At the moment in which an artistic inspiration comes, is an artist ready?

Readiness, they say, comes with practice but that is more to do with being prepared. This distinction will be touched on again later so first let's talk about artists.

There are many people who would like to be artists but it's not that easy being one nor calling oneself one. There is no hierarchy in art but for the sake of convenience, let's create a definition. Art is that which renders in some form expressions of a mystical nature where the artist is intensely engaged in the act of total giving. This allows me then to (again for the sake of convenience) to exclude things like, scholarly research, non-fiction writing, graffiti, graphic design, electronic pop and commercial architecture, given that such activities are expressions of an intellectual, political or a mercantile nature. Art, in my view, must be free of associations with the intellect, ambition and lucre, while acknowledging the need for adequate recognition and recompense, status and money are not the principal reasons for the creation of art. I deliberately exclude things that have a total dependence on technology in its implementation, so although photography and cinema lie on the borderlines of what may be called 'artistic', the intentions and facts do not quite merge in a spontaneous performance due to the necessary intrusion of gadgetry. Because I regard them necessarily as processes of reporting on external facts, while I am very interested in these forms for what they can do (and the 'artistry' required), I will not include them in my list.

For the sake of modesty, I exclude architecture. This is what I do and it is something else again. It is logistical organisation. The component elements that make a building beautiful is always outside the direct control of the architect, unless he happens to also be the man who paints frescos or sculpts marble. These instances have occurred in history but only rarely. There were the likes of Michelangelo and Bernini but I think they also made a distinction between the managerial command that creates buildings and the craft of creating the details that injects life into them. Finally, I exclude cooking, out of respect for the farmer on whom the chef depends to give him the best ingredients. Cooking pertains to tradition and it is a form of manipulation of cultural knowledge so it has similarities to architecture in its relationship to reality. A chef has a role different from that of an artist. Food, like a building, is not taken just for 'entertainment' and in any case an artist would feel that his job is not necessarily that of satisfying someone else's appetite.

My List:

Story Telling
Poetry
Prose
Reading

Image Making
Drawing
Painting
Sculpture

Theatre
Directing
Staging
Acting

Music
Composing
Playing
Singing
Dancing

If pursuing Art in its singular form makes an artist, then he becomes a component member if a universe that is searching the sensibilities for that something that pertains to an organic honesty of purpose or some would use that problematic word 'beauty'. It is problematic because, like love, it is an absolute indisputable thing. As Keats said in one of his poems, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." According to this interpretation then, an artist is the maker of such a thing. We return to where we began the thought: inspiration. This cannot be induced, it must be there somewhere in the schemata of life, in which, an artist constructs the possibility of making fine things. The mind, the hands, the temperament awaits the will to start learning to bring certain passions under some kind of control.

 
Lucignano, 18 2 2007