Art with a Will of its Own

Robert Frost

I recently re-read Robert Frost's wonderful essay, "The Figure A Poem Makes". I was struck by how much of what Frost says about poetry also pertains to visual arts, and especially to painting. Frost speaks of a poem as a living thing, one that "finds its own name as it goes".  The idea of an artwork as an independent being--something with a mind of its own-- is so striking. I think Frost would say that the poet is caught up in the poem, and that the poem is leading the way (not the poet).

Richard Diebenkorn
from his Ocean Park series

I know it's an unlikely comparison, but as I read Frost, I could not help but think of Richard Diebenkorn's remarks about painting. Diebenkorn said "I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue." This comment suggests that, like Frost, Diebenkorn sees the art as having a life of its own--it is the other party to the dialogue.

I think that Diebenkorn would also agree that what Frost calls "the wonder of the unexpected" is what fuels the artistic process. For example, Frost writes that a poem "discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad..."  Ah yes, that moment of discovery at the end. Is there a painter out there who has not struggled at length with a painting, and only at the very end come upon the stroke that brings the entire work to fruition?

I will conclude with the last few sentences of Robert Frost's essay. "Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went."

Don't you wish we could all create art like this!?!