Inertia is understood here in a sense close to the one set out by Newtonian physics in its first law, which we take as known. We apply this sense to any process or material state indifferent to the subject’s intentions and prior to his operations. As an example: a block of raw stone confronted by a sculptor is an inertia. The successive forms the stone will take on are also new inertias, but this time directed according to the sculptor’s plan — a sculptor who, through manipulations that grow ever more precise and subtle, will try to bring those forms into line with that plan, which may itself shift in response to the setbacks the work meets along the way. Total convergence, full control of the inertias, is proof of mastery. Divergence is proof of a lack of mastery, which the artist will try to conceal with the appropriate aesthetic ideology, principally one of expressionist stripe. We see in this example how artistic work always moves, of necessity, from the general to the particular. The other examples we shall examine below are these: the free fall of an arm onto the keys of a piano, or of a bow onto strings; a blank canvas; the definition of an objectified idea; a musical improvisation.
A musician performing a score does so in a sense very close to that of a painter executing a painting. The motif, the idea, the composition to be performed, the object to be represented, are all inertias — sometimes shaped by the performer himself, at others external, raw and alien, given in a strange morphology that the performer must master. The development of an instrumental technique, like the development of work with stone, begins from the inertia of the performer’s own body. A pianist plays not with the fingers, nor even the hands, but with the whole body. The body is the stone — unable to move properly when it lacks training. It must learn to position itself, and once that is done, to release the broader inertias. Any joint blockage breaks the chain and makes inertial control impossible. The arm falls undiminished in the totality of its inertia, and that inertia must be controlled in order to discover, in turn, the inertias that compose the general movement: the trunk, the shoulders, the arms, the wrists, the fingers — the movements of which must in their turn be trained to produce ever subtler variations. On the violin, the bow falls without resistance and rubs the strings to generate the greatest possible volume. That volume is the inertial totality which must be broken down into precise movements capable of varying intensities and timings. Only from the control of the first inertia can detail and subtlety be achieved. Without such overall control, the result is an unsteady sound of slight presence.
A blank canvas is the totality of an artistic space. For an academic execution — which can serve as the basis for any other — one starts from the broadest axes and the most generic figures. In this way the raw inertia is set in motion, an inertia that will guide the process up to the achievement of detail. Inertial control advances with the support of the simplest geometric forms one is capable of fitting in; these are gradually broken down until, in their general conjunction, the fluidity of a dynamic and balanced inertia emerges, in keeping with the performer’s mastery.
Sometimes the first inertia is given not by a physical object but by an idea. Ideas are materialities objectified historically and socially. A writer, for instance, starts from experiences given in that very same social context; his gaze is constituted by the same flow of thought, which in him takes determinate form in a particular biography. These flows include conflict and harmony as the driving forces that experience detects, and it is in this way that the raw inertia which the writer must sculpt comes to light. The settings and the characters consistent with the motor ideas of the events to be narrated will need to be made concrete, and the conflicts with them. This leads inevitably to defining those ideas, to drawing them out of the inertial confusion of the play of opinions, and to confronting their various senses. As for the plots, they must be outlined and worked out in detail in much the same way as a great musical composition is sketched along several lines at once. Contemporary art too, in the current known as conceptual art, takes ideas as inertias — though in the end its works cannot escape physical materiality, so that the idea ends up as a justification crystallised in technical manipulations.
In musical improvisation, one starts from inertial command of the instrument and lets various motifs emerge, with no prior planning, that constant practice has solidified. The apparent initial disorder is treated as though it were an external inertia. Here the question arises of the nature of artistic spontaneity, and of the fascination produced by the apparent unconsciousness with which some artists operate — no need to plan, no pause to think about the next step — as though some alien force were taking them as its mediums. This is the foundation of the genius, that supposed figure whose talents would lie in his privileged communion with the creative forces of nature. It is an idealist fantasy that has to be demolished. Performing mastery has only one source: training. Training is a process of strict, guided rationalism sustained over a long period; there is nothing in it of the unconscious or the superhuman. The performer’s unconsciousness is the firing of an inertial control already assimilated through practice. A performer, faced with a fast and intricate passage, does not stop to think how to perfect each note: he draws on a technique trained and engraved neurally into his movements. In the same way, a painter combines precise brushstrokes with a fluency forged through practice, and his need to correct himself grows steadily smaller as he comes to master the technique.
After all this, one final question remains: the origin of the plans that guide the process of inertial control. This is the last refuge in which the fantasy of the genius can hide. It will be said that anyone can master the technique with the right training, but only a few can take it to its highest degree and bind it to perfect creations. On the first point, it must be noted that, as in everything, talents differ — though we understand these talents as initial dispositions more or less suited to a given activity. Anyone can play the piano up to a certain level, but only a few reach the highest. In the same way, certain pupils, with equal study, get excellent grades in mathematics or language compared with the mediocrity of others, who will undoubtedly have other aptitudes. There is nothing supernatural in this. As for the excellence of certain artistic works, this is just one talent more, and each kind of poetics manifests it in its own way. The great composer has a special sensitivity for drawing out the richness of the musical language; the great writer has a sharp eye for the situations and themes worth telling, and finds the way to tell them; and so on. Inertial control is at work here too. When the control is poor, strategies emerge to conceal it. The expressionist ideology, for example, justifies its works with the proclamation that the artist is expressing himself, as though that were something exceptional. Artistic institutions then take on the task of exalting that expressivity and presenting it as something deserving exhibition, against the profane vulgarity of those who live in the world outside the museums.