The Vacuum

A few days ago, I picked up The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura, which is a diminutive volume eloquently written over one hundred years ago on "the Japanese tea ceremony and the art of beauty". But it is to me, a book of profound elegance which treats of relating to the natural world in a holistic fashion in order to better understand and integrate our intricate inner world, to master the art of living and to live a life of beauty.

 

It's an odd concept, living a life of beauty. Our western culture doesn't place a high value on art; we eliminate it from our educational curriculum in the schools at the first blush of budget cuts, and after coloring books, rarely speak of it. We are certainly not well-versed in it, encouraged as we are to pursue money and fortune and fame and whatever. Art can be anti-that; slow instead of fast-paced, contemplative instead of quick-to-judge, and timeless instead of of-the-moment. Yes, it might require us to slow ourselves down a bit, to think a little harder about things intangible, and true, that's the hard kind of thinking for which our schooling does not prepare us.

 

What of the open-ness this kind of thinking requires? Perhaps this is what we in our culture are truly guarding against when we don't incorporate reflection in our daily routines.  There is the possibility for vulnerability if one is open and is willing to subjugate one's ego.

But there is tremendous power in the surrender to open-ness, or non-reliance on the personality. Okakura describes Laotse's favorite metaphor; the Vacuum.

…only in vacuum lay the truly essential. The reality of a room was to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and walls, not in the roof and walls themselves. The usefulness of a water pitcher dwelt not in the form of the pitcher or the material of which it is made. Vacuum is all potent because all containing. In vacuum alone motion becomes possible. One who could make of himself a vacuum into which others might freely enter would become master of all situations. The whole can always dominate the part.

I seek to be the four walls within which a person finds themselves comfortably purchasing their car.  My art seeks to create a place in which art, with the viewer's participation, can happen.

Okakura goes on to discuss how Taoists' ideas influence many other seemingly unrelated activities. 

In jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw out and exhaust the enemy's strength by non-resistance, vacuum, while conserving one's own strength for victory in the final struggle. In art the importance of the same principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a chance to complete the idea and thus a great masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum is there for you to fill up to the full measure of your aesthetic emotion.

Thus, in both my professional and my artistic life, I seek to create a vacuum.  In selling cars, the vacuum is a safe place unhindered by the needs or personality of the salesperson, in which the potential client is free to "complete the idea" of how they'd like to buy their car. The salesperson is an active facilitator, devoid of ego or personal needs.

In my art, the vacuum is a place where there's something a little un-done, a little imperfect, a little crack through which the viewer can enter and participate by completing the idea. In that moment, the viewer makes the artwork their own, and by extension, lives a life of beauty though their own willingness to be an active participant in a work of art.