Embracing Chaos and Vulnerability in Artistic Creation
In an insightful interview, Lita Cabellut shares her views on the creative process, emphasizing the importance of chaos in fostering new artistic perspectives. She describes herself not as a creator, but as someone who rearranges the chaos of life into new forms of expression. Cabellut challenges the conventional notions of success and failure, suggesting that these concepts limit the true potential of art.
Cabellut advocates for a solid foundation in material knowledge as a prerequisite for genuine artistic exploration. For Cabellut, vulnerability is essential, serving as a conduit for authenticity and depth in art. She emphasizes the necessity of balancing commercial realities with artistic integrity, suggesting that while concessions are sometimes necessary, they should not compromise the artist’s core vision.
Interview with Lita Cabellut
Welcome, Lita. We're going to have a relaxed conversation today. I have some questions for you, which we agreed I wouldn't disclose beforehand. My first question is about chaos as a creative tool. Is there a method to your chaos?
Well, chaos is fundamental for an artist because it offers many possibilities. Imagine entering a room where everything is in its place and there's no chaos. You could only create a few compositions and perspectives. An artist needs to create chaos, to disrupt the order to gain new perspectives.
The act of creation is quite dangerous. I find it very arrogant to label ourselves as “creators.” What we actually do is rearrange life's inherent chaos into new forms. We artists observe and reposition images, compositions, intentions, desires, fears, ghosts, angels. We don't create these things; they are part of life. We aren't gods; we can't create, but we can reconstruct a new way of seeing things.
So, chaos is essential. My studio is always in a state of chaos. It's so chaotic that we have to tidy up daily to create new chaos. If I've worked a week without chaos, it means I haven't observed enough, haven't been passionate enough, or mad enough to see what needs to be disrupted.
What would you say to artists who are hypochondriac about mistakes?
That we've coined two toxic terms in art, but applicable in all fields: success and failure. They are the worst enemies of reaching something deep, beautiful, and true. Because we never truly fail, nor do we ever truly succeed. Success and failure are part of a process.
So, what are we afraid of? Failing?
Well, there's no such thing as a mistake in art. A mistake is just a perspective from a normative system.
We are educated, and it's good to have basic education, like knowing the materials. So there, mistakes can happen.
I believe every artist needs a foundation in material knowledge. They need to learn what the material is and what can be done with it. This knowledge has rules and laws we can't ignore by saying, "Oh, I'm an artist, a creator, and this doesn't apply to me."
No, you can't. A ship's captain needs a basic understanding of what the engine can do, the weather, and the helm. It's the same in art.
Once you've mastered this discipline, learning to paint or draw is a technique anyone can learn. Go to a teacher, and in three months, you'll be able to draw, more or less as you practice. The error in art doesn't exist because once you've passed this stage, you start to create a language, a way to express and convey what you want. And this isn't something you learn. It's an attitude towards life, an attitude of learning how to observe life and importantly, how you observe it.
What role does vulnerability play in all this?
It's essential. Humility, vulnerability… they're essential in art.
I've never met an excellent artist over the years who wasn't vulnerable and humble. They just don't go together...
Is vulnerability their creative power?
Yes, indeed. When you're in the hands of something as divine as art... Art is much bigger, comparable to God. It's a divine feeling, far greater than oneself.
In the studio, are you in charge, or are you caught in an involuntary rapture?
In the studio, I am a servant trying to do my job as best as I can.
And when those magical moments occur, when you realize that the experience, the passion, the dedication... I mean, I've dedicated my life to art. I've had to say thousands of 'no's for one 'yes'.
And when you're there, and suddenly what we call "the duende" appears... But the duende doesn't show up at 8 AM when I start. When I enter my studio, turn on the lights, start the heating, and get the brushes or canvases ready, the divine and inspiration aren't there.
No, that's where discipline and humility begin, even knowing it's going to be tough to reach something greater than yourself. And as you work, as you dedicate your time, your passion, your focus... in that silence, real things appear.
And sometimes even I don't recognize them. I've been doing this so long, I look at the painting, and I say, "I have to learn from what I've done." But... did I do it?. No. A lot of things aligned, and suddenly something good appears.
Could it be said that art appears when we forget the reasons why we create art? Yes and no.
Because, well… professional artists never forget why we do it. We have our responsibilities. An artist who says, "Look, next year on May 13th there's an exhibition in Dubai, and everything needs to be ready for a catalog in January." You can't forget that; you must have a clear line which is the technical part, the responsible part, where you commit to museums, galleries, your collectors. This part requires punctuality and seriousness.
…But when I'm working, I don't remember that part.
I have... —thanks to life, to God— a wonderful team that reminds me: "Lita, in three months you have to be there, you have to finish that."
"Okay, okay, okay. I think: three months..."
