement within the image, its detail and its wholeness.
I’m warming up now. I step across to the next image and start the process of settling into its rhythm and meshing with its dancing surface. By the time I move to the third I’m genuinely astonished; it is startlingly colourful and has this amazing textured surface, as though the surface is literally flocked. How could I have thought that these paintings were ‘same-y’? As I continue to move on I continue to be rewarded by the particularities of each artist and image. But I’ve got work to do too. I have to be prepared to learn and practice entering into the timing and spirit of each piece.
Michael comes up to me – he’s completed his viewing while I’m only a third of my way through the space. That’s ok, we’re used to that – he’ll go away and come back later to see if I’m ‘done’. His viewing of the exhibition isn’t glib, by the way, he just seems to extract an essence from the artworks much faster than I do.
Four scrolls by one artist are hung together, to be read from right to left. The gallery notes remarks usefully that they are like four movements of a piece of music, moving from a place of quietness and stillness to a place of increased movement and energy.
A long wall is dominated by an extraordinary panoramic view consisting of multiple scrolls. It extends beyond the edges of my vision, particularly when I am drawn in to examine the intimate scenes that occur across the surface. I am enthralled by the image’s capacity to work in-close and from afar. I’ve always loved that about great painting. It makes me want to rip them from the wall (reverently) and bring them into my home. These things can bear a lifetime of looking, seeing and discovery.
Donohue, John J. 1998 Herding the Ox: The Martial Arts as Moral Metaphor, Turtle Press, Hartford.
Dang, Phong Thong & Seiser, Lynn. 2003, Aikido Basics, Turtle Publishing, Boston.
