Yesterday I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC (shoutout to the Bergmans in Jersey for taking me along).
I’d never been to the Met before, and I guess I’d never really been to any art museums other than any ones they might have taken us to throughout the K-12 school years (don’t remember), and I definitely didn’t appreciate that kind of stuff back then.
You need some life experience before you can “get” art, I think. Sort of like how you need to have some base level of fitness before you can “get” weight lifting. (and even then the sheer ridiculousness of jerking around hunks of metal is pretty incomprehensible to me sometimes)
It’d be pretty absurd for me to try to tell you all the thoughts that raced through my mind as my senses were bombarded by the Met. To keep it simple: it was a hell of an experience.
ART + PEOPLE (NYC melting pot) + BUILDING (gorgeous) = INSPIRE
I’m not sure I can properly describe to you how much I learned about art, and about life.
If you were to ask me an open-ended question like “What do you know about African art?” or something technical like “Which Impressionist painters enjoyed using broad rectangular brush strokes and heavily contrasting colors in creating the reflection off the surface of a body of water?” I’d probably be inclined to tell you to shut it.
Because that’s not what art is about, at it’s heart.
At the Met, they have guided tours at scheduled intervals during the day. Normally I’d skip this kind of thing, but we figured it wouldn’t be that long and that we’d be able to pick up a few insights if we checked it out.
It absolutely was worth it.
The tour-guide was upper-middle-aged, squat and stocky, and dressed impeccably in blue blazer, face framed in very round glasses. He looked sharp. And his pitch was sharpened to perfection. (30 years of experience can do that)
I’d never witnessed such outstanding salesmanship. He was in-your-face salesy, but he sold genuinely valuable content. I’m not sure everybody appreciated his mastery as much as I did, but I fully recognized that he was just as much a part of the museum as any of the actual art was.
To get back on track, though.
The real reason I liked him so much was because of the way he defined art – he said that art isn’t just passive observation – it’s active recreation.
At each exhibit, he’d brief us on the art at hand, but more importantly he’d find a way to remind us that we (the museum goers) were just as important a part of the museum as the art itself.
He elevated us to the level of the artist.
And he was absolutely right. The finest art in the world is worthless if it doesn’t have a “receiving consciousness.”
Art is the interplay between art and audience.
It’s what happens to you when you see it. It’s your reaction to it.
That’s what art is all about, whether it be painting, photography, poetry, music, theatre, or literature.
Or the less deliberate, more “unspectacular” art of everyday life.
That’s what art is all about. And that’s what life is all about.
There’s a lot of stuff going on in this world right now. Mindblowingly smart people are creating mindblowingly complex gadgets that can do mindblowingly ridiculous things. Business tycoons are commanding our economies with pixels sent out on their BlackBerry’s. Leaders of countries are making monumental decisions with immortal (and mortal) consequences.
And so on.
All this stuff only matters at all because of the way we respond to it, because of the way our consciences receive it – the collective conscience of humanity.
The fact that I can look at a painting created by a random person in a random place at a random time (random from my perspective) and react to it and sometimes resonate with it – that’s beautiful.
It shows that genius is universal.
And it celebrates the individual. Every individual, not just the talented individual.
This serves as a strong call to reduce inequality in this world. In the most basic of senses, we really all are equal. If you don’t trust me on this, try the business mind angle:
“Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity—reducing inequality is the highest human achievement.”
-Bill Gates, rich guy
That’s right, all human achievements – art, science, business, what have you – can serve no higher purpose than to reduce inequality.
Now try the theatre mind:
“The primary function of theater is to uplift humanity.”
-Philosophy of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in NYC
Uplifting humanity starts with uplifting yourself.
Recognize that you have enormous potential as a human being, and that you can and should and even must unleash this potential upon the world.
Recognize that in the process of lifting yourself up, you are free to (and encouraged to, by me at at least) break rules in the name of expressing yourself.
“You are remembered for the rules you break.”
-Douglas MacArthur, American general who commanded the Southwest Pacific Theatre in WWII
Do you see how much you can get out of a single visit to an art museum?
As I walked around, trying not to lose myself amidst the sensory overload, the dots started to connect for me. One dot that stood out was a bumper sticker I once saw on a crummy white sedan:
Art saves lives.
-David
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I find it interesting that you don't mention a belief that is held very popularly by the intellectuals of our world, that art is intrinsically valuable. That is, that the existence of an amazing work of art, even if no one ever experiences it, somehow improves or adds value to the world. I myself don't agree, and tend not to agree with much of what today's academics have to say. But I did speak to a professor at a dinner once (I myself may not have any impressive credentials, but this professor did work at one of the best academic institutions in the world - I won't say which) who really believed in the value of art, on its own. He asked me (not really an exact quote) - "Take the hostile, barren world that existed before humans and before life. Now drop an anthology containing the complete works of Shakespeare in the middle of some desert somewhere, pages free to flap around in the wind. Doesn't the fact that art so magnificent even exists - or that it has existed once it is destroyed - doesn't that somehow make this barren world a little bit better?" The professor himself was quite convincing, and unfortunately I can't remember much else he said specifically, but it is interesting to think about..
ReplyDeleteI'm going to cite a quote from the comic Watchmen that sums up my feelings on the matter (Bergman, feel free to agree with me)-
ReplyDeleteDr Manhattan : In my opinion, it's [Life] is a highly overrated phenomenon. Mars gets on perfectly without so much as a microorganism. See: there's the south pole beneath us now... No life. No life at all, but giant steps, ninety feet high, scoured by dust and wind into a constantly changing topographical map, flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples ten thousand years wide. Tell me... would it be greatly improved by an oil pipeline?
