The Way I Think...
As Platon recognized more than 2000 years ago, „if the harmony in the living creatures breaks, their natural being breaks up as well; and at the same time pains arise. If harmony is restored and nature gets back to its normal state: then we can say pleasure is sprung.”
The quotatition cited above is beyond dispute even these days, what is more, it has been extended. The state of pleaasure in almost any from of it solves the tension, which is a result of stress. Tension and relief-basic needs.
Being organized to achieve a certain direction or a creative goal, the tensions brought on inside appear in the form of a “need”. These strains can only be alleviated by the right form of act thus the need is satified and the equilibrium is restored. The reestablishment of the equilibrium does not preclude the possibility of formation and progress, as its reestablishment not only means the return to the previous state of equilibrium but at the same time it also offers the chance to create balance in its progressively new and firmer state. As Spinoza says “…Every creature strives to remain in its own essential state.”
The close connection between joy and the artistic experience is hardly surprising, if we take into consideration the eagerness with which so many people throw themselves into art, even though art is not claimed to be indispensible to survive. Nowadays, however, we do seem to need it to bring this small country more wealth than spiritual poverty.
I believe the pleasure produced by creation or an artistic activity must be placed above the pleasures of sex and nourishment. For this reason when recalling my childhood memories I always followed this order of importance – instinctively though at that time.
By saying that creation of my works of art involves artistic experiences and pleasure, I do not necessarily state that pleasure is the only and most important component of my inner creative experience.
…One of my most memorable experiences is from 1967, which can be inexplicable to others up to the present day. As a locksmith apprentice in the third years I was doing the assigned task with my mates, planting trees, making ornamented fences and tasks like that. During the work other task occurred such as painting fences and stakes for flowers. Who else could have received this distinguished and important task than myself. By that time, I had alredy been known to paint and draw a lot and to be familiar with handling the brush. Having painted the assigned objects, I just could not stop and I went on painting the fresly-planted trees, turning them into red from head to toe. Having finished my taks I was watching my work with incredible satisfaction as the small garden had been made alive. I would rather not mention the consequenses of this act. Experience, aesthetic pleasure, satisfaction now I can feel those things. I do not feel, however, how important it is to talk about myself, my inner side and the essence of creation have always expressed these views through my work.
So it is important and not so important at the same time. I want to express, but not to betray myself! It is due to this kind of concealing, that in a work of art just like in a dream-where I am alone in my works I can talk about the things which other people living in society, the receivers can not mention and keep in secret as these “secrets” are irreconcilable with their moral consciousness. And from this point on pleasure, satisfaction and joy are mutual things. My supressed feelings are shifted to a new object whose content is acceptable for me and real, even if it is sometimes momentary and artificial. Coming into existence gives an opportunity both for me and the receiver to elaborate the tensions which-by supression-have swollen and been impossible to solve. Having heard all these now you can understand the distinguished quaility of my mission and the way I offer relief to my fellow-men.
“…order inside and outside”-as my poet-friend Buda Ferenc said, because only this way can the ultimate goal be achieved and it lies ahead you only have to take it.
A worrying feeling have occurred to me several times: am I authentic or not? But every time I replace my previous thought with the promise of a mysterious and transculent inner vision soon transformed into a swelling tension inside. The life inherent in the form sometimes throbs and roars, then it breaks my inside apart, and when I can not withhold it overflows and destroys every certainty and build up the new one, the real. The special and distinguished sense of real art lies in its ability to escape personal narrowing and deadlock thus becoming universal; It can throw its transitory and succint nature away. Having achieve all this it was worth for me to live in this material medium to live and work in a sensual way.
Finally, my acknowledgements and thanks to my family, parents and all those friends of mine, acquantces who have been able to bear all this-my creative nature.
Fernc, Ötvös Nagy
