“The reflection of her here, and then there,Is another shadow, another evasion,Another denial. If she is everywhere,She is nowhere, to him.“ ...
from "Bouquet of Belle Scavoir”, Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
Some of my painterly work consists of variations, meaning that I settle on 1 motif, 1 composition and then execute these in different aspects of colour and expression.
This is not a new procedure. Variations on the same base motif have been common throughout all of art’s history.
For example Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous and wonderful “Goldberg Variations“, composed in 1742 as the fourth and last of his „Clavierübungen“. With them he masterly concluded a long musical tradition of his time, the „Variation“, meaning executing and performing around and upon a central musical model, leitmotif or base theme. The Goldberg Variations start with an introductive Aria and then, over the course of 30 variations in all moods, colours, tempi and tonal modulations, again conclude with it, the Aria being technically the same as the one with which everything started, but nevertheless somehow changed through the experience the listener/performer was put through during the cycle.
Claude Monet, famous impressionistic painter, used the same method to show different aspects of one motif (haystacks for example) in painting them at different times of the day, early morning, noon, afternoon, sundown.
In these examples the motif in its role as a giver of meaning moves to the background to allow other properties and aspects to come to the fore. In the case of Monet’s haystacks not the haystack itself is of importance, it rather serves as a projection screen of different moods and temperaments evoked by the changing light of day thrown on it. The same goes for Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
Variations, while at first glance might seem repetitive or redundant, teach us to recognize the abounding diversity, the endless and plentiful variety in life and art likewise.
There is never only 1 model of something, be it a flower, an animal or a simple bacteria. Not one species is like the other, and within one species not one individual is the same. That is what variation means, the playing out of all the possibilities which lie hidden in one form.
This is also one of the main keys of life’s survival. Be diverse, be playful, be ready to adapt. Only through adaptation there will be survival and endurance against all odds. This might be one of life’s greatest achievements and is something truly to be admired and be perplexed about. Variations are a guarantor of survival, standstill in the long run means extinction.
This principle of variety, of diversity, is so deeply ingrained in all things alive that it transcends into society, culture and art.
Hence my affinity to variations. They offer much freedom and diversity.
There once was this idea of “The Original“ in art, meaning that an artwork, produced by the artist, existed only in one and one only execution, namely the painting or sculpture you had in front of you. A lot of value, monetary and ideologically, was attached to this idea of originality.
Then, for the first time in man’s artistic endeavor, with the industrial revolution came serial reproduction. Photography allowed copies of one picture and all of a sudden a work of art could be reproduced, in minute detail, as to be almost indistinguishable from the “original“. - The idea of what is original had to be redefined and altered.
Our times do not stand still, times never do. And so, after the industrial revolution and serial reproduction came the time of quantum physics and with it the great revelation that one thing truly can exist in more than one execution (actually it exists in all possible and imaginable forms) and in different locations all at the same time. This came to be known as "Superposition", the coexistence of distinct phenomena as part of the same event.
Imagine yourself in possession of a clever, cunningly constructed device, some sort of micro-macro-tele-time-O-scope. Wich would enable you, by simply turning some wheels or pulling some levers, to see some-thing, some-body, any-thing in all its variety, all its changing, endless forms, appearances and expressions through time, from start to end, all states of probability viewable. Then you would have a very good impression of its essence, its true being.
Variations are, in a way, manifestations or expressions of superimposed states of being.
So, to get back where I started, with that line of W. Stevens’:
“The reflection of her here, and then there,
Is another shadow, another evasion,
Another denial. If she is everywhere,
She is nowhere, to him.“ …
As beautiful as I find these lines, and as much as I do understand the feeling, I have to disagree with the conclusion. If she is everywhere she is there in all possible variations. She is there, for him, after all. He only needs to look closely.
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