Thomas Aquinas at the Pharmacy

 

6 April 2022

Thomas Aquinas at the Pharmacy 

(part one)

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 2 April 2022, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

While hanging around the pharmacy counter waiting for an order the other day I was suddenly bombarded by a burst of ideas about Art. I’m not sure why I was triggered there but it can happen to me in the most mundane of places. And besides, it’s not out of the ordinary for me to think about painting at odd moments of the day. But I think it may have been triggered by Putain’s war on Ukraine which is on everyone’s mind these days. Many, like me, are also shocked by the immoral barbarity in this young 21st century. But perhaps like others, I mused at how regrettable it is that such awful people seem to be running the world at our expense. Why can't we have great leaders in the world today? Then I began wondering about Art in our contemporary world and where its greatness might lay. 

In fact, I’m always on the prowl for any inspiration when it comes to great people, and most especially so in the Arts. Most of all, I think, because without a notion of 'greatness' in all parts of life, how would I navigate these big tents we call Humanity and Art? I would be but a voyager at sea on a cloudy night without the North Star to guide me safely to critical clarity.

Unlike the aesthetic realm of the Arts where critical clarity can lack morality, the sphere of politics and leadership leans solely upon it. Though I mostly avoid politics in here, the recent invasion of Ukraine by the dictator of Russia is immoral. Ukraine never declared war on Russia and yet it must defend itself like a small Morandi in the corner of a large collection of Contemporary Art.

But in artistic terms alone, what do we generally deem to be great? At the pharmacy this morning, this was my very thought as I waited at for my scrips to be filled. Precisely, I was thinking of what Thomas Aquinas wrote regarding art way back in the 13th century when he postulated that “art is the measuring stick for art”. My teacher Leo, so loved this, that he passed it on to me within weeks of meeting him, and it still speaks to me at very odd moments like this morning. With this bare utterence, Thomas Aquinas defined in the simplest and most compact of terms, the very essence of all art. Nothing more, nothing less, and with acute brevity and wisdom he managed to demystify the substance of what makes a work of art great. But how, and what does he mean? 

I’ll wade into it as a painter. Quite simply, he means that Painting will be the sole arbiter of what Painting is. And more broadly, by the same token, I think that any greatness defines any greatness in every aspect of our lives. It’s how we qualify things in general. It means that anything ‘great’ will define greatness in everything else, because great men or women of ages long gone, still define what it means to be a great man or woman today. At the same time it sternly reminds us that quality begets quality. But if we’re after ‘great’, then we have to understand that quality first, and let’s be honest, not everyone even cares for greatness, look at our politicians and some of our art. But we don’t vote for greatness, we vote for what we like. In the Painting world, preferences do not determine quality, they determine our taste which are two different animals, like a tiger and a pussy cat. Great pictures determine the quality of great pictures.

So, we need an education, in this case an education in Painting. And yes, I know, I know, Post-Modernists are surely cocking their shotguns and putting pens to paper in rebuttal, but I freely admit that I have little defence, at least not here and now. And, I will admit that my own taste is full of prejudice as is my own critical intuition but it's at least hewn from decades of looking at art. As a painter, it’s also been formed by lots of failures in my own work. But it’s these experiences that have been critical to forging an awkward path forward in my own life. Like everything, there are a few exception to this axiom because I think there are great pictures made from those who have never studied Painting. They have been blessed with a gift that defies any notion of ‘art education’. But that said, their exceptional work can still be measured and judged by all proceeding art. 

Of course the reverse of this hypothesis is also true, but this can be for many varied reasons. For instance, a really bad painting might also define what constitiutes a bad painting, and it will inform a student of Painting about what to avoid if one is lucky enough to understand this. It could even maybe help an ardent lover of this unique craft to appreciate painting even more. And so as Aquinas says that Art is the measuring stick of Art, it is surely true that human perfidy will also be defined by perfidious behaviour because Hitler, for most civilised folks, still remains the template of the profane.

But sticking to Painting, what happens if we lose sight of what it is and we consequently get lost, like maybe getting on the wrong train to go somewhere other than where we intended to go? If Thomas Aquinas knew what a train was, he would simply tell us to get off at the nearest stop and board the right train. But then, he might even add that we'd need to find the right model too and put all our creative faith into action so that our artistic intuition could grow from there. 

This study was the first of several from the other evening. There are three here to accompany Thomas Aquinas over the next three pages. They are presented in the order they were painted. It had been a stunning bloom, and one really magnanimous to me. This first one is self-explanatory and it depicts the very start of the bloom. I like the way the sky came out, it’s not often that it comes so naturally nor as easily. It was made in seconds. In the sea, there’s drip that I partially attempted to wipe away but quickly realised that I rather liked it. It's one of those marks that declares that it's a picture and made by an imperfect attempt at verisimilitude.