YOUR CAMERA IN MOMA

Patti Smith, in her book Just Kids, gives us a glimpse into her early artistic methods.

Before we go on, Just Kids is a fantastic and intimate look into NYC during the late 60’s and early 70’s.  When I lived in the City, I never had the guts to live my art like she did;  not remotely close.  Yet the inescapable romance of her artistic awakening in the City is an inspiration to us all.

On page 77, Ms. Smith writes of being inspired to paint as she was looking at the work of a friend.

“Taking my camera to MoMA, I searched for inspiration.  I took a series of black-and-white portraits of De Kooning’s Woman I, and had them developed.  Taping them to the wall, I began her portrait.  It amused me to do a portrait of a portrait.”

Searching for inspiration.  Which we all do.  We all search for inspiration.  As has been said many times before in these pages, for example, YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE), how you are supposed to search for this inspiration is never discussed.

One architecture course that needs to be taught is the means and methods of fundamental inspiration.  What techniques of inspiration are open to us?  How do you open these channels?  What is the ideal mental state?  And when you find something that inspires you, then what do you do?

Of course, drawing gets you most of the way there.  But what other methods and techniques are open to you?  How do you get the inspiration more internalized?  In short, what can and do you do with the feeling and emotion of what you found to be inspiring?

So it was refreshing to read Ms. Smith’s direct operating procedure.  She grabbed her camera, took photos of a De Kooning, and then drew / painted from that.  She did not include what the outcome of this exercise was.  And it really doesn’t matter what her work looked like.

The fact is, this is what she did.  And it was a relevant enough experience that she included it in her book 40 years later.