Self-portrait, Vienna, 1655. (Detail). Rembrandt van Rijn.
I saw a man crouched by the side of the road close to the railway station last week. I thought he’d dropped something. Then I saw he was holding a piece of chalk and was in fact writing on the pavement. Must just have poor eyesight, I decided. Anyway, before I could see what it was he was writing, he peered up. ‘I’ve not finished yet,’ he said.
The artist was due an eye operation around the same time. I was struck by how vulnerable it made me feel. Interconnectedness, I guess. One of the characteristics of the artist’s work—as I’ve indulged the reader before in these pages—is detail, and the thought of it being tampered with by a surgeon was unsettling us both.
I’ve studied the artist’s attention to detail for years. It has compelled me to look at things more closely than I suspect I would have done otherwise. To consider her eyesight in jeopardy was the mother of all distractions—not that the general optics of the world are any better. In fact, they are far worse.
Some people are physically blinded by malice. There have been so many instances of children losing their sight, if not their lives, to shrapnel lately, or explosive remnants left by armies that detonate. Talk about perspective.
Determined to attend the operation alone, the artist would not even allow anyone accompany her on the bus there. This single-mindedness will be a characteristic of many artists, I suspect. I was also aware how important it was not to impose oneself on someone who wants to be alone.
The artist told me there was another artist—and activist—living and working in London who is registered as blind. This is Bianca Raffaella. I looked at her work online. What I saw were strong abstract pieces like blurs in a snowstorm, or swaddles of shape seeking shelter.
How impressive, I thought. A victory of sorts. How feisty, too.
I had to speak to someone about a long journey I’m hoping to make, and when I explained how superbly feisty the artist was being since the operation, which seemed to have gone well by the way, he applauded: ‘You want people to be feisty,’ he said, understanding fully the implications of an artist having an eye operation.
The artist will now have to take it easy for the next few weeks, including stepping back from the larger pieces. She will have to postpone her usual regime of swimming and weights before those long stints in the studio, too. She’s also spending half her time out of the city helping her mother these days. So it will be interesting to hear how she copes with no exercise. Work will be less of a problem, as she simply does smaller pieces while there. Presumably squinting the first week.
Before she left for the countryside following the operation, I made a little film that she had requested, a very little film—a short, slow sweep from left to right and left again across her latest large piece. The colours were a melange of blues and reds and yellows and greens. The film was accompanied by an Underworld track—denver luna—which she’d been playing a lot while working. As I’ve said before, I’m not trying to be cryptic by not giving the artist’s name. Some people just prefer the shadow to the limelight. Besides, this is no promo.
What makes people make art? It isn’t sales, that’s for sure, as the London art world is in pretty bad shape here. Anyway, I suspect it’s something more interesting and remote than that—some kind of small desert shack between Bravery and Self-Soothing. It’s always interesting how an artist works on regardless. For me, this compulsion to create is winning in itself.
The importance of art and culture to society cannot be underestimated. Let us hope we can keep it undimming. I worry that as we shed things like our right to privacy—I’m thinking in particular over here of the unvoted for ID card—we will lose all sight of nuance and the precious nature of life.
At the same time, art must remain ungovernable. No one, in theory, should be able to tell an artist what to do. There should be no ICE agents hovering about in the psyche. Just as we should be taking seriously any kind of mental illness for example within our creative communities.
It’s through art that the outsider can articulate the light and dark best, fully reminding people of essential differences. Just as when something is fragile, it should be protected.
When I read what the man was writing on the pavement, it was quite the revelation. He had put down at length that he had known he wanted to say something but didn’t quite know how best to say it—except with one word: ‘DEFENITION.’
I applauded him, told him it was a work of art. I even asked if I could make a small donation. That was when he told me he was homeless. I hadn’t expected that. ‘Can I make just one request?’ I said. ‘Can I ask you to change the ‘E’ in ‘DEFENITION’ to an ‘I’?’ Realising what he’d done, the man quickly got out his chalk again and crouched by the ground—just as he’d been doing when I first saw him. He changed it: ‘DEFINITION,’ it now read. But after I’d left, I realised that was wrong of me. His original spelling had been much better.