Much of what motivates my practice is the desire for self-knowledge. Whether that is in understanding aspects of my character that I might not have known otherwise, or in an increased sense of empathy / understanding of the world around me. This desire for knowledge is also shared by the author I shall be writing about, Henri Micheux.
Born in 1899 Henri Micheux was known as both a writer and an artist. Mostly known for his gestural figures (fig 1.) he explored the dialectic between the subconscious and the conscious, working rapidly with ink on paper, not allowing himself to edit he found aspects of himself that felt almost alien to him; as Michaux himself states:
'I paint just as I write. To discover. To rediscover myself, to find what is truly mine, that which, unbeknown to me, has always belonged to me. To experience at once the surprise of it and the pleasure of recognizing it. To bring forth or bear witness to the appearance of a certain vagueness, a certain aura, where others would, or do, see fullness...'
This refusal to make the subconscious intelligible by using language allows Michaux to explore the territory with out muddying it with context.
His work has to be seen as animated, an expression of his phenomenal characteristics in the act of creating his work.
This is fascinating in relation to my panpsychic aesthetic, as the panpsychism I'm defending considers mind to be only one of the plurality of ultimates (the most basic building blocks of reality) of the singular physical universe.
Michaux, in attempting to bring up phenomenal otherness through ink and paper, suggests to me a way suggesting through practise; that mind is not bound only to only in the human subject, the experiencing of otherness in one's self being a metaphor for the otherness of other subjects.
(Fig 1.)
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