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| The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (1931) |
“Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.” ~Virginia WoolfJennifer Hathaway commented:
Back when, there was a painting trade. Artists were apprenticed, worked their way up through the ranks of journeyman, etc, and then eventually struck out on their own.So I chimed in, too:
A "master's piece" was, technically, the moment when a "journeyman" painter "arrived"- it was kind of like hanging out one's shingle, and was designed to show one's abilities.
The Woolf quote above is both right and wrong. Yes, artists are grown on the shoulders of those who've gone before, yes, there is an element of communication [ergo common thinking] involved [or the work would not be understood at all].
But there is so much beyond that in any given work of the arts, and the artists, musicians, and writers who bring forth 'masters' pieces' are also bringing both their reach beyond 'what is'- into the realms of other possibilities- AND their own internal evolutions to their work.
A "master's piece" is not just the "experience of the mass", it is also its transcendence via the combination of hard work and persistent idealism.
The 20th century saw artists pushing the boundaries of convention and innovating on what art was, to begin with. Surrealism, and Salvador Dali in particular, were born of that century. To Woolf's point, there is a history or a context that gave rise to the birthing of this movement and such a painter. But to Jennifer Hathaway's point about transcendence, the Surrealists advanced, challenged, and transformed our notions of art - and of time, memory and dream, as in "The Persistence of Memory."
