THE TAO IN ART LIFE

Cy Twombly and a French barrette

i have spent some hours admiring Cy Twombly’s works at the contemporary art museum in Berlin. an old man with a French barrette approached me and said: ‘Eretz hakodesh’

This means in Hebrew ‘the holy land’

There was a Hebrew sentence written on my shirt

We began talking about Cy Twombly’s works.

It symbolizes the Tao, he said

How is that, I inquired..

• The Tao is the Zen way to guide human beings through life. It says that everything flows, there are no real borders between human beings and nations, the borders are only in each human being's mind. There is neither beginning nor end not happiness nor is sadness, there is no definite good as there is no definition for bad. The bad of today can turn to be the best of tomorrow.

  But what has it all to do with Cy Twombly’s art works? I asked

  This, he pointed at a big white canvas with 3 green lines on it, is creating out of emptiness.

  What do you mean by emptiness?

  it means forming a visual manifestation of what passes through the creator rather than what he is and what he feels at the moment. Fullness carries all the weight of fears, inhibitions, moralities, beliefs, relations. Emptiness is just a shade in the dark.

  Toda Raba, I said, meaning thank you

  Shalom, Eretz Hakodesh, the older man with a barrette said, and went away.

  For me those kinds of encounters raise researches and dwellings, I treat those people in my life as messengers and it is my responsibility to decipher their message.

  From that day on I started to learn and enquire about Cy Twombly.

  The more I read about him, the more I studied his art the more amazed I was about his philosophy and art. Cy Twombly for me is like arriving to a planet with no gravity, I feel lighter viewing his art, especially in his last almost empty works, it is like saying, I have filled many canvases in my life now I can express more in much less, few lines will do, few withered flowers would resemble the whole human journey, an emerging green light green pointing upwards is vitality and the promise of everlasting existence.

  Cy Twombly is a Tao artist.

  It is easy to detect Tao human beings, they are not trying to impress, they are not trying to draw attention not to them nor to their doings, they are not trying to fill all the room and all the canvas. Sometimes one line is enough to express the entire human journey.

  Have Tao in your life

  Ted Barr