The Brooklyn Rail

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”
–Henry David Thoreau

“Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization.”
–Peter Kropotkin

“I paint flowers so they will not die.”
–Frida Kahlo

Though we know that every human idea that ever came into existence is open to various interpretations, and vulnerable to distortions that could lead to endless unexpected perverse consequences, we also know that as long as we can hold the space that lies in-between for ourselves, our worldviews and our observations of human behavior can be explored endlessly and lead to broader thinking. The process of creation of original works of art is given value not only by our awareness of the artist’s predecessors, but also by understanding that each work of art must be made from nothing each time. And here we find Giambattista Vico’s verum factum principle as the most useful guidance.

Verum factum literally means truth is what is made. One can know the truth only in what one makes. Be it a made object like a painting, a sculpture, or photograph; or a made thought such as a novel or a poem; or a time-based performance such as dance, music, or theater; all are unnamable acts of creative manifestation, which take much of their strength from the way their makers fearlessly face the possibility of their failure. In fact, the possibility of failure is an essential part of the creative process. In this way, artists in all mediums are different from politicians or business people, who tend to shy away from failure. For example, if a politician’s advertisements for their programs and agendas don’t get them votes, they are unlikely to repeat them. Similarly, a businessperson who is driven by an idea for a product that can be invested in for future gain will back away quite quickly if that investment is deemed a failure, and will probably never repeat it in any form or shape. It is only in the arts and humanities that failure is fully embraced as the creator’s precondition.

I suspect that Vincent van Gogh thought that his paintings might not ever get recognized; yet, he persisted. And since his self-doubt was so profoundly monumental, he poured great energy into his letters, which he thought would leave a worthy record of his existence. One can argue that this was the reason that van Gogh wrote the majority of his two-thousand-plus letters in French, instead of Dutch. Like Franz Kafka, who deliberately chose to write in German rather than Czech, van Gogh believed that it was one way to ensure he would be read more widely than if he wrote in his native language.

Another inspiring story of a struggling artist who had suffered a great deal throughout his life, from being Jewish, from family tragedies, and by being a phenomenal autodidact who taught himself everything on his own, was Philip Guston. And Guston is especially remarkable for his refusal to accept his success unquestioningly and at face value. So after he had entered the pantheon of the New York school among his peers in the glorious decade of the 1950s—along with other abstract artists including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Ad Reinhardt, and Richard Pousette-Dart, among others—and after three good decades of being an abstract painter, Guston had his infamous exhibition in the winter of 1970 at Marlborough Gallery of shockingly cartoon-like paintings filled with grotesque figures, which essentially derailed his entire career to date. This radical change in direction revealed Guston’s deeply personal odyssey, with works that were infused with everything the artist had reconfigured and sublimated in iconography and composition. That exhibition garnered endless negative reviews, brought no sales, and ended friendships with even some of his closest friends. He was forced to return to teaching at Boston University, until attitudes to the new work began to change a decade later, when his retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened on May 15, 1980. And only a month later, on June 7, 1980, Guston died.

In the long run, Guston was fortunate to have a daughter like Musa Mayer, who left a career as a mental health counselor to pursue an MFA in writing from Columbia University. It was while she was still in school that she published her first book, Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston (Knopf, 1988). This book was more than just Mayer’s own story of growing up in the New York art world of the 1950s; it was rather her working through the profound sadness of a daughter—neglected by Guston the father, she was trying to understand Guston the artist. It’s the latter that compelled her to dedicate her life since then to elevate the value of Guston’s work. 

In considering where we are today under this time of duress, what are we to do to maintain, to defend our own verum factum principle? Need we remind ourselves how young this nation really is? Despite its terrible imperfections, it has a long tradition of fighting for the arts and humanities through private and personal philanthropies from various sources—never fully depending on the states or federal government, as most European and Asian countries do. It is good to remember that Transcendentalism was created by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, and their friends during Jacksonian America in the 1830s; how Walt Whitman brought Transcendentalism and the realism he experienced during the Civil War into free verse; and how Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey founded pragmatism. We also should remember what happened when progressive education, which advocated for the balance between vocational training and academic education, largely led by the progressive left, gave way to a cultural left that eventually heavily favored the latter and completely abandoned the former. Cultural elitism is a profound negligence of the synthesis that brings together the necessary skills of the workers, the dignity of manual labor, and the knowledge of the artists.

Lastly, our own verum factum principal correlates deeply with how works of art get made. Through the artists’ emphasis on the imaginative origins of our human civilization, including the importance of metaphor and mythology, they’re perpetually consciously or unconsciously able to explore history as a cyclical continuum. This cyclical continuum is a living organism, a vital source for our human imagination, from which past failures can be corrected, remade, reactivated—hence becoming concretely alive again. Here, in this open access to all different stages of human civilization, history will continue to serve as the primary engine of creation for the arts and humanities. We’re faithful servants of truth from what we make. 

Onward, upward with love, courage, and cosmic optimism as ever, 

Phong H. Bui

P.S. This issue is dedicated to the extraordinary lives and works of our mentors and friends. For Rosalyn Drexler (1926–2025) and Robert Grosvenor (1937–2025) whose profound contributions to the idioms of painting and sculpture were unmatched in their respective uncompromised visions of form and invention. While Ken Jacobs (1933–2025) had significantly changed the course of experimental cinema, Noble Spell (1995–2025) was admired for his beautiful spirit that was inseparable from his fearless musical experimentation. As we continue to elevate their legacies through our work at the Rail, we send our deepest condolences to all members of their families, friends and admirers across the country and abroad.