On Lid Planets

Edited from entry 1/21/23 – On Lid-Planets

More personal than the general intentions of this journal – I have been musing at a painting I’ve kept on my office wall since around graduation when it was given to me by my parents.

It may be familiar to some, as it was a popular choice for street artists. (I hesitate to call it fad, although it seems that way to me because I haven’t seen it performed in some time.) I only assume it isn’t still a common ‘hustle’ – I can’t think of a word with a better connotation than that: It is a depiction of many planets and distant stars, created using spray paint and plastic lids.

I’m writing my thoughts out here in order to explicate the particular feeling I get when I see it. I believe that if I write it out, I may be alleviated or just better understand it:

I adore the planets and space, I am always captivated by works that use space as the subject. But this piece is more of an impression of space, in that it depicts something which doesn’t exist and could not exist. That clearly is not the point of the piece, however the logical part of me takes in the image and wrestles with it.

It depicts seven heavenly bodies, with an eighth much larger, only partially in view. Each planet is a different color, with striations and texturing placed by removing the top of two paint layers with crinkled newspaper blotting. The smaller bodies are all in clear view, huddled together in some kind of insane low-orbit. Behind them, a white star and collection of comets.

Part of the disconnect is the uncertainty of intention. Did the artist intend the unrealistic portrayal of these planets? If so, then there is no problem. It is an impression: a diagram like would be in an atlas of the planets, not-to-scale. Its intention would instead be to convey the impression of variety and strangeness we can almost certainly attribute to exoplanets and the majesty of the universe. So instead, really, what I feel is an anxiety to know. An insufferable desire to be insufferable – and point out to the artist ‘Y’know, that couldn’t actually happen…’

Hopefully, they would say ‘I know, that’s not the point.’ Then although they may be annoyed with me, I would at least have the resolution, and could enjoy it completely for what it is.

Now the question, having no access to the artist, is this: does it matter what the artist intended? It seems almost impossible that the artist had said to them-self ‘I will create an accurate depiction of an exoplanet system’ purely on the merit that one can assume they would have done a little research beforehand. But here I am trying to apply logic to what attention they did have. So in some way it does seem to matter, at least to me.

This ties closely with my musings on savviness, as it is a vessel to convey intention within the work, such that the audience need not interview the artist afterward. Is that the mark of ‘good art’? Is it necessary? Is the true value of art simply what you get out of it on its own merit? If that is the case, then what I get out of it is a sense of confusion. Because I love space, I love to learn how it all works, and seeing this depiction strokes an anxiety I feel when I see someone make an incorrect statement about space. Because the truth to me is always so interesting! Then, once they’ve joined me in the meditation of the complexity and beauty of this universe, let them have their science-fiction! Maybe the inspiration of reality will go on to create even stranger, more complex things.

There is one additional feeling, that of guilt, which seems to slowly fade with time. It is directed at the concept of the street artist and their requirement to produce such artworks as a means of living. My younger self might have pitied them, but now I’ve learned better than to take pity on anyone. Furthermore, I remember watching the artist create the piece, and others like it before, and he’d struck me as enjoying his craft.

Is art made as a profession not also art? We all seem to be in the know, my parents and the artist, that hundreds of paintings just like this exist, they are generated by a formula of plastic lids and layering technique. It was not the first or last time I’d seen such lid-planet pieces being created on the street. So what is the value of the thing?

When I behold it today, it does invoke a sense of wonder: the knowledge of a creative and colorful universe viewed through a kaleidoscope of human impression. There is enough truth within the patterns to call to the mind, and not say “this is a bunch of circles”, but say “these are planets”. I suppose it is similar to an abstract symbol intended to convey something more complex but true. Is the crinkled surface of a newspaper bunch not equally false to geological features as the pin-prick strokes of a photorealistic painting? Neither contain the entire truth.

So then I could conclude that it is a dream, the collection of impressions of space first grasped by a child when they ask what’s up? and are given a book on the solar system. The nature of its high-volume production technique can only be seen as a further aspect of the universe and human nature that we all know well enough: within simple things we can find analogies to the mighty, yet beneath all these layer of abstraction there rests a human truth.

NOTES from Sam 1/5/24:

I think some of my conflict with the piece was a latent anxiety toward other people’s ignorance, rooted in a messiah complex that I still wrestle with today. For whatever reason, it is difficult for me to enjoy interpretive works if I can’t locate the author’s voice in it – something that I’ve improved significantly in the last year. I’ve also reached a healthier, more respectful impression of humanity since then. Not everybody needs to be told things, Sam.