How to pay attention

Chuck Close

Chuck Close

If anyone knew how to maintain his attention span it was Chuck Close, who has just packed up his studio forever. 

Chuck Close said, “Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work.” He was right and perhaps one of the most important issues is that the more time invested in working, the more time is invested in keeping your attention focused. Like anything else you build up your muscles by using them, so the more time spent working and trying to pay attention to what you are doing, the more practiced you will become at spotting what works and what doesn't. 

One of the hardest things to do as an artist is to pay attention to what you are doing. Too often you think you are doing one thing and in reality you are doing something different. You need to be very aware of what's happening as it happens, be this as a drawing emerges from the surface of a sheet of paper, as the forms unfold from the sculptural work you are doing or how sequences restructure themselves during the editing of a piece of film. 

It is about watching for what is becoming important and not about always keeping an eye on the constant control needed to ensure the work is done. However, yes, you do need to keep an eye on that control, or the work will never get done but the important moments that emerge as the work evolves, are those that will give it 'duende', that heightened state of expression or authenticity, those moments that if you do not follow them as they emerge, will be lost in the 'finishing' of the work. 

However you cant keep a heightened state of attention going for more than a few moments at a time, so certain devices can be used to enable you to 're-look at' or 're-see' what you have been doing. 

One of the oldest is to have a large mirror in the studio. Simply by looking at your work in reverse you get to see it again. What was familiar can now become strange, your work's dopplegänger, and in that otherness you can often find alternative meanings or opportunities that you had not thought of before.

Squinting your eyes up, so that the work goes in and out of focus, is a useful exercise as it can allow you to assess which elements are becoming more or less dominant, it also allows you to assess overall impact and pulls you away from obsessing about details. This is usually coupled with walking backwards and forwards and getting to see the work up close and far away, which will allow you to also think about how the work will be encountered by an audience.

Adjusting the light in the room or taking the work outside can get you to rethink colour values and to think more about tonal range. 

A lot of artists will turn work to the wall or simply not look at something for a while, so that when they do eventually get back to it, they return with fresh eyes. Even a short break, a walk outside or undertaking a totally different activity, can be beneficial.  

The studio critique is of course the traditional art school way of getting a chance to re-see a piece of work and it is a real learning curve to see how others spot something in what you are doing that was previously invisible. Another method related to this, is to see if you can approach your work as if you are standing in someone else's shoes. 

Having the sort of attention that can spot what is becoming important is perhaps what singles out the significant artist from the everyday artist. It is that capacity to constantly surprise yourself that you need to cultivate, but that also means letting go of ideas like trying to find a personal style or way of working, because a personal style can simply mean that you are no longer searching, but believe you have found what you were looking for. The more you are lost in the finding of the work, the more it will have an authenticity and in that you will find true 'style'. 

Think of the early hunters stalking prey. They would have to be fully attentive to every sense if they were going to be successful and success or failure was of course a matter of life or death. 

Try to engage with mindfulness, which is simply about focusing completely on what you’re doing; as well as slowing down, and observing all of the physical and emotional sensations you are experiencing in that moment. Being open and allowing sensations to arise rather than needing to be in control all the time is an important aspect of mindfulness, and paradoxically as you let go of control, somehow you find yourself being far more aware of what is going on and therefore more in control.

This type of advice isn't new, this extract from a 1928 letter to Jackson Pollock from his father gives similar counsel:

'Well Jack I was glad to learn how you felt about your summer’s work & your coming school year. The secret of success is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc. In other words to be fully awake to everything about you & the more you learn the more you can appreciate & get a full measure of joy & happiness out of life.'

In 'Some Rules for Students and Teachers' first of all set out by Sister Corita Kent and then adopted by John Cage, there are are some other important messages for both staff and students of art, again one of the most important is the advice to keep working. The more you work, the more you will learn to see.

However it's not all about work. Sometimes we need to redirect our attention in order to notice interesting things, especially those that we weren't even looking for. For instance if you pick a colour, lets say red and begin by looking for the range or variety of reds encountered you will eventually begin to spot peculiar relationships, strange colour combinations or things that are red that shouldn't be. By looking for the same thing, you begin to spot differences. Another way of approaching this is to “see something new” every day in something that is so familiar that you don't look at it any more. For example a stretch of the street walked every day, that corner shop you visit constantly, a draw in the kitchen you take things from at every mealtime, the pair of shoes you have been wearing everyday this last three months. Examine whatever it is forensically, begin in one corner and move along carefully until you find something you hadn't noticed before. Then record what you have found, (draw it, model it, write about it or photograph it) and once you have recorded something, get on with something else, but don't forget to set yourself the same exercise the next day. Gradually you will begin to discover a new universe. One tip I will give you is to keep changing the direction of your gaze, look up or look down and stop glancing, become systematically directional. As you begin to collect things noticed, begin to think about the connections between them, why have all of these things been found in the same place? What story are you unearthing, how does it begin and where might it be going? 

Finally, don't forget that it is in noticing what everyone else has missed and you highlighting it through your work, that will make people sit up and take notice of you. 

Coda

Since writing this post I have looked at a few Chuck Close obituaries (see) and found out that in later life he was accused of misogynistic behaviour. He was also I understand suffering from dementia and of course he spent most of the latter part of his life in a wheelchair. I think it is important to not hide these things, especially in the case of his misogyny as it helps reveal the extent of problems with sexual harassment and assault on women by showing how many people have experienced these events, how many unexpected perpetrators there are and in how many often unexpected situations. On the other hand I have decided to still show his work and comment on his methods of art making, as he took an approach that was influential to many and which asked questions about our relationship with photographs, which still remain valid. 

See also:

Iterative drawing

Drawing and mindfulness part one