Reflections

But the very act of creation is an uphill path riddled with obstacles. As ideas emerge, they must be distilled and organised, decomposed into later interconnected constituents to create a coherent unit. The vision of what is sought is often blurred, obscured by the infinite possibilities. The creator, usually emotionally and intellectually invested, might picture something lurking behind a shrouded veil, although the precise description of what it is that hides may be unclear and indistinct. In the heat of the search, creations are destroyed and recreated. Ideas are reshuffled and reassessed. Old concepts are revisited and further enlightened.

This somewhat unsatisfactory state of affairs, a rather unpalatable perception of a work in progress heading somewhere undefined or unanticipated, may be a metaphor for life's trajectory itself. Walking towards something or somewhere unclear, adapting and evolving to meet our perceived goals, we humans live, love, commune, and exist in a constant state of change until inevitably fulfilling the only certainty we have, the cessation of existence. We are, in this manner, perpetually unfinished works of art.

This project attempts to capture the elusive nature of the creative process. It also explores the relationship between two well-established disciplines widely considered disparate: Art and Science. The emotional rollercoasters inherent to creation, ranging from deep-set frustration to blinding exhilaration and euphoria, are typically associated with artists; rarely are they connected with scientists. While not new, one of the aims of this work is to protest against this preconception and point out that Science, as the human enterprise it is, and its practitioners, are very much subject to the tidal influences of the creative mind at work. Therefore, we have chosen to portray an individual, and his strenuous search for something larger than himself, while diffusing the boundaries across various fields of human endeavor. The palette choice is also not accidental, the black and grey being used as a metaphor for the obscure, unclear, yet-to-be-finished.

The idea for this project was conceived at a barbecue party at the house of Helmut Hofer, Hermann Weyl Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, where Landon Clay was invited to discuss with mathematicians about certain abstract ideas he was considering for a personal art project. There he met Agustin Moreno, at the time a member of the School of Mathematics at the IAS, and an avid devourer of steaks (not surprising if one takes into account the fact that he grew up in Uruguay, where there are four cows per person). Agustin quickly jumped at the opportunity and suggested something completely different: Landon should illustrate a poem he had written while living in the Bavarian town of Augsburg, Germany. The first version of this writing was originally the subject of a live musicalised reading, performed in the Neruda Cafe, where the main character was brought to life by the quintessential Mime Artist, Hugo Fonfon, who at the time ran an art company with Francesco Zevio, Mime in Mi Mineur. The words were wonderfully spoken by the native Englishman Andrew Fear, to the accompaniment of Bach's cello suite no. 5, performed live by Agustin. The version appearing in this work has been substantially revised. In these pages, the reader will find 16 stanzas of a poem that appears in English and Spanish (both original), each accompanied by an illustration due to Landon's able hand.