In April of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to spread throughout the country and the world, I was asked to create a short video about how I’ve been coping with it and what kind of changes it’s caused in my work. The full text appears below the video.
What Is Necessary?
Benjamin Edwards
April 22, 2020
It’s been just over twenty two years since I finished grad school, moved to Washington D.C. and rented a small studio near Capitol Hill.
In those stolen moments of quiet seclusion, suspended between the drudgery of a day job and the subsequent exhaustion of domestic recuperation, I felt overwhelmed with ideas, and confused about what I really wanted to do with this precious time in the studio.
To find my bearings I wrote on an index card:
WHAT IS NECESSARY?
I have kept it on my desk to this day.
During this crisis, as so many unessential aspects of our lives have been stripped away, many of us turn inward, or to nature, or to friends and family, so that we may connect with what is necessary.
Suddenly we are again thankful for food, for shelter, for medical care, for each other—that is, if we are among those fortunate enough to have access to these basic human rights.
My heart goes out not just to those who have been stricken by this virus but also to those who have lost their livelihoods and their fundamental security in this precarious world.
It is a tragedy that the most vulnerable among us suffer when the greatest nation on Earth is suddenly exposed.
It is all too easy in such a moment to fall prey to the idea that art is unessential, or unnecessary.
In its outer guise, as mere product or token, yes, art is indeed superfluous when compared to the primary needs of the body.
But when you see a painting or read a poem, you are really looking at a fossil from a process that has already occurred for the artist, and now it wants to live again in you.
It’s the inner life that counts.
And it’s this process, not the base thing, that is the soul of art.
The work of art catalyzes the transformation from one state of being to another, allows us to understand where we are in the world, who we are, and why we are here.
There is nothing more necessary than that.
In a moment like this, art is no longer the domain of the professionals. We’re all artists, as well as beneficiaries of the arts, or at least I believe that is what we are all being called to do.
The moment asks that we turn to the imagination, to beauty, and to care, so that we may articulate who we really are.
What is necessary in this moment?
What irrational impulse has come over you?
Lately I have been in my garden, playing with dirt. In the park I take notice of the blossoms.
At night I track the moon and the planets.
Why? To what end?
My rational side assures me that this is an art project, which means someday I will be able to come up with an art object from it.
Then again, maybe that’s what I tell myself so that I have permission to play.
Sometimes we have to gravitate to the things that make us feel good, but in a soulful, nourishing way.
It may seem childish or stupid, but it also may be the humble beginnings of something profound for your future self.
The Greek word for truth is aletheia, which means to bring out of oblivion, concealment, or forgetfulness.
In his essay “The Origin of the Work of Art,” the philosopher Martin Heidegger maintained that the artwork, through beauty, allows truth to unfold.
New worlds are disclosed through making.
Heidegger used Van Gogh’s painting of peasant shoes to show how the mere “equipment” of the shoes, when treated aesthetically and with feeling, metamorphoses into a “happening of truth at work,” disclosing a world into which we may enter.
The old world is gone forever, and we don’t yet know what the new one will look like.
There’s a terrible uncertainty and anxiety associated with this.
We are confused and afraid, and so it is only natural for us to turn to what is comforting, to what is necessary and grounding, so that we may form some kind of model of what our future holds.
After the sharp and abrupt shock of 9/11, followed by the fear, chaos and confusion of wars in the Middle East, the panic of the financial crisis, and the long, slow, festering burn of the climate crisis, we have, unfortunately, grown rather accustomed to the anxiety associated with the passing of an understandable and predictable world.
In such times, art is a healing balm, not simply as something to be consumed and enjoyed, but as an ongoing process through which we actively participate with mystery, a bridge across a chasm of the unknown.
The new world is disclosed to us through our own making.
Looking back on the paintings I have made over these last twenty anxious years, I can see that it took me time to process the shocks we’ve all experienced.
Experiencing an artwork of the past is to put oneself into the shoes of another time and place, while beginning the mysterious process of creating an artwork for the future can sometimes feel like breaking in a stiff pair of alien shoes.
The key is that the shoes allow you to travel to someplace new, someplace necessary, and in time these too will become worn and obsolete, begging to be outgrown so the journey may begin anew.
During this terrible time, I hope you are safe and secure enough to find these new shoes.
May they guide you to what is necessary, to an understanding of a new world trying to be born, whether we like it or not.