The artist and the inner retreat
AI summary of the linked articleThe article argues that artists feel stuck between modern pressure to self-promote and ancient wisdom about retreat, and proposes a personal "artist retreat" as a regular practice of creating privately without sharing publicly. It cites Joseph Campbell's 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which describes "willed introversion" as a classic tool of creative genius, and Agnes Martin's statement "I paint with my back to the world." The author's framing holds that artists need periods of turning inward alternated with periods of sharing, and that social media platforms push creators toward constant output. The piece is also a Metalabel newsletter, with product listings, a promotional principles survey, and job openings. |
3 comments  This was really inspiring and encouraging. I feel the same way right now. I have a list of stuff, and I‘d love to retreat more and just work work work, but then on the other hand there is summer right now and with it comes a lot of expected social function to attend or more potential to spend time outside. But I just want to create and it‘s literally eating me up from inside at times when I cannot ahhh! mishaSubmitter What Agnes Martin actually meant by “working with her back to the world” is not that she wanted to retreat from the world. (Though she very much did so.) But that her art didn’t represent the physical world, but her inner world. Her paintings should extend your perception to the awareness of beauty around you, but more than anything else to the recognition of beauty within you. She said that because everyone knows what beauty is, all she needs to do is ‘bring the subject up’ rather than make it herself. Mhh, yeah I just realize that they talk about inner retreat even in the headline and so on, still when reading this I thought that also some good old physical solitude was meant by it. Inner retreat, I‘ll think about it more… |
