The split between the critic and artist is now fairly serious and complete, we have the artist who does the work and the critic who criticizes in an unhealthy codependent relationship, one does and the other criticizes without understanding, the one that does the work retreats into the work and without appreciation becomes egocentric and self involved, without censure his work becomes the mere mooning of passersby. Newman, in the quote above, consigns the critic to complete irrelevance which is understandable only if the critic has placed himself in position of irrelevance by understanding the artist’s work strictly in terms of  its status  in our current culture and not of what is essential in art. A common understanding of what is essential in this time of cultural pluralism is difficult but made even more necessary by that pluralism. In times when culture was expressed by a common myth then the artist’s job was simply to give that myth form and the critic was to appreciate and comment based on his understanding of their common myth. The problem is that culture changes and their myths with them, cultures are mixed with other cultures creating a pluralistic matrix of ideas so that the critic and artist must find the single golden thread that runs through the many forms and modes of expression.  This golden thread is the essential presence the image conveys which to appreciate the critic must see the work as an artist then as a critic. In joining his sympathy to a particular work, that is becoming present to that presence in the work, his comment which is an expression of that sympathy will have value. What he or she writes as commentary should be literature with its own aesthetic sensibility both independent of and in relation to the work contemplated, the work of criticism should be on the same level as the artwork so that a true dialogue can take place.

                Oscar Wilde, in his “Critic as Artist,” develops this idea with the surprising assertion that the critic’s appreciation is of a higher order then the actual creation of the work. Because the artist is involved in the work emotionally, he is not free to commune aesthetically with the same purity of purpose as the critic who can appreciate and see its meaning unclouded. The meaning of a work is what it conveys aesthetically, the golden thread, not what the artist thinks he is saying, this is especially true a thousand years latter when whatever was on the artist’s mind is lost to history but the work remains in some mysterious sense important. What gives the critic the authority to speak is his or her apprehension of the true meaning of the.

                 The artist is to become critic as well and is to search out the golden thread that runs through out the many and varied ideas and forms in existence to be present to that which is present in object of contemplation. If an artist sits in front of a rock and draws it, the rock is not the object of contemplation though it is being studied with great. Beauty is not the object either though it may be what stirs the soul to begin the act of contemplation, the object is the intensity in which he looks at the visual world but independent of whatever it is he is looking at. In a one sense the object of contemplation is the act of contemplation itself, in another sense he is not contemplating anything at all, he is working. It is this intensity of concentration, the single mindedness of the doing of the work that is perceived in the artwork a thousand years later.

                A picture is first the abstract arrangement of various shapes and colors, on a flat plane within the limits of the frame. If this is it’s thesis then it’s antithesis is the illusion of three dimensional space which is in relation to the visual world of shared experience. These two aspects create dynamic tension between two dimensional reality and the three dimensional illusion,[Gauguin’s figures in space] this is to be balanced visually, synthesizing the first two aspects into a unified whole within the frame of the picture. The third aspect it is a myth conveyed symbolically. All three aspects of the picture are experienced simultaneously and are present in all pictures regardless of  it’s type or genre.  The abstract arrangement of two dimensional shapes is as important to the painter who uses symbols to tell a story as it is to the abstract painter. The illusion of a  figure in space is just dabs of paint patterned on a flat surface. Although abstract paintings may not use symbols to tell a story, the works themselves become symbolic and therefore mythic. A myth is a myth when it is transforming otherwise it is a cock and bull story. If we except this as a definition of myth, and I do, then an abstract work that has the power to convey an idea aesthetically is mythic.

                The subject matter of a work is like your morning cup of coffee, it may be what gets you out of bed but is not what your day is all about. An artist may have an idea or a set of ideas to convey that tells a kind of story that the work begins with but as the work progresses it becomes more about finding it’s balance. A young male art student finds himself in figure drawing class and is expected to make a drawing of an attractive female who is naked, he begins with an earnest desire to capture her likeness from sexual desire. If the drawing is to succeed he is going to need to sublimate his desire so that he can concentrate on drawing. Transforming his natural inclination towards procreation into devotion to doing the art work, through this transformation his consciousness of the object becomes more abstract. Her form becomes an arrangement of significant forms in space and the artists consciousness of  her overall form is now detached from it’s usual meaning. The beauty of  the drawing and the beauty of the woman is entirely different, though the drawing will retain a reference to the woman or more exactly to the idea of woman, not the particular women. This brings us to the mythic aspect bringing to mind mother goddess figures of older cultures where the forms of woman are simplified into elemental forms which brings the mind into direct contact with the divine feminine, sublimating the worshipers energy and transforming consciousness. Although significant form has lost much of it’s religious significance to the modern mind it is still the transforming aspect of the work’s mythos that conveys the aesthetic experience.

Wilhelm de Kooning said that he was fascinated by the idea of taking a lump of clay and shaping it into a perfect sphere taking the clay adding a little here and take some from there, continually refining its shape from it’s natural state of relative formlessness into a perfect sphere. Giving form to formless material by constantly reshaping, adjusting and forming the material until it find it’s balance and the mental energy released in working the material rests in equilibrium. All nature is expending energy to find it’s balance, to find rest in equilibrium which it will never find without being reshaped, adjusted and reformed to be aligned with it’s own higher concept.

 An important adage of the alchemists ran as follows: ‘Art is the imitation of nature in her mode of operation.’ The model for alchemical work is nature. Nature comes to the aid of the artist who has mastered her mode of operation and perfects, in her play, what he has begun with labor and effort.’   Titus Burckhardt  Alchemy