ARTISTS/WRITERS

“Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there,” Bill says. “I’ve always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence…There’s a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer’s will to live.”

from Don DiLillo’s novel Mao II

***

I’ve often been drawn to visual artists as friends or romantic partners, and they to me. This began early and has continued throughout my life. (I was married to an artist for twenty-nine years.) 

In recent years, four artist friends have passed on: the sculptor Richard Serra; the painters Michael Dvortcsak, Thekla Hammond and Victor Cuevas. In the coming weeks I plan to write a little about each (sketches: an artist’s practice, borrowed), their stories and their work, and our various connections. 

I’m not sure why these writer/artist affinities have been so pronounced in my life. The creative processes so little resemble each other, even if a few have combined them successfully (Ed Ruscha’s droll paintings of words, the writer W.G. Sebald’s combines of text with photographs and other images). Surely there’s a reciprocal curiosity about what makes the other tick. But in the end they are utterly different pursuits. To cite one example, most visual artists I know are comforted or inspired by listening to music or audio books while working. The explanation I get is that engaging one side of the brain with words or music allows the other side to roam freely. This is unimaginable to most writers, I suspect. When I’m writing, the words are the music. Sound and sense conspire to render the sentence, which arises out of a void of silence. 

Of these four artist friends, Richard Serra was easily the most prominent, considered by many to have been the great sculptor of our era for his monumental steel installations. The other three, just as devoted to their work, are to me no less interesting or worthy of writing about. As for the importance or durability of their art, I’ll let history sort that out.

MICHAEL DVORTCSAK

THEKLA HAMMOND

VICTOR CUEVAS

RICHARD SERRA

(Top painting: Michael Dvortcsak)