Lyn Ott as My Teacher
The tribute to Phyllis and Lyn Ott, continued
Lyn wrote a book, IN QUEST OF THE FACE OF GOD, A picture book of paintings of Meher Baba, in which he explains it's purpose as “an effort to help bring art back to God from whom it has strayed and lost its way.” Phyllis gave me a copy of the book in June, 2002 and I have poured over it, reading it cover to cover many times. It is in my studio, and I refer to it frequently in my research before starting paintings. It is not that I want to paint like Lyn or that I agree with all of Lyn’s conclusions about art, it is that his book is about God and painting God, of which he is one of the greatest masters along with Phyllis. Rarely has any artist or art writer commented, as Lyn emphasizes, “the urgent necessity in our time to bring art back to God, the One Source of all art, that Source from whom art has strayed and lost its way.” I would add that art is either an expression of love of God or it is an expression of love of ego, and that it is time for a shift in cultural focus. Lyn discusses some of his inspiration from the world of art, and this allows me to study art history from the perspective of the quest. To this end, I find Lyn an excellent teacher.
Lyn’s art is also extraordinary because his style changed with the degeneration of his sight. The absolute precision of his portraits becomes loose and more expressionistic. Rarely does an artist exhibit such a dramatic change in style, particularly a portrait artist, and still continue to be prolific. His commitment of artistic expression and his love of Meher Baba drove him beyond his limitations. To answer the question of what defines great art, Lyn responds, “… it is fervor (,) …the pure expression of the heart (which) …seeks by the sincerest of means to discover those nuances that make up the components of true love.”
The Question of Purpose and Tradition
My own life as an artist had atrophied because of a lack of fervor or feeling. I lack the formal training to be a truly great draftsman or designer, my gift is in my eye and in my knowledge of color and light -- often considered a secondary skill for a painter. Even with fervor I must produce art unconventionally. Learning many disciplines has distracted me from focusing my life on art or any other field, and over and over I have come to the same realization of that Lyn discovered while he was in school. What is the point of learning painting (or any other science or discipline) with Western painting (or any other technology or knowledge) at its end (or is in revolutionary transition)? I have already had to forget much of what I have learned because it is out dated and obsolete. The average person is expected to change professions six or seven times during their life. The only people who did that seventy years ago were outcasts of society. If carrying on a tradition is a key component of becoming an artist or living the human experience, what can anyone do that has any real meaning or cultural significance?
In 1949 when Lyn asks this question, art is one of the first cultural domains that seem to have been exploited to the point of exhaustion. There is simply no artistic greatness to be achieved in any traditional sense. Immediately after the Second World War the Western art world embraces Picasso - the first artist to become a brand and whose work has value for his name alone. Picasso is famous, not because he carries on tradition, but because he slaps it in the face. Great modern art starts on the path to becoming kitsch (my opinion, not necessarily Lyn’s). Through the 1970’s high art painting is drawn through a succession of reductions to the point that "fine art" becomes a marketing or commercial commodity and little more. For our culture, fervor is no longer valued. At the same time the number of capable artists increases tremendously. The secrets of the great masters are no longer handed down to apprentices, rather they can be learned from books, correspondence classes or interactive DVDs. Then, in the 1990’s being a fine artist falls out of style. Art schools shift from traditional mediums to computers and college level fine art painting programs around the country close. There are still painters, probably more than ever before, but there are very few great masters - painters differentiated by superior draftsmanship, craftsmanship, design and fervor.
The Importance of Lyn's Book
In looking at Lyn’s book for the first time I flip through the pages, reading a bit and glancing at the images -- until I come to one particular painting that is unlike any other. It is an abstract painting, although the face of Meher Baba is imposed in modest scale in the center. The brushstrokes are slow and labored. The muted colors are exceptionally dark or light, lacking in the dimensionality that is so common in Lyn’s work. Nonetheless, it is a portrait. Balancing Of The Universal Mind And The Universal Heart (1978) is Lyn’s last painting of Meher Baba, executed when he is virtually totally blind. In what seems to be a tribute to what has died within him, Lyn paints this last image, one that is the pure expression of his fervor without the faculties of the artist. In all of Lyn’s other paintings that I have seen there is at least some evidence of a portrait artist designing the form and color into some monument to the tradition of Western art. Even with the deterioration of his eyesight and the inevitable loss of realistic accuracy, the draftsmanship and intentional control is always evident, except in his last painting of Baba.
After spending so much time with Phyllis and in Lyn’s book, I find obviousness in painting a tribute to them both. Phyllis uncovers an undercurrent of fervor within me that I never knew existed, and Lyn provides the framework of study for its development. Around 1956 Lyn sees a painting by Willem DeKooning in which he finds a communion of the painter and painting that transcend into something greater. I have studied as many of DeKooning’s paintings in books that I can find, and I cannot precisely see what Lyn sees in DeKooning. Certainly DeKooning pushes the thresholds of art to their fullest extreme, and DeKooning uses the technology and skill of a master artist to produce images that are nearly completely void of any recognizable form, and yet they still look artistic. Recently a 60 Minutes segment compared a painting by a particularly talented elephant with DeKooning’s work, and the two look very similar. Even so, I can honestly say that I am not good enough as an artist to paint like DeKooning, despite the childish and haphazard way his paintings often look. Lyn describes his discovery as, “(DeKooning) uncovered for the sake of discovery potentialities of painting without ever having found the real oasis of singular seeing where there is peace and inner fulfillment in the finding of One - in having a glimpse of that Eternal Nature.”
Discovering My DeKooning
Art of the 1950’s and 1960’s is not new to me, and I grew up with those images in the background of my life, never having the opportunity to discover them at a point where they might have caused some inspiration. Lyn’s discovery of DeKooning occurs just as action painting is evolving and nearly a decade before his discovering Meher Baba. For Lyn, Baba provides the focal point of singularity that triggers his own fervor and transcends his art. DeKooning provides the fuse Meher Baba’s spark ignites.
When I begin to study Balancing Of The Universal Mind And The Universal Heart, I find in that painting the “real oasis of singular seeing” that seems to me to be what Lyn writes about in describing his experience with DeKooning paintings. With Lyn, blindness removes the potentialities of his artistic training from his painting until he ultimately creates something that might have been done by a talented elephant or DeKooning himself. The difference is that Lyn’s painting leaves evidence of a glimpse of the Eternal Nature of the One instead of raw deconstructive artistic expression inspired by the glimpse of the One. It is complete in a way that DeKooning never achieves.
Related Off-Site Links for Willem DeKooning
For selected later DeKooning paintings from a MOMA exhibit, click here and
click here.
To see famous DeKooning Paintings,
click here.
For Willem DeKooning bio and paintings at the Guggenhiem ,
click here.
To find Willem DeKooning on the Internet,
click here.
All quotes from
IN QUEST OF THE FACE OF GOD, A picture book of paintings of Meher Baba, by Lyn Ott
© Chris Ott and Sage Walsh
Available at the Sheriar Foundation Bookstore
sheriarfoundation.org