Because time disappears, because the illusion becomes something, a process that has no limit, no timeframe. But for that, professionals surround ourselves with very capable people to help the artist. Because once we get into the studio, we are blind owls. We don't need to see outside; we go very deep. So, it's good to remember.
This leads nicely into the next topic. Because Lita, in October 2024, will have an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. We've known this for about a year, and she will be working on “Los Disparates”, the engravings by Goya. Her team reminds her: “Lita, the exhibition. Lita, you need to start, we know nothing... What materials should we prepare? Lita, what images should we manage for you? Lita, what documentation do you need? Lita, what images?" ...and she does this, as you're seeing her now. She waves her hand like "leave me, leave me, leave me." And suddenly one day everything comes out of her head, and you realize how an artist really works. We all operate in a much more methodical, more rational way, and she gestates everything she's been seeing all this time, which is what an exhibition is. Then, her team... Is always on the verge of a nervous breakdown...
Yes, on the edge, a nervous breakdown.
Because, of course, that part is very compromising. You can't not comply. But that makes artists, in one way or another… artists like I always say: "I live in a delusion."
When I get into the studio and start working on a series, I merge with that series, I merge with, for instance: getting now into Goya... well, I know I'm going to suffer a lot. Because I have to get into his complaints, his colors, his plasticity, his fears, his silence, and his enormous denunciation of the situation he was experiencing, and all...
And all in silence. If we think about it, this poor man chose to live in absolute solitude, in absolute silence, to leave a testimony of what humans are capable of. Getting into that world, well, I already know it's going to be a world that will... Well, I'll see how I get to 2024.
But it's a challenge. It's something I have to feel brave about before diving in, and I also have—like you say—I'm like a cow: I eat the grass, and I chew it, and it goes from one stomach to another stomach, and another stomach... and suddenly it appears. But it doesn't appear suddenly. No, no. I believe I've been digesting Goya for a year in silence, unconsciously, consciously. And this is what's so magical, what's so beautiful about my craft.
Do you suffer to paint, or not? I've known painters who suffer a lot, painters who paint joyfully... but there seems to be no gray in between.
Ah, no. I have all the colors. I listen to Camarón and there I am, singing and crying with Camarón. Then I listen to Bach and am in a sort of spiritual peace. Then I listen to Carmen Amaya, I hear the flamenco beats. Then I listen to Janis Joplin, or I put on Pink Floyd, or the Rolling Stones... No, I use everything.
It's that suffering happens when you reach a very, very, very deep moment. But those are moments where we can only stay a little while inside, because then you die. I die every day in the studio and rebirth, every day.
Yes, in crisis there is a rebirth.
Yes.
And can we really talk about an open wound?
I don't see it as a wound, I see it as an elevator. Look, I see it as an elevator: emotions have levels. It's a house, we are a house. So in that house you have floors.
It's been very hard for me to access some floors. From the basement to the first floor, second floor, rooftop... This has been very difficult for me, to move through these levels. And it's in these levels where you find, what we could say, all kinds of nuances that art can inspire to offer.
There are paintings that are in the basement, and there are paintings that I say "I will never sell this, because it's so deep, so hard, so sad..." But I never live sadness as sadness, or pain as pain. I always live it as an emotion that is crucial to embrace.
It's crucial to recognize it, and it's crucial to bring it outside. Because that's also something you have to share. Art is empathy, art is love; and love is communication. The artist who doesn't communicate is an artist who gets stuck on the second floor.
Let's say there are artists who focus on goals and generating an applaudable or beautiful result, but who don't worry about transferring an emotion through their work.
Yes, there are those types of artists.
Today you've seen in the talk I gave this morning all the journey of my work. I've painted many years the muscle of the portraits, what lies beneath the skin, the broken bones. Then I moved to not very soft skin, but I also moved to wonderful skin, youthful skin, beautiful skin. A character dressed and in a situation of well-being, of happiness, of beauty.
I believe a painter cannot discriminate against the styles or what an artist chooses to express, because art does not discriminate. It doesn't discriminate if you had a good or happy childhood, it doesn't discriminate if you paint pain or happiness.
The only thing art considers is that it be something true, something authentic, something that comes out of you and not painted because it might sell better, because the public likes it more. Because then we are thinking for others and not offering the truth. Humans are very sensitive to the truth.
There's a lot of need for approval in the art sector, especially when galleries get involved. It's a vital need to sell, and there's an internal, structural conflict in the sector.
Sure. Because most gallery owners, well...
There there are wonderful gallery owners in the world, but most gallery owners are the opposite of a collector who sees the art, feels it, recognizes it, reads it, understands it, supports it, and buys it.
And then there are the gallery owners who view art as a product. Because in the end, it's a craft, what we do. A blacksmith makes a product that has to be well made and has to be liked, and has to be useful to sell it. Like a shoemaker, a fashion designer. We artists are always balancing that point.
