In search of the real

I reread Hans Hoffman book when I was deciding whether to paint again. Of all the great questions like does GOD exist? Is faith real? Am I loved? Am I mattered? Why are we here? What is consciousness? Is this a trait of being human to ask question? to test for a response so that we can know what to do next? When I look into Benji eyes I know he is asking question too: what is this alpha male about to do to me? is he going to take my bone? He is conscious in the sense that my existence matters to him i.e. otherwise he will just go back to sleeping and chilling. An ant will do that as well. So no this is not a human thing. It's a life thing. Even a plant will respond to moving toward sun light. It's really a test for dead or alive. Everything should be a test and a response. That is the purpose for a test. To test is to get a response. It's fight or flight at the simplest. Failure means dead and therefore no more need to test. So correct respond matters. Beyond survival, it gives meaning and purpose.

Hans asked how would a mark agitate flat surface tension?

I think it is a brilliant question.

It is brilliant because it is asked. At the end of the day, it's the first person who asks that matters like why humans suffer? Before the question, it doesn't matter but once asked it becomes matter. Ignorance is blissed. Why ask because nothing but problems will come after. It doesn't matter if there is no answer because a question is directional i.e. it points us toward a particular direction, an intention that didn't exist before.

Why does it matter to ask such fundamental question about making mark on a flat surface?

Let's imagine a world in which Cezanne never asked this question ie he never painted the bather MoMA | Paul Cézanne. The Bather. c. 1885. So there is basically no question about surface tension created by placing objects to create relational space. The object then becomes supreme and has no relational to any other excepts itself. So the bather is basically himself only and no connection to how he is placed in an environment that relates to himself. Essentially it is just a pictorial portrait of a bather depicting a man who bathes but not a man self reflecting as he is stepping out of the 19th century mode and into a new century of being. It becomes a choice of depicting of what is vs of what will and could be. In other words human would not have evolved intellectually and emotionally and basically would just content to accept himself as is ie. standing still like Benji still sleeping and chilling. It would be a choice to go forward or not. That is why Cezanne is father of modern Art

Anyone and anything can make a mark. But making a mark on a flat surface has to be uniquely human. Flatness is a human construct in a world of 3-D. It's pure abstraction. A mark has no meaning until it disrupts the flat surface and therefore creates tension ie pictorial tension. It's a problem that we create for ourselves and for no one else. Why bother to create a problem or any problem? Why just leave a blank paper or canvas as is? There is no need to make any marks to disturb it. Life will just go on just fine. It's like a sleeping and chilling corgis or an ant just keep walking forward doing its thing. That is right. No need to paint. No need to make any marks to disturb the surface. No colors. No movements whatsoever. Just still. Bland and dead.

Then whenever there is a mark disturbing the flat surface it will be just like a breath coming into the world to let us know that the corpse is still alive. Still matters. Still important to everything around it.