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Forgetting to forget | Joel Gustafson

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When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape. and again even more concisely To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at. Holy smokes! To see, we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at! The idea that painting requires forgetting - as opposed to concentration and effort - seems counterintuitive. But really, looking at a thing and registering it as a "chair" or a "tree" is a forgetful process itself, in the way that all abstractions involve the forgetting of most details in favor of a few. And since names are just handles attached to abstractions, forgetting a thing's name is really more like forgetting to forget it! This isn't about something cheap like "lateral thinking exercises" that play language games; this is about meditating all

--> Forgetting to forget | Joel Gustafson Forgetting to forget Joel Gustafson / Posts / 2019-02-06 Claude Monet once said When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape. and again even more concisely To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at. Holy smokes! To see, we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at! The idea that painting requires forg

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