The exhibition I just had in Dubai is a magical exhibition, full of color, full of vital energy. The exhibition I'm doing now about Goya, is an exhibition where you're going to question many things you see around you and do nothing with, and it's going to make you feel a little uncomfortable. Clearly, that Goya exhibition could hardly go to a commercial gallery.
Artists must and have the responsibility to be able to maintain our art, to continue with our art. And for that, we have to make concessions. But concessions that are real, that don't cut a piece of our soul, that don't cut our creativity, that don't cut our creative process. For that, we have to be very intelligent and make things that are a bit more liked, but also not selling our soul.
Painting with integrity in the studio.
Exactly, and all of that has to be done. Because the world can't expect from an artist that "ah, I'm so radical so then I leave everything and go do what I want." Yes, you can do that. But your art will suffer. You have to be a good father and mother to your craft, to your gift. You have to take good care of it.
I think this moment is perfect to show you the video that Lita has titled—it has a lot to do, Carles, with what you just asked and is the main reason for the title of today's talk—which is "exercises of freedom." Now let's watch the video and...
And then I'll tell you more!
(Video)
If you see this, you say: "Well, what is this? …she paints, creates a work, and then destroys it." I never destroy, what I do is deconstruct to reconstruct.
There came a moment in my case —because it's different for all artists— but in my case there came a moment when I had been painting, painting portraits intensely for 45 years. Learning, trying to understand what the masters left us as testimony, how we can use portrait technique with all the feelings, with all the stories I wanted to tell.
And suddenly, in my studio, I was sitting and there was a portrait which I believe was the best portrait I had painted up to that day.
And I said, "well, this is... I'm 57 years old. With a bit of good luck, I live until I'm 90, painting, of course. This can't be, that I stay here, that this is the end and that now what I have to do the rest of the years is a good copy of what I've learned all these years.
And looking at that painting, I felt vertigo just thinking that I could deconstruct that painting. Because of course, what's going to happen with that painting? What's going to remain of that painting? How will my gallery owners, all the people, all my collectors, who have been believing in me, and supporting me year after year, react?
Am I going to betray a tradition that I myself created?
But what tradition, what betrayal?!
The one I'm betraying is myself. I'm looking for excuses not to take a risk, not to face something even more difficult, even braver than being an artist.
It's allowing things to appear, really believing in the creation of the material. So, I started: "you're doubting that, after having been painting this painting for so many months and with the result you've achieved, that this has no memory?”
I was doubting the memory of all that time that I've given from my life, my attention, my affection, my passion, my doubts. Yes, I was doubting, doubting that this couldn't be retained. So I said: "well, the only way to get out of this doubt is to take the painting off the stretcher, embrace it."
That occasion was the first painting. I took it out, I embraced it, I scratched it, I kicked it, I threw myself with it on the ground. And then I said: "well, I'm going to stand it up, let's see what madness I've done." And I was surprised, I was surprised by the beauty, I was surprised by the power of art when you don't control it, but when you do trust that everything you've done with that previous piece…
it contains memory, it contains energy, and it contains what we hope for in all human beings: that when we're not here, that they remember us in our children, in our grandchildren, in the stones we've laid, in the constructions we've made.
This is also true for paintings, for the materials we touch. So, I started to get into the concept of the fluidity of the material.
And I don't just do it like this. I fold them, I make sculptures out of them, I transform them, I cut them, I display them. And each time that chance gifts me, after having worked... Because if you take a canvas and say, "well, I'm not going to pay attention to it, I'm going to do anything... bang, bang, and voila! Let's give it four knocks and see what comes out."
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There has to be a journey and there has to be an attitude of life in each canvas before you embrace it, before you deconstruct it.
And it's surprising because it changed me, not only my way of seeing and perceiving art, but it made me a better person. I started to change in an incredible way. I'm no longer into micro-management, I no longer want to control everything, I'm no longer worried that something has to be there forever. Suddenly I started to feel that this way of creating, in which I now find myself, are exercises of freedom.
And it's funny because they asked me to attend a program for very, very, very difficult children with a tremendous experience they had had in their lives. There were coaches and psychologists, and they put them for two weeks in a house to live, to do a kind of therapy where teachers of various disciplines came: a politician came, a cardiologist came, a photographer came...
And they told me, Lita, can you come once? And I said, no, I can't come once, I have to come three times. So they said "well, then come three, what are you going to do?" I said: "I don't want to say because this is something that has to develop with the children." So, to the children I said they had to do their self-portrait. We started. That was the first session.
The second session was to see that the children were in the way they had made their self-portrait.
But there was one they told me "no way, we haven't been able to work these two weeks with this girl because we haven't been able to reach her trauma, we haven't managed to leave a little door open to be able to help her with her trauma." And like her, there were a couple.
