Ben Volz
Marius Lehene, a professor of drawing at Colorado State University, stands in front of his painting, “Irrigation Channel,” at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art Oct. 9. “Where is 'We?'" Lehene said. "Just as impossible to redefine as the chipped, peeling, tired skin of paint, unable to offer immunity to whatever entity it locally and temporarily describes — such is life."
“I am a peasant at heart,” Marius Lehene said as he recalled growing up on his grandparents’ farm in Transylvania, Romania. The natural environment was his first teacher.
Lehene, now a professor of drawing at Colorado State University, is someone who engages with learning as a lifelong practice.
“We work constantly on ourselves,” Lehene said. “Our own selves are an open project.”
In the brightly lit, mixed-media atmosphere of Lehene’s studio, the internationally exhibited artist shared how his relationship with art and learning has developed throughout his life.
Lehene’s early love of art was nurtured by a formative experience in primary school.
“I had a fantastic elementary school teacher, Maria Fǎrǎgǎu, who was not only talented as an artist, but she noticed that some of us had talent,” Lehene said. “This was during the Ceaușescu regime — a communist regime in Eastern Neamț — and art outlets were very limited, so she sent two of us to this silly competition of chalk drawing on the pavement.”
At the competition, the judges were art teachers at the Arts Magnet High School, a place of visual, theater, musical and written arts, which Lehene described as an “oasis of life and culture in a regime that was very impersonal, very oppressive.”
Though he’s since spent the majority of his life engaged in the art world, Lehene has not limited himself to a specific artistic focus. In order to define his art, Lehene said he’d “have to know what art is about,” which he said he doesn’t believe is a question anyone can truly answer.
“I think art itself is responding to its time,” Lehene said. “Whatever we do individually operates within that.”
In Lehene’s view of art, meaning does not equate truth, nor does it define the deeper resonance of a piece.
“Meanings are trivial,” Lehene said as he gestured broadly around his studio. “Everything is meaningful. You look around this room and everything makes sense, and yet, communication has a limit, and I think that it’s where the essence of art lies: beyond communication.”
Lehene pointed to a large gray book about French painter Paul Cézanne as he spoke of a letter correspondence between Cézanne and fellow French artist Émile Bernard. Cézanne closed his letter with the line, “I know that I owe you the truth in painting, and I will tell it to you.”
This, Lehene said, is his answer for where he finds truth in art: “The truth in art is something forever owed.”
“What should we want from life? … What should we want from each other? These things still need an education.” -Marius Lehene, CSU professor and artist
Lehene interwove stories of his past experiences with his values and hopes for the future, searching to articulate not just the truth within art but the truth within the modern world.
Lehene noted the impact of artificial intelligence on truth within art.
“What I think is happening is that, because we didn’t give ourselves time to see (or) to understand what the technology is, we are proletarianized by it,” Lehene said, reflecting on why, during the development of such technology, humanities are excluded. “And a proletarian, in my definition, is someone who doesn’t know how (to) — or simply cannot change — their own condition.”
As a professor, he said he has developed an important point of view on the topic of technological advancement and its impact on arts education. While artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, outsourcing knowledge can pose risks. Therefore, as Lehene put it, learning should be about “an education of our desires.”
“What should we want from life?” Lehene said. “What should we want from each other? These things still need an education.”
As someone who experienced life under an authoritarian regime, Lehene also spoke of his concerns for modern society and the United States in particular, especially in regard to how politics affect art and education.
Lehene reflected on the ways artistic freedom can mirror freedoms of expression within a society. In today’s world, self-expression is sometimes limited.
“Freedom is perceived as dangerous, especially when based on love nowadays and empathy, sympathy and so on,” Lehene said.
Living under the Ceaușescu regime, Lehene said he experienced communist oppression and authoritarian attacks on the truth.
“It’s not a great life to be under an authoritarian regime,” Lehene said. “Everyone suffers. And of course, there is no truth. And I don’t know that anyone can live a true life in a false world. If what dominates — as it starts to dominate now — are the falsities, it makes a true life very, very difficult.”
In considering the role of the artist in society during challenging times, Lehene told a personal story — one he often shares with his drawing students. As a child, when helping out on his grandparents’ farm in Transylvania, he sometimes asked his grandfather, “What do I need to do?” His grandfather would respond, “Well, if you ask that question, you are already not helpful.”
“That’s all that’s expected,” Lehene said. “If you pay attention, the right form of attention, you will know what’s happening, and you will know what to do.”
Whether the subject is art, education or the changing world — for better or for worse — individuals have the choice to pay attention, to see things for what they are and to let what they observe guide them in knowing what to do.
Reach Addie Mitchell at entertainment@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.