the master bathroom

I spent the weekend working on the master bathroom. The bathroom has lingered in a state of half-finished repair. We ripped out the shower and put in a new one at Christmas. The old shower was so small, if you dropped the soap you had to get out to pick it up. Once the new shower was in, things got busy and the rest of the room had to wait. So I came home Friday afternoon, changed my clothes pulled out my crowbar a chisel and a hammer and went to work peeling back layers of tile, plaster, and metal lathe until only the studs remained. Saturday was spent finalizing the demolition, ripping out old cabinets and the floor, followed by the laying of cement board and floor tile. The mortar had to dry so I took Sunday off, stocked up on building supplies and grouted the floor Monday morning.

That is the easy version. The real version is a tale of false starts, endless cleanup, and cursing. I am not a great builder. That is, I don’t do it every day, so it always takes a little while to get back on the horse. Building for me is a bit like alchemy, a mixture of exotic ingredients, pseudo-science, mysticism, and prayer. When you think of Alchemy it conjures visions of a fraudulent and inefficient forerunner of modern chemistry. In reality the basic idea of this supremely complex discipline seems to be that of the union of opposites that will result in the transformation and purification of base matter into a higher state of perfect being. Most people think it is simply the changing of physical lead into physical gold. Rather it is an investigation into the spiritual constitution, or life of matter and material existence through an application of the mysteries of birth, death and resurrection.

Artist like Marcel Duchamp like to think of themselves as modern Alchemists. No one more than Duchamp (or Rauchenburg) has as interesting a history in the transformation of the everyday and the ordinary into the extraordinary. His impact on art was widespread, repeatedly crossing over the traditional boundaries of sculpture, painting and graphics.

Why is alchemy so important to Duchamp, and ultimately to the arts? Alchemy, like analytic psychology, is a discipline in which the notion of the subjective and objective as separate and opposing realities is dissolved. The history of western art has oscillated between formal representation and decorative design. However, in the postmodern era, many of these distinctions seem to have fused together into a new synthesis. Art can now be recognized not only for its linear or painterly qualities, Instead art grows increasingly pluralistic.

Artists recognize equally the importance of both the objective qualities of art and the subjective experience of the artist and viewer; a refinement that stresses composition, construction and rationalism married with artistic notions of symbolism, decoration and design. From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative energies of the artist emerge and begin their interaction to bring about an alchemical union. This ultimate union, says Jung, is the basis of the alchemist’s endeavor, the archetypal union of opposites by means of the integration of opposing polarities: conscious and unconscious, reason and instinct, spiritual and material, masculine and feminine. Oh, and one that results in a new Master bathroom.