4/26/2004 05:41:00 PM|||Andrew|||Some time ago (translation: I don't know when) I was reading one of those books that have the clever little quotes before each chapter, for enlightenment and reflection I suppose. I don't remember the book, and it doesn't really matter, I don't think. But the quote somehow got through; it stuck with me even until today. The quote, attributed only as "an engineer's proverb" was:

"Form is liberating."

For a while, I took this very seriously indeed. Part of my seriousness was because I used to think of myself as an engineer, mathematically minded as I was. And it seemed to ring so true. I had always somewhat rebelled against those authors, like Whitman, who seemed to just fling everything to the air and ignore any kind of structure to their work. I've always liked structure, even (or especially?) in art. In most of my creating, I have always tried to keep form in mind. Not all form is the same, of course, not every poem is a sonnet or a haiku, but I think that every poem (just to continue the example--it works across all mediums) needs some kind of formal structure for it to survive as a poem. In every (good) piece of art, there is a consciousness of form.

It needn't, of course, be an all consuming god, and I don't deny that many people create perfectly beautiful art without any deliberate concern for form. But I think that some sort of form shines through, nonetheless, a consequence of being human, perhaps.

But I've been thinking about this proverb lately, trying to understand it, rather than just believe it. It's pretty clear to me also that an obsession with form can cripple some people's attempts at art. Here's what I've come up with, by way of explanation.

Consider the spark of the artist, whatever piece of spirit that within the aspiring artist, drives her to create, to design, to find and develop something beautiful. Call this creativity, though this term is so sorely lacking that it cannot even begin to approach all of what I mean. I mean everything that makes the artist an artist....but this term will have to do for the sake of this little essay.

Now consider a grand scale, a measure of creativity in a person. My contention is that the usefulness and effect of form in art, is directly related to this spark. For the truly uncreative, the dullards in all matters of art, those that cannot create a whit of beauty (however well they may appreciate it), for them, form is constricting. It serves as a crutch which unduly takes control of the artistic impulse and twists it out of recognition. Form out of control in this way can destroy art; it becomes something created merely for form's sake, utilitarian.

On the other extreme is that person in which the artistic urge, creativity, bubbles up and overflows. She cannot help but create beautiful things, she does it even as she thinks and talks and writes each day. Yet how distracting it is! So many ideas and things disturbing her thoughts, threatening to, by their very variety, to crush the emerging beauty like a delicate flower under an elephant's foot. So many threads that will never be followed to completion because another jumps up just as soon. For this person, I maintain, art, though it flow in her veins, does not always come easy.

Form is not constricting to the true artist. Rather, it focuses and directs all the vibrant energy that wells up within and threatens to turn out of control. Form is the vessel by which the artist completes things, by which she takes the wild ideas of her imagination and turns them into beauty for the world. Form is a loving friend, not a cruel master.

The rest of the spectrum falls in between these two extremes. Does the need for form simply increase or decrease as one follows up and down the scale? I'm not sure. I'm inclined to think that there might be some point, some critical place where the creative urge becomes stronger than form, and that at this point (and beyond) that a dedication to form becomes most supremely useful, not a crutch but a tender lover.|||108302782824665762|||On the Aesthetics of Form