A piece I wrote recently on art

[cali]

What do you want from art?

And I mean the full spectrum of art. take your pick. I want the same thing from any form of art- whether it be a stone wall or piece of literature, a movie, a cartoon, a tv show, dance, photography.....

I want it to move me. I don't mean emotionally necessarily. More like shift my perspective somehow- make me see or hear or feel from another place; no, not necessarily the artist's perspective.

I've had the experience of initially being irritated by a piece of art that over time, I came to love.

I was at the Hirshhorn Museum some years ago and saw a major exhibit by an artist named Wolfgang Laib. The exhibit contained a lot of his installations, The one that I recall irritating me particularly was one of his "milkstones". I'll let wikipedia take it for a moment:

He made the first of his milkstones in 1975. They consist of a rectangular piece of polished white marble. The top surface of which is sanded to create a slight and almost unnoticeable depression. Laib then fills this depression with milk, creating the illusion of a solid object. While the artist makes the initial pour, it is the responsibility of the gallery, museum, or collector to empty, clean, and refill the marble on a daily basis while the work is on display.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Laib

But irritation can be significant and can actually indicate quite a bit about the viewer. I couldn't stop looking at this piece of milk/marble; at the fluid interaction between, well, fluid and stone, how it was almost imperceptible in the stillness of the room, that there was a liquid held in tension on the marble.

So I guess I don't hew to the "I know what I like" school of looking/listening. I'm willing to question my own reaction to art.

Laib also works with beeswax and pollen a lot; creating sort of anti-Tibetan sand mandalas. Tibetan sand mandalas- at least the ones I've seen- are all very intricate and include a rainbow of colors. The pollen creations of Laib's that I saw at the Hirshhorn, were large, bright yellow, in squares and rectangles with blurred edges. One color. No intricate design. And yet they reminded me of sand mandalas in their deliberate impermanence. At the same time they reminded me of some of Mark Rothko's paintings; particularly an untitled yellow study. Not bad company at all.

Make me look. Make me listen. Make me think.

We get so used to perceiving in certain patterns- the rutted, well worn neural pathways in our brains. When I was a kid, I called it "the second story syndrome". I was about 11 or 12 and I was walking through the town in CT that we'd moved to a couple of years prior.and I suddenly noticed that I no longer noticed the second stories of the building in the small town. I'd grown so used to them, and I was distracted by what was in store windows, people on the streets, etc. Not seeing the woods....

Lazy brain. Magpie, distractable brain.

In any case, back to art. I don't mean that the person experiencing art, shouldn't be discerning. Of course, there's art that doesn't interest me, doesn't resonate. That's fine. We all experience things through our own filters. It's just about keeping those filters as unsmudged as possible.

I'm willing, at least with literature, to keep trying and trying. I have, for example, yet to fall in love with Moby- Dick. I've tried, and I'll try again, not because it's so iconic, but because people I know and whose opinion on such things I respect, have such affection for that novel.

What about absolutely loathing a work of art? I saw David Mamet's play Oleanna in London a long time ago and I really disliked it. It actually pissed me off. But I remember it. It evoked a strong emotion. Disliking art is not the same thing as being indifferent. Given the chance, I'd give it another shot.

There are so-labelled Outsider artists, or naive or primitive artists, if you will. Folks who create work and who are often largely untrained. I think of myself as an outsider art appreciator in the sense that I have no training in art appreciation or music appreciation or acting or film or or or.

Still, make me look. And then, make me see something..... differently.

[Brainstormy]

1. Very well-written and interesting op

and I couldn't agree more. My demand for literature is that it leave me changed in some way. Wiser, more empathic, perhaps, but yes, even pissed off will do. There's no question that our own training, education and enlarged experiences can make us more receptive to art, but indifference, not hate or irritation, is the only failure. And, zzzzzzzzzzz, I've yet to fall in love with Moby Dick myself. But on that one, I'm through trying.

[cali]

2. thanks. and I wish I'd give up on Moby

[Brainstormy]

3. There was a time when I took a perverse pride

in being, I imagined, the only person in history to have been granted a doctorate in literature without having read Moby Dick. I didn't really need to read it. We were saturated in the white whale lore in grad school. I'd seen the movie (dull), and there was always Cliff Notes. I finally read it, almost, in a book club which had committed to the 100 Greatest Novels. It didn't work for me. Still doesn't. Nor does Lord