Black Lemons: A Trick Question

An idea for a painting: 2, maybe 3 objects (black lemons) against a brilliant yellow background, or’ field’ as the background is commonly called in aesthetician-ville by lovers and critics of abstract art.

The question: do I paint the brilliant yellow field first and then the black lemons, or do I paint the black lemons and then the field?

Hmm. I seem to have reached the place where aesthetics and process meet, to then either coalesce or collide. In the case of the making of this particular painting, the painting itself will remain only as its idea until the question of process is resolved. Then and only then can the aesthetician—me—proceed with the painting.

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945): “Objects are not given to consciousness in a rigid, finished state, nakedly in themselves but…the relation of representation to the object presupposes an independent, spontaneous act of consciousness. (V. 2, The Psychology of Symbolic Forms).*

I meditate for 19 minutes and 12 seconds. No answer to the question—should I paint the black lemons first or the yellow color field—comes to me.

Then last night a dream, a representation of the resolution to my question: I will create a camera that makes paintings. All I would have to do then to make the painting I hope to make is to buy 2 or 3 black lemons at the supermarket in Cody and a can of brilliant lemon yellow Krylon spray paint at the hardware store, take a picture of the arrangement (2 or 3 black lemons against a brilliant yellow field) and sit back and enjoy the collaboration of both the aesthetic and the process of actually making the painting in the realized picture.

 Next question? Can anyone out there name the pianist in The Thelonious Monk Quartet?

 *And thank you Bill Stout of William Stout Architectural Books in San Francisco for mailing to me in Wyoming the April 8, 2021 edition of The New York Review of Books with the article on Ernst Cassirer, “The Symbolic Animal” (pps.51-53), by Adam Kirsch.