An Artist’s Path to Certainty
How does a great artist know he is on the right track before being recognized as canonical? Van Gogh, for example, knew his own importance despite commercial and critical failure; Picasso was convinced at a very young age. The answer, I believe, is that they study art in ways few others do and they see in it - through constant viewing - the same principles that they themselves then follow. In actually practising their craft, they gain wisdom that, without such hands-on experience, is next to impossible. And, further, they become wise through reading philosophy, literature and theology or, at least, socializing with those who have done so: patrons, poets and others. Artists, unlike most people, think homospatially, finding the links between theories which others in search of difference and originality never see. By these three paths, they gain a measure of their own worth long before their future public does. And their work confirms it.
It is a process that we too can take advantage of. Marsilio Ficino, one of the wisest minds of the Renaissance, gave this spiritual advice to everyone.
“There are”, he wrote, “three guides for the life of man. First is principle, which has been long and carefully tested; the second is experience, strengthened by long practice; and third, the authority of those ancients who could not have been easily deceived by anyone, and who appear not to have wished to deceive others. Attend more to what a man has done than to what he has said, for many speak well but few act well.”1
1. Letters of Marsilio Ficino, vol 1., 108.
Posted 30 Oct 2014: Inner TraditionTheoryVisual Perception
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