Resolution, completion?

I was stunned by the news yesterday that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by US Special Forces. Instead of delivering feelings of justice or closure, the news brought a terrible sense of foreboding. When will the cycle of violence end? It became very clear to me that any hope of 'world peace' is as foolish as believing in Santa Claus. As I turned over events in my mind as well as processing my own feelings, I began to wonder about the notion of 'completion' or 'resolution'.

In Gestalt, completion is a fairly major concept. The act of completion in our 'cycle of experience' enables us to feel satiated and satisfied. Our ability to complete also provides a source of reference and a source of strength for facing challenges in the future. In contrast, incomplete gestalts call for our attention and this 'stuck' or 'trapped' issue will continue to ask for resolution until we are able to bring it to as good a conclusion as possible- given the circumstances. Looking at the situation of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, it doesn't seem to be the case that resolution from a particular perspective or a particular course of action necessarily leads to long-term overall resolution. In fact, the contrary might well be the case.

As these issues were bubbling away, my thoughts turned to art. It is often difficult to know when a piece of art is 'finished'. For some people, it is never really 'finished' as such. For others, in trying to bring it to a point of completion, we sometimes do something that is just a stroke or a flick too much and the whole is ruined. I looked at some of Turner's later works and once again noticed how much less resolved they were compared with some of his earlier works. As I contemplated on this theme of completion, I emailed a friend, Ken, who is an extraordinary film-maker/ artist who worked with Joseph Beuys, to see what he might say about completion. He said that in his work, there is always the intrapsychical forces reacting with resistances of the medium. The extent to which the two can be reconciled can be detected in the work itself. I spoke with another friend and mentor, Len, who is a well-respected artist and painter and he said that completion is something he has struggled with all his life. That none of his paintings have ever reached a state of completion. In our extraordinary and precious conversation this afternoon, he said:

The reason why I use colours in the way I do is to get a balance...a balance between the parts so as to achieve the whole. The softening and toning down of colours is so that they can sit together...so that people look at the picture and they see the picture as a whole.

What would happen if we were to apply these principles to our most pressing issues in the world today? How is it that we have come to the place where power means power-over one another? To what extent can we have 'completion' if we are always going to have the polarities of right and wrong, good and evil. In fact, how is it that we have come to see polarities as opposing/ competing opposites? What happened to the possibility of complementary opposites?

I will finish with an experiment Len talked me through this afternoon. This track of conversation started with an A4 painting I made a couple of months ago- a blue-black painting that is completely saturated with darkness. I said that every time I looked at it, I was tempted to put a lighter colour on it. He told me to stand about 6 ft away and to focus on the canvas for approximately 1 minute. He then told me to turn my head to the right and look away. He said 'what do you see?' I said 'Oh....a transparent canvas- as if it's been lit up....exactly the canvas but without colour...' He said 'are you sure? It has no colour at all??' I repeated the experiment. Then I SAW...firstly- that the canvas itself had a darker edge with the middle forming a purple-blue rectangular patch. Secondly, when I looked away, I saw yellow. Len said '...hmm...you should also see some orange...' and...I did- very faint. He said, this is what happens to your eye. You have to 'see' the orange in your eyes to be able to pick up the dark blue. It is the complementary opposite...no-one knows why this is so but it is just the way our eyes work.