Saying that a desert will be improved by some shakespeare scraps, is saying that ANYTHING humans create has intrinsic value. People are very set on the idea that in any larger sense, humans substantially matter. In the scope of the universe, there is a very small difference between an oil pipeline and a "magnificent" work of art.
I'm going to agree with Dave on this one, art without an audience holds no meaning. Whether that audience is the artist themselves, or a million people. Things are relative.
I think you've actually misunderstood Dr. Manhattan in a pretty important way. I think (and I've never read the comic, but I loved the movie, and think that the character is basically the same) that he absolutely believed in the possibility of things, or in this case the lack of things, to be intrinsically important and add value to the world on their own without any kind of life to view it. This is, in fact, his exact point when he says, "No life. No life at all..." He means that, even without any living creature there at all to view Mars, without him being there to talk about it, Mars is intrinsically better than it would be, perhaps because there is not life there.
ReplyDeleteThe mistake you make comes when you say, "Saying that a desert will be improved by some shakespeare scraps, is saying that ANYTHING humans create has intrinsic value." Dr. Manhattan might argue that life, and the ugly products of life that we observe, such as oil pipe lines and highways, actually add negative value to the world. Or, more simply, that life and its most typical products may actually make the world a worse place. The fact that humans are such a small, irrelevant part of the universe and do not "substantially matter" may mean that there is very little difference between a pipeline and a book. But that difference may actually span the value zero; or, phrased better, the pipeline may make the world just the tiniest bit worse, while the book may just make the world just a tiny bit better.
The idea I posited before stems right from this idea, that a book of plays and poems might actually have intrinsic value, absolutely separate from its being written by a human being. That means that I am not saying it is valuable because a human wrote it, as you seemed to imply, even though they are not around any more. I mean that a beautiful work of art could be valuable even if it just began existing one day, separate from a creator or an observer. And, though I might not agree with this idea of intrinsic value, I actually believe Dr. Manhattan would. Just as the "giant steps, ninety feet high, scoured by dust and wind into a constantly changing topographical map" are beautiful in his mind simply because they exist, a work of art, too, might be beautiful without anyone to read it.
Toly and Avid Reader, thanks for the excellent thoughts - they're much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to think about indeed...Here's my brief take (w/o the Watchmen terminology, because I was exhausted and fell asleep when I watched that movie, a long time ago):
The question I would pose is, "Valuable to whom?"
Again, judging that something has value requires there to be a "receiving consciousness." To say that the "barren world" becomes a "better place" requires someone to judge it to be "better."
The extent to which I will concede on the whole "uplift humanity" and "reduce inequality" points: A particular piece of art could be valuable to only one person (and this may explain a lot of what is generally perceived of as horrendous art, or perhaps art that is ahead of its time), but there must be at least that one person for it to be judged valuable, whether "intrinsically" or not. This goes back to "uplifting humanity starts with uplifting yourself thing." I guess this means I don't believe in "intrinsic value," not if "intrinsic" is defined (roughly) as "existing in a vacuum."
I'd also like to add that I hope that this particular professor (who worked at such a fine academic institution) was merely entertaining his thoughts on an interesting matter, and that these thoughts do not reflect his approach to academia. Because I think academia is useless unless it's applied to the people. Here, I wouldn't even concede the "one person" argument, simply because of the enormous amount of resources/opportunities (money, influence, etc) that is poured into academia.
Another thought: Theodore Roosevelt believed in human striving and achievement for the sake of national honor (see his essay "The Strenuous Life"). I agree with this only tenuously, and believe that reducing inequality is a (much) better goal to aspire to than national honor. I'd say that this would sort of be like spending a lot of time and money to build up a really impressive collection of baseball cards when meanwhile famines are starving people and violence is killing people. Sadly, this kind of paradoxical thing happens all the time.
Good stuff guys/girls. Thanks and keep it up!
-David
Going off of what Dave said...
ReplyDeleteIf you admit that contextless shakespeare has some objective value, then there can be (+/-) intrinsic worth attributed to everything (human-made or not). My point is that the significance of these things without some perspective may be pointless to talk about. In other words, whether or not a pipeline is good, depends on the relevance to the observer.
In the story, Manhattan ended up changing his mind about saving the human race because he realized the beauty that exists in the unlikeliness of human relationships. His understanding of the matter changed and so did his attitude towards human existence. Not for the sake of the oil pipelines, but for something he believed outweighed the bad parts of human life.
Back to the matter at hand, I see your point and I agree with you that Dr. Manhattan would, in fact, find beauty in something that existed without any context, like a work of art or the topography of mars. In this case, the fact that it was created by humans actually does matter and he can’t abstract himself by just looking at the intrinsic value. Who knows, if he were to stumble upon an oil pipeline that simply existed he may actually find it beautiful.
His change of beliefs about the importance of life shows that in relation to him, things have changed, i.e. context of things matters. You’re right that my analogy doesn’t really pertain to the (contextless) poems in a desert scenario, but I think you misunderstood my observation of Dr. Manhattan for a generalization.
This stuff is all over my head, but...
ReplyDeleteYou can also think about this as: Dr. Manhattan may perceive things exactly, if not very close, to what they actually are in the world. He can 'see' an atom and understand it, whatever that may mean. Using his particular perception, he does his best to approximate the right allocation of intrinsic values. When certain information changes his perception of reality, his approximation changes with it. Therefore, he still thinks about things in terms of intrinsic value, but he tries to adjust his model to be a better fit of what he believes the world to be.
This is the Dr. Manhattan that might find beauty in a contextless work of art...
Probably poorly explained, but something to think about. Sorry for hijacking the blog Dave.