And the third time I showed up I told them "very well, and now we're going to do an exercise of freedom, we're going to deconstruct the portraits. You're going to take them out or leave them on the stretcher, and you're going to physically intervene in them."
Well, well, well, well, well, well...
What I saw there was extraordinary, because that girl opened up. First she started to hit the painting, crying, kicking, shouting... and I was holding the painting, thinking she would kick me and destroy my knee, which I already have destroyed.
But well, when she got all that out, there began a true, open, and serious therapy. And the beautiful thing about it all is that all the paintings, the ten self-portraits, turned out wonderful: they recognized themselves in them.
And this is the power of truth.
I always say that art can be manipulated in many ways, it can be colored in many ways, presented in many ways. But art, when it's true, is irresistible, like music, it enters through the pore.
And that was a very beautiful experience to see. Not only are they exercises of freedom, they are exercises of liberation. They are exercises of projection and progression. And that's what I wanted to share with us with this video.
(Applause)
There's something you mentioned about luck, which reminds me of the Stoic motto of Amor Fati, "love for the fate." Is there a love for the fate of your works?
Absolutely, absolutely.
I'm at a moment where I love all the materials in my studio. It's so obsessive that I see art everywhere. When they start to clean up, I say "don't pick this up. Look, from this we can extract, if we fold it like this, if we put it like this... suddenly a wonderful sculpture appears." That's recognizing chance.
And it's curious, because when you're aware that you're not manipulating your surroundings, that you're not all the time intellectually studying the possibilities, that's when you let intuitive observation do the intellectual work. You start to trust that chance will bring you impressive gifts.
I believe this happens to all artists. If you think about Monet, those wonderful landscapes of Monet... don't you think that's chance? That suddenly that poor man is working well on a cloud, the light is blocked and a deep blue appears that he could never have thought of.
The truth is in the involuntary act.
Exactly, and in observation, the truth is in observation.
When young people ask me if I can teach them to paint, I always say "I'm not going to teach you to paint, I'm going to teach you to observe, because to paint you have already a lot of technical books you can read. Take advantage of me, because observing is the hardest thing."
And not only in painting, it's about observing in everything. And if you apply this, you free yourself from many things you've gotten used to being here. When you give space to chaos, when you give space to exercises of freedom, a full range of possibilities appears.
And this is the most important thing I try to give in this wonderful project of yours, Carles, with the mentorships to the young: "trust, and never stop working. Work hard, but relax the intellectual eye to really see."
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Any more questions?
(Applause)
To conclude, I'd like to ask about your experience in Menorca, whether it's been a refuge or a challenge.
Both. A challenge because it's the first time I've given mentorships in this way. I've always done it with people who came to my studio to work with me as trainees.
But I'm not the type of person who is where there are a lot of people. I'm dangerously shy, though it may not seem like it. And solitary, though it may not seem like it, but I am. And I've avoided this type of thing. But the truth is that it's been a challenge and also an inspiration.
Because when you've been on a long path, like I've been painting for nearly 50 years —in two years it will be 50 years of painting— you suddenly meet young people who tell you their longings, their fears, their dizziness, their desires...
It's like reliving something that maybe unconsciously I had forgotten and that's so important to refresh, because even though we have many years of experience, we often need to feel like the student I have in front of me.
And when I tell them that this also happens to me, they are amazed.
Yes, this happens to me, this is normal to happen to you. And it's not something you're going to overcome. It's something you have to learn to live with. Because that's being an artist.
Being an artist is a process of learning and a process of unlearning. And in that corridor, you will always encounter the question: "Am I on the right path, am I doing it right, am I honest enough, am I professional enough?"
For me, it's wonderful.
Humble enough...
I tell everyone this: "first, egos in art do not exist." When people tell me "no, Lita, you have to be a bit more arrogant." I look at them and say "arrogant, but why?"
They say: "No, no, because you have to make yourself valued..." But do you think that respect and value come from having an arrogant attitude? If respect and value come because you are a humble, true person and you are a person as you are. From there comes respect.
I don't want people to be afraid of me. I want people to approach me out of affection. But not out of fear.
(Applause)
That yes, they are very afraid of me. I don't know why, because I have quite a sour face, because many times they go to my team, and they say: "...Can you tell Lita, please, I don't dare to approach her." But... c’mon!
You are very wise!
Am I very wise? no…
Thank you. I'm working on that, uh?
Dare to join us?
In the first email, I’m giving you some books that are pure gold. And you'll get Brutally Honest Oracle answers on the first Saturday of each month.
To make that happen, you should subscribe.
We'll be emailing you, assuming you love what we do and dream of joining us.
Don’t like it? Unsubscribe. It’s free too. Life goes on 🍀