Scattering Around
Encapsulating in the work of art.
Everything can be scattered. Both things and thoughts.
I’m not placing an idea into each and every piece that I create, but when I’m done, I am tempted to sink into the subject matter. What it is or what is depicted doesn’t end on its own as it is a part of broader context. Although I think there is something slightly encapsulated in each one.
Being scattered means not to be in order. An idea of order provides a structure for material or non-material things that dictates them their place. It only feels awkward to alter anything when you know about the existence of this order. Conversely, if it wasn’t in the first place, you would be free. For instance, when cave paintings had appeared in Font-de-Gaume, Lascaux, Altamira, Covalanas, nobody thought there was something wrong with them. They were abstractions, weren’t they? Only by having a linear perspective in art, when we started moving away from it, people felt that it was not right, disorganised, against tradition.
Order is a pattern. It is repetitive unlike mess. Mess is independent.
I envision an order being represented by a simple wooden drawer with several divided sections in it. Naturally, all of them are the same size.
What does aesthetics have more in common with? Order or mess? Finding beauty in a pail of clothes seems to be a more challenging task. However, I would give an example here and confirm one of my theories. If we have a look at Venus of the Rags (1967) by Michelangelo Pistoletto, we will not find aesthetics in it. Even if it would have had a straight and organised pile of clothes in front of the sculpture, it hadn't made sense to estimate this artwork in any configuration using these terms. Therefore, moving away from aesthetics evaluating something as beautiful or not, I would use terms of pleasing or not pleasing in general human’s terms.
Another quality of mess can be found in its consequences or in the future. I had met several people for whom this theme has been especially palpable. It comes down to the reality of their lives and home organisation. Basically, some people feel uncomfortable and worried when their home is sloppy and messy. The thing that goes hand in hand with it is you don’t customarily organise somebody’s home, exclusively your own. It adds a sense of possessiveness and having rights to install rules for objects around the house.
However, order has a great potential to be destroyed. There will be somebody who plays his things on the worktop at the kitchen. Dust will come along. You cannot prevent your thorough organisation from external forces that are most of the time driven towards chaos.
“The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.” ― Umberto Eco
It points out practicality, purposefulness and utilitarianism of order. Consequently, disorder doesn’t contain these qualities. It doesn’t intend to get you anywhere in particular, but by being free, you can go much further.
