The Role of the Other in Art
While working through chapter 3 of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, I came across this gem:
Art requires a safe hatchery…As artists, we must learn to create our own safe environments. We must learn to protect our artist child from shame. We do this by defusing our childhood shamings, getting them on the page, and sharing them with a trusted, nonshaming other.
I feel like capitalizing the “other” in the above quote because the concepts of Levinas echo throughout. The Other in this passage calls our artistic self into being—or rather interbeing. The artistic self is not a selfish or lonely creation. The artistic self is an interdependent construct of an I/Other relationship, a face-to-face meeting between two unknowable and ineffable selves who can only by themselves see through a glass darkly.
The perspective of an artist is an interdependent perspective that sheds light on universal truths. Such a perspective is impossible and too infinite for one person alone. Where two or three are gathered together, artistic vision is there in the midst.
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