I've Only Seen Paintings of That Painting!

There's a scene in the movie Kung Fu Panda (what can I tell you, I have a kid) where the main character Po is excitedly exploring the "hall of warriors" filled with sacred objects and treasures. He's overjoyed to fanboy levels at all the famous artifacts and at one point he exclaims: "I've only seen paintings of that painting!"

This is amusing because, being in ancient China, photography doesn't exist. The only way you could see a painting without going to see it with your own eyes is to see... well, a painting of it. This sounds bizarre to us in the age of recorded images and that's why the quote is funny. But at the same time, there's a lot of truth to it. After all, why do people visit the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa? Why don't they just buy a print or look for images (and they are legion) online? High quality digital images have stunning clarity, and quality copies painted by artists in China can be hung in your own home. So why bother with the original?

Because potentially there's something special about the original. Because it's not a picture or copy, but from the hand of an acknowledged master (plus it was in <i>The da Vinci Code</i>, so that totally gives it cred /sarcasm).

This is on my mind today because of a very wise comment to my last post by forestdoor:

...I think it's kind of defeating the point of "destroy your art" to keep a virtual image of it. That's not really letting it go, you know? I think the point of the challenge was to pour yourself into something and then entirely release it....

Of course, she is completely correct about this (plus hey, comments!). The goal of the original challenge was to create something and then destroy it completely. To put yourself in to your art and then deliberately destroy that piece of yourself. Of course Dionysos would approve.

Still, the digital image isn't the same as the original. Or as I said in my reply, "It doesn't have the energy that the sketch did. Just like I don't think you could print a sigil painting from my blog and expect the sigil magic to work for you. Because the magic is in the painting and not the image of the painting."

Sannion recently posted about the difference between paper and digital books, and linked to an article that spoke about the difference between CDs and vinyl (I think that article was misguided by the way, vinyl and CDs are fundamentally the same, it's iTunes and MP3s that are the truly "new" and "unreal" form of media -- though at another level, if it's not live music it's recorded, period). In any case, I think there's a lot to explore and examine here, not just about the nature of art, but of the nature of reality. How much do we consume as opposed to experience? And how much do we create?

Still, I agree with her, it's "cheating" in light of the purpose of the challenge to keep copies of the work. Of course I also realized that I hadn't destroyed the energy in the sketch. I offered it to the dead, who took it and left nothing behind. So by the time I destroyed it, it wasn't 'real' anymore. It wasn't my sketch, just graphite on paper.

I'm glad that our beloved dead accepted my offering and I may include that in our tradition moving forward. But it wasn't the same as the challenge that Sannion proposed.

Years ago, I lost a roll of sketches in a move. There were several that I was very fond of, including one of giant fruit bats and another of a couple of punk kids with mohawks. I loved those, and they are gone forever. My husband once lost a hard drive with a ton of original music that hadn't been backed up. His compositions (including all the recorded tracks, seconds, scratch tracks, etc.) were gone forever. Those were painful experiences, but again not the same as <i>deciding</i> to destroy an image.

I'd still like to take on the challenge. However, I won't be deliberately destroying any of my sigil paintings because, well it's one thing to destroy some of yourself, it's entirely another to destroy a symbol of love you created for your family. But to pour yourself into an image and then kill it? That's some trans formative magic right there. I wonder if I'll have the courage.

Art, magic, energy, originality, creativity... these are interesting waters we're treading.