The Esthetic Pleasure
 I have asked myself a thousand times: What is art? Having sought out and asked someone I appreciate and admire, he told me that art is the parallel universe. Reality reigns in one while fantasy and imagination rule the other. Although difficult to understand, after various days of thinking about it, I found that definition to have a great deal of simplicity, for sure.
In real life, humans create an ideal world and express themselves in that quest, manifesting themselves in the search for the ideal - through art. Art is the expression in face of fantasy, the idealization of perfection. That is the mission of the artist, and only he, with his creative and fantasy-filled vision can reach those levels of expression.
For a long time, I thought that artists intended to transmit their feelings and ideas, as if it were a medium of communication. Today I think differently. Something made me change my mind; I think that what artists seek is simply to express themselves, i.e.: manifest what they hold within, cry out how they see it, from within. They feel their parallel universe skimming what they carry inside, this different world of ideals, of higher planes, of fantasy, mysticism, abstractionism.
That is why I now think that the poet writes what he wants and how he wants. That is why I now think that painters venture into their deepest inner selves to bring out what they feel in their souls. Now I understand Picasso's paintings, the absolute expression of his eagerness to understand the inner and outer aspects of human beings, his passion for women, his weakness for bull rings and the good life and the bohemian life style: Picasso's blue period, cubism and the Guernica great mural are all a reflection of what he wanted to find and express, the latter being a painful cry of his feelings resulting from the civil war in Spain. Artists manifest themselves like they want and where they want. Vincent Van Gogh, a brutal expression in search of light, of brilliant colors, of the yellows of the wheat fields and the sunflowers, or the bright blues of his "Starry Night" painting, expressions of his inner self, increased and energized by hunger and absinthe, that some dared say was madness when in reality they were desperate cries of an idealization of the world and society in his time. We could continue talking like this about sculptors, musicians, dancers… An expression of the inner self set in a dimension that all may admire and appreciate.
Among the spectators, lucky are those who reach the vision of that universe parallel to reality for they will receive the benefits of esthetic pleasure. And that is when the circle of art closes, realizes itself: expressive creator and pleased spectator… the parallel universe, of creativity, idealism, fantasy and bliss, enjoyment and pleasure, this esthetic pleasure that only artists provide.
All these thoughts came to my mind as I observed and lived close to the work of three young artists, expressing their emotions, transporting their experiences as youths, groups, gangs, neighborhoods, now with a vision transformed from what they once used to do on walls, or wherever they could, inspired by skateboards or surfboards or simply by the most human of all ideas to mark their territory or that of their group.
I watched as Tomas Guereña and his collaborators, Paco Rosas and Enrique Freyre, enjoyed a great space, an enormous, impeccable, blank canvas, looking at it over and over again, and suddenly, with passion, begin drawing lines with the exactness of one who carries fantasy within and wants to express it for all who pass by there to enjoy this marvelous experience of esthetic pleasure.
 "The idea is a blank canvas with a continuous line, thinner or thicker, that embraces the building, lines that intersect and insinuate themselves into fantasy shapes of the sea, animals, plants, mythical figures like sirens, birds… those lines, now with shapes, function like a skin for the building," says Tomas Guereña, architect, painter, dreamer.
I ask him what he feels when he paints. "It is nearly an addiction, drawing, I think in painting, but my thing is creating, noting, expressing, it's like keeping a diary, a journal -it is an escape- making your mind blank."
Such is this young artist's need to create and to tell, that I discovered that on Sundays and holidays, he paints on whatever surface he can find, a cardboard, a piece of plaster board, a dented oil drum or a can, and then he leaves them there, in the street, a park or a sidewalk, for someone to find and bring to their home or office.
The great value of those artists is that they travel through the parallel universe, not the one of reality, not the one with the economic crisis or the one of politicking, nor the one of egoism and violence, but on the contrary, the parallel universe of fantasy, of the ideal world, the world of generosity and beauty.
There are their works, all, all artists leave them for us, to find human beings who will discover in them the possibility of reaching esthetic pleasure, perhaps the most powerful of all human pleasures.
Let us support culture and the arts! Now there's a profitable investment.
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Until next month…
Ignacio Cadena
E-mail: nachocadena@holapuertovallarta.com
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