In Memoriam Sister Wendy

Two days ago I spent some of my Boxing Day watching Sister Wendy art documentaries from the 90s, which have held up extremely well. (That's the thing about the public television sort of production values, which are never high: when the focus of the program is its content, rather than its medium, the content endures. Consider Julia Child, for example.) I was saddened to hear, later in the day, that she has died. In fact, I must have been watching one of her shows as she was dying, which would strike many people — though not a member of a religious order, I suspect — as a morbid thought.

If you've not encountered her documentaries, I recommend them highly. Sister Wendy is the best sort of person that the Christian tradition can produce: a genuinely humane person, in the truest sense of the word. The Christian life, even the consecrated religious life, should not be a retreat from the reality of lived human experience. I speak, frankly, of sex: Sister Wendy looked at it — and there is so much of it, in the history of art — with an honest and uncompromising eye. (Downplay or retreat from sex in art and you end up sublimating it like Gerard Manley Hopkins, writing quiveringly of bathing boys. Such art, wrought from curdled sexuality, makes me nauseous.) She was a keen observer, and not afraid to look things square in the face.

I'll refer you to an essay she wrote, "The Art of Looking at Art".

And here is one of my favorite Sister Wendy bits, from her Story of Painting:

Japonisme

Like many renters, I have extravagant dreams of future home-ownership. There will be a library with lots of cherry-wood bookcases, and a sun room, and many bedrooms of various themes. Among them, I am convinced that one must be a "Nipponese Room", with bamboo floors and ukiyo-e prints and, prominently, posters of The Mikado and Madama Butterfly, two of my favorite things. I suppose there are several theses to be written about the influence of Japanese art and music on that of fin de siècle Europe. What interests me is not how accurately European artists translated Japanese forms, but rather how they idealized them. Japonisme tells us next to nothing about Japan: it reveals far more about the Europeans who reveled in it, dreaming of an exotic, venerable, ancient courtly culture quite removed from a Europe with its ethnic strife and dark satanic mills. (It requires a special sort of stupidity to think The Mikado is racist. The operetta is all terribly English.)

Here I shall mention that my absolute favorite recording of Madama Butterfly is the 1966 one directed by Barbirolli, with Renata Scotto in the title rôle. Aside from one clarinet lick that is almost comically off, I find the recording to be nearly perfect. And, fortunately, it has been remastered for posterity.

I will add, as well, that one of my favorite movies is Topsy-Turvy, which, besides being about the making of The Mikado, is one of the best depictions of the artistic process that I have seen on film.

If there is anything in actual Japanese culture that attracts me, it is perhaps the country's apparent obsession with cats, both in this modern age of the internets and in ages past. I should like to see, were I in New York, the current exhibition of cats in Japanese prints of the 17th-20th centuries.

Iconophilia

There is a tension inherent in the Christian tradition between the urge to glorify the Divine through art and the temptation for that same art to serve as a sort of substitute for the Divine. All too often we have put aesthetic concerns above truly spiritual ones. (Church musicians, I feel compelled to add, are far more susceptible to this sort of error, whatever our personal tastes.) Of course, the reason this mistake is so commonly made is because aesthetic experience is so easily mistaken for spiritual experience. It is the natural impulse of the artist to create beautiful things, and these beautiful things can effect a sort of transcendence within us. The problem begins when this aesthetic transcendence is mistaken for that different sort of transcendence which is truly spiritual.

Paul, preaching in Athens, touches upon this point:

For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.

(That's Acts 17:28-29 (NRSV). Paul is quoting Epimenides's Cretica — which he cites also in his letter to Titus — and Aratus's Phaenomena; we see already the appropriation of Greek pagan imagery and language for the Christian God.)

As early as Paul, then, we see the impulse for iconoclasm, the reluctance to make physical objects that might take God's rightful place in the center of worship. (Indeed, this impulse is far older than Paul, dating back at least to those graven images Moses warned us against.) The easiest way to avoid the pitfall of worshipping the aesthetically beautiful is to destroy it. This explains why some Byzantines broke their icons and why Calvinists dismantled pipe organs.

