Leonardo Learning----Technique vs. Soul

Where the spirit does not meet the hand, there can be no art--leonardo



There seems to be two kinds of artists in this world--soul artists and technical artists. It is very rare when an artists legs are long enough to stand in both of these distant shores at the same time. It is a harbor that only a colossal-Rhodes genius can straddle, a Leonardo, a Vermeer a Velasquez. If you only have your feet in soul you have the semi-spiritual smears of Rothko and the drippings of Pollocko and the missed targets of Dekooning and you are nowhere. If you only have technique then you are a sargent, a burger-o, a David! Lifeless and over rendered like the ledger of AIG--- full of the toxic assets of overly rendered flesh and landscapes with the spirit of god lobotomized out like flesh from a melon!!! Musicians---nay, GOOD musicians----understand the idea that they are not getting "paid by the note." It is the empty bowl that is useful--the space between notes-the unplayed note! To paint without life is a great sin and to paint without technique is a great sin. In art school these camps were enemies and I watched the two camps of fools throwing eggs across the field of ignorance at each other. Blake had Soul beyond all as did that eater of old spoiled stew alber pinkham ryder! They carried the torch of Coleridge and the romantics but the romantic poets and writers were well versed in pentameter and structure and they knew their "stuff"---- they just didnt hang on to it like a babe to a nipple or an artist to a "system". Charle Parker said--"first you learn your technique--- then you forget all that shit and just wail..." A wise artists learns his craft and then lets go and lets the spirit guide his vessel to shore. A foolish artist cluthches onto the life raft of things learned and never grows beyond the systems learned as a pimpled student. A genius finds a way to have one leg in the life raft and the other in the good ship of faith and courage. It is a dangerous way to travel but the right path for the wise.