Sunging


Image of a house on a mountain top, Sung Dynasty

Guston could easily play with the notion that the working artist aspired to be a demigod and, as such, would have to experience a peculiar kind of hubris—Guston’s own idiosyncratic hubris. This was one of his most distinctive leitmotifs, expressed in another way when he spoke of “a third hand” doing the work. That metaphorical hand becomes shorthand for describing an experience every true painter knows—that of transcending himself and his tools, as if following some ancient imperative. Sometimes Guston couched these thoughts in terms of the Sung painters, whom he deeply admired. He thought they did “something thousands and thousands of times…until someone else does it, not you, and the rhythm moves through you.”

This passage is from Dore Ashton‘s introduction to Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations, edited by Clark Coolidge. The mystical sense of this idea—not a quality I typically associate with Guston‘s approach—can also be juxtaposed to one of Guston’s favorite quotes that was inscribed below a self portrait by Giorgio de Chirico: “What shall I love if not the enimga?” Or also alongside another favorite from Franz Kafka:

The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked along.

Third hand interventions, loving the enigma, talking a path that causes stumbling rather than walking—they all speak to what passes through the mind during a typical week. And all of it is in an effort to reach that moment when you can feel yourself “sunging”—the exquisite experience of having a rhythm that is moving through you.

6 Replies to “Sunging”

  1. What a beautiful post, Deborah…such a wonderful feeling when that rhythm is moving through you, and it usually comes after much stumbling.

    1. Holly, thank you so much. I am still working through a healthy relationship with the stumbling. Not easy loving that part of it is it? Thanks for your comment and for stopping by.

  2. In a sense, how much harder it is to navigate that rope when it’s only inches from the ground!

    Wonderful quotes and altogether a lovely post!

    1. It IS harder when it is only inches from the ground. I really responded to that image. Thanks Maureen.

  3. Nice excerpt, Deborah. I suppose the “thousands and thousands of times” must be done each with loving attention, otherwise the transcendence into grace is not won. Alas, for some of us. -Andrew

    1. It’s like one of Zeno’s paradoxes where you can never really get through the door, you always feel like you approach but don’t arrive. And we just keep working at it. At some level it requires an obsessive trait don’t you think?

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