A Successful Artist Re-Invents the Universe

The passion an artist feel for his elements is what distinguishes art from esthetic exercise.  An artist must be content not merely with the reinvention of the wheel.  In truth, that is the work of a successful esthetic hack.  The successful artist re-invents the universe.  This is no easy task.  Much of the enjoyment of art resides in  experiencing or sharing the solution.  The sophisticated observer of art attempts to infer the problem undertaken by the artist from the solution presented.

Allan Bridge, from The Confessions of Mr. Apology 

An artist is someone who lays claim to primary authorship of the most important passages in her or his life story, notwithstanding whatever other major influences may come to bear upon it. Creative discovery happens without undue reliance on serendipity or dumb luck.  In other words, an artist is someone who makes his or her own good luck.

That’s one of the things that impresses me most about Allan’s legacy.  The Apology Line was a world entirely of his own making. He was the creator and sole proprietor of it.  It was his Swan’s Way or Guernica - not just a wheel reinvented, not a mere world, but reality reconstituted into a universe in miniature, complete unto itself, and built by power of his imagination.

What further distinguishes the Apology Line as a singular product of contemporary art is that it was peopled with living souls.  Allan figured out how to build his universe using as his raw material the voices of present lives in being  -- human essences that he incorporated directly into the fabric of his work.  His remarkable accomplishment lay in discovering an utterly novel and constructive use of these raw materials he found close to hand.