But orthodox thought, in both the East and West, came to the conclusion that images aren't so bad: after all, God created the physical world and pronounced it good (whatever the Gnostics might tell you), and thought it so good that He took physical form. If Divinity itself might assume our mortal flesh, who's to say that we cannot appreciate the visible as signifier for the (invisible) Divine? Music, too, can remind us of the beauty of God.

The problem, of course, is when we forget that there is anything beyond mere art. This happens when we make the concert hall our temple, or — if we're at least so correct as to know what a proper temple is — when we put the quality of the Offertory anthem above the quality of our service to the poor. Both are offerings, of course: the sacrifice of praise is no less fitting than the succour of the needy. Both should proceed in equal measure from the well-formed soul. For further thoughts on "Art and the Motion of the Soul", I'll refer you to Peters.

Organists: Consider the Seamstress

Kierkegaard, in one paragraph, makes a convincing case for the proper production and understanding of all sacred art:

When a woman makes an altar cloth, so far as she is able, she makes every flower as lovely as the graceful flowers of the field, as far as she is able, every star as sparkling as the glistening stars of the night. She withholds nothing, but uses the most precious things she possesses. She sells off every other claim upon her life that she may purchase the most uninterrupted and favorable time of the day and night for her one and only, for her beloved work. But when the cloth is finished and put to its sacred use: then she is deeply distressed if someone should make the mistake of looking at her art, instead of at the meaning of the cloth; or make the mistake of looking at a defect, instead of at the meaning of the cloth. For she could not work the sacred meaning into the cloth itself, nor could she sew it on the cloth as though it were one more ornament. This meaning really lies in the beholder and in the beholder’s understanding, if he, in the endless distance of the separation, above himself and above his own self, has completely forgotten the needlewoman and what was hers to do. It was allowable, it was proper, it was duty, it was a precious duty, it was the highest happiness of all for the needlewoman to do everything in order to accomplish what was hers to do; but it was a trespass against God, an insulting misunderstanding of the poor needle-woman, when someone looked wrongly and saw what was only there, not to attract attention to itself, but rather so that its omission would not distract by drawing attention to itself.

— Preface to Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, trans. Douglas V. Steere

The Adoration of the Magi

We are defined by, more than anything else, our desires: both the fulfilled ones and the thwarted ones, I think. Once a man has it in his head that he wants something, this desire begins to shape him. Ambition, or lust, or greed, eventually become engraved on a man's face, as do the more admirable, less common, desires. One need only to consider the sorts of things people want nowadays to begin to understand why the world is an imperfect place (and getting worse, one will note).

This is all just a roundabout way of coming to the point I was going to make when I started writing. When I was in Prague, I visited — as all tourists to that city must — Prague Castle. The most impressive part of that very large complex is probably St. Vitus's Cathedral, which is as fine an example of Gothic architecture as you'll find anywhere in Mitteleuropa. My favorite memory of the castle, however, comes from the considerably smaller Basilica of St. George, which is basically Romanesque (albeit with some Gothic and, regrettably, Baroque elements. I cannot understand why anyone would deface the simple purity of a Romanesque interior with the gaudy showiness of a Baroque façade). In one of the side aisles (to the south of the nave, if my memory serves), there is a medieval carved (wooden?) relief depicting the adoration of the Magi: I say without hesitation that this was my favorite work of art that I saw in Prague. I did not take a picture of it — I find tourists taking pictures in church to be irritating enough that I did not dare do so myself — but here is the best picture of it that I could find on the internet:


Of the six figures, three are unexceptional: the two wise-men in the background, and St. Joseph (who always seems to get a rather raw deal in such depictions. Here he looks rather disinterested. It's not his son, anyway, after all). But the three central figures are remarkable. The Theotokos sits with the Christ-child on her lap, looking rather guarded: who is this foreigner come to gawk at her son? Most striking is the third wise-man, who has taken off his crown. (Why are the Magi supposed to've been kings? Oh well; no matter.) His expression — which you can't see so well in this particular photograph — is of undisguised wonder: here, here, offering his hands in a childlike gesture of blessing, is the desire of the man's heart. The carving has captured a moment of transcendence: the union of the soul with the soul's creator. What else is there to say about the Christian life, save that we ought to seek Christ with such fervor? Would that all sacred art served as such good catechesis...

"Moral Luck"?

I'm not a regular reader of The New Yorker, but if I happen upon it (i.e., if I find it unused in the common kitchen area of the house), I'll give it a look-see. In an article on Van Gogh, there's a digression on Gauguin—who, like Wagner, happened to be a generally terrible man who made extraordinary art.

[Bernard] Williams points out that Gauguin's is a prime real-life case where doing the wrong thing—abandoning your wife and children and betraying your friends—appears to be morally justifiable, since the art made was, as it happened, great. Moral assessment, Williams suggests, has a strong component of sheer contingency and chance. You run a red light and no one notices; I run a red light and hit an old lady and I'm the worst guy in the world.
...
Gauguin is the original of the type, of whom Picasso is the most famous realization, of the artist as gambler—the solitary risk-taker, indifferent to anyone's welfare but his own and therefore capable of acts of independence and originality unknown to timid, orderly, nice people, acts that thrill and inspire new acts a century later. It is the goal of that kind of modern artist to run the red light and hit the old ladies—the old ladies of custom and convention. Where art since the Renaissance had attempted to limit luck in a system of inherited purpose and patterns, modern art demands that you press the pedal as hard as you can, and pray.

So that's what's wrong with modern art: the urge to upset people enough to be remembered for it by future generations, and the rejection of "inherited purpose". The great myth of modern art (of modern man, come to think of it) is that the artist is an autonomous individual whose actions, however abhorrent, may be justified by the acclaim of people unknown, or unborn.

It is far to easy for me to sit back in my armchair and complain, though. Let me talk of something I may be a bit more qualified to discuss: music. We see the same type among composers, as well: Wagner, Schoenberg, perhaps even Mahler(?!). But the world would be a far worse place without the music of these men. (For those uncertain about Schoenberg, I suggest you try his Gurrelieder, or Verklärte Nacht. Gorgeous pieces.) Would their great art have been possible if these men had not been egotistical bastards? I don't know.

The Figge

Yesterday I visited the Figge, in Davenport. It's really quite a nice collection, certainly far better than I was expecting in a metropolitan area as small as the Quad Cities. There's a Dürer, and a Brueghel (the Elder). And the Mexican Baroque collection is very fine indeed.

Still, I have not yet come to an understanding about abstract art. There is a logic implicit in representative art: viz., its purpose is to portray its subject. When this telos is abandoned, we're left only with what the art makes us feel. (That's not to say representational art shouldn't make us feel things; indeed, it should. When it doesn't, it isn't art.) There's some abstract art I like very much; there's some I find to be quite without a point. The problem is that I have no reasonable gauge for thinking so, now, do I? I suppose all art can be appreciated to the extent that it takes some skill to create, but then we're left with the difficulty of appraising those works that neither represent anything nor demonstrate any sort of skill. Maybe a red circle on a white canvas makes you feel something; maybe it means nothing at all to me. But you'll have to explain the justification for paying thousands of dollars for it. Abstract art—even the good stuff—has led us into the thickets of subjectivity. This may not be a bad thing, but it is certainly not a comforting thing. Perhaps that is the point.

The Art of Art Snobbery

(Written 2005)

Depending on what circles you travel in, it is quite possible (indeed, likely) to come across someone who claims to know something about art. To engage such a person in discussion (at a party, for example) can prove difficult, at best; for one thing, they always seem to direct the conversation towards their area of expertise, using far too many French words. Three minutes into the chat you've lost any sense of direction and have begun to inch backwards towards the door, which you may or may not reach before collapsing in a frustrated stupor. And that would seem to ruin the whole party experience, wouldn't it? But this need not always occur: one can turn the tables. With a little practice, anyone can make art an impenetrable fog, incomprehensible to the listener.

Certainly the most important factor in becoming an art snob is attaining the vocabulary to sound impressive. Key words include many '-isms', such as modernism, impressionism, expressionism, regionalism, neoclassicism, fauvism, deconstructionism, revivalism, dadaism, surrealism, and others. Put a 'post' in front of one, if possible. Then, insert an adjective—the longer, the better: Kafkaesque, metacritical, Aristotelian, übermenschian, etc. Finish by adding a 'reminiscent of...' a foreign phrase: Die Neue Sachlichkeit, La Belle Epoque, Kamchatka. Feel free to make up appropriate-sounding words. Such phrases are even more bewildering when applied together—compare these two sentences:

1. "I really like how the artist paints that fruit."
2. "The artist's verdant, luxuriant painting, while continuing the pastoral dichotomy of past works, admirably captures the subversive hermeneutics of desire, embodying a subaltern pathos of duplicity and dialectic into a polysemous weave of interleaved multitextuality that fitfully illuminates a life's work spent dancing on a metacritical pin."
For maximum effect, use adjectives that have no relation whatsoever to art, for good measure: arsenious, lugubrious, schadenfreudeian, agrarian, diaphanous, esophageal, etc. Your unfortunate listener will be unable to do anything but nod and smile weakly.

Though it may prove impossible to constantly evaluate specific art works or artists, the snob must relate everything to at least an art topic. Name-drop—the more obscure, the better: "Why, just yesterday I was eating lunch with Hans Namuth. The Hans Namuth. And he was telling me about his Vin d'Anges with Andreas Becker—can you believe it? What? You haven't heard of Andreas Becker? Or Hans Namuth?" If the person listening hasn't heard of the person referenced, cultivate an appropriate sneer, saying, "Well, you certainly don't get around much, do you?" Remember to place the spoken emphasis in the oddest of places. Then continue: "As I was saying, he had ordered the minestrone, and I said..."

Wardrobe, too, constitutes a vital part of the development of the "art snob" mystique. If possible, grow a goatee, regardless of your gender. Wear a turtleneck, preferably with a snazzy jacket. (Taste—at least what other uncultured plebeians consider 'taste'—isn't really an issue. Actually, you'd do better to dress as ostentatiously as possible.) Then there are the glasses: whether or not one has a vision problem, tinted glasses are absolutely essential. Favorite colors include rose pink, olive green, maroon, or lavender. One's clothing should be eclectic, yet refined.

The most difficult part of feigning knowledge about art is truly a test of craftiness: conversing with someone who actually does know something about art. Such a person may be a college art professor (though many of these also prove fraudulent, fortunately), or a curator. Now, chances are the person will prove just as fake as most snobs, but there may be the slight chance that they aren't. Drop a phrase or two on them, perhaps with a reference thrown in for good measure. Note their reaction—do they stare rather blankly, glassy-eyed? Or has such a comment, heaven forbid, engaged them? Do they seem puzzled? Perhaps they suspect that anyone who would say such a thing knows nothing whatsoever about art. Now is the time to abort. The easiest way to do this consists of excusing oneself to go to the restroom. Make it clear: you absolutely have to use the restroom. Don't allow the individual to continue talking, lest they discover your deception. Walk away slowly, maintaining a slow, easy pace—any sign of nervousness and the jig is up. Once out of the room, leave. Don't come back to get a coat left behind. It's not worth it. If the bathroom door is actually in sight, your problem is more severe: escape through the window may be the only solution. Afterwards, make a conscious effort to avoid the individual at all future parties.

Once one is able to pass this test, however, art snobbery can prove to be both enjoyable and profitable. Have fun with it. Make up convincing-sounding words. Use a watch to time how long it takes for someone to get lost in the depths of art jargon. Practice a suitably upsetting sneer. The art historian Erwin Panofsky once said, "he who teaches innocent people to understand art without bothering about classical languages, boresome historical methods and dusty old documents, deprives naïveté of its charm without correcting its errors." But why even bother trying to understand art, when one can so easily pretend to be an expert?