Fw: La Valise Noire (2)

I had quite some interesting discussions this week about this new concept, and I had quite some different reactions.
One conversation I had today with Frederik Beerbaum, another artist with much more experience but with the same interests in philosophy and the role of art in life.
He had a few interesting comments that made me think and I would like to document them here.

One of the new drawings this week for La Valise Noire.
I would say the two silhouettes at the top would represent my children.

One reflection:
We have different force fields at work inside us, made of areas that we do not understand, creating tension. This tension requires us to release the related subjects frequently in order to reduce pressure. For an artist this can be through the process of painting.

I very much like this concept. In fact I tried to translate this to the concept of La Valise Noire; by making the drawing I bring the escaping images into the light, they become part of the explicit part of my unknown, and then get sent back into the darkness of the black suitcase. This would also support the idea that it helps to reduce the force fields if we know more of the forces inside us. At the same time we will never be able to know all, which is also good; if we could explain everything in our lives we would reduce the magic of life to a set of mechanical formulas. This also relates to the start of the book I found with the title 'La valise noire', where the writer says: 'as our images and thoughts are the result of an area we don't understand we can never see the full truth. And despite that we always succeed to convince ourselves that our opinion is the right one, the only way to see it'. Well, that's a very free translation.

Frederik also had a nice poem of Dutch poet Gerrit Achterberg that he quoted (sorry quoting in Dutch):
O vrome vuur
Breng in mij over
Uwen uur en tover
Ik ben een lege schuur
Een lover
Een landweg in het middaguur
Een afgezette passagier
Een in beslag genomen koffer
Offerdier

He also referred to a nice book from Mello Ponti elaborating on the value of painting. He is part of the phenomenological stream of philosophers ( such as Kant, Heidegger etc.). The book is called 'oeil et esprit' (eye and spirit). Will definitely look this up when I'm in Paris.(issued by Galimar 1964)

This exchange of ideas comes back to the purpose of communicating; it helps to verify and enrich our own view of reality. And it brings lots of inspiration, especially for me when I talk to people that are passionately exploring the concepts of life, such as Frederik.

Next article with reflections on La Valise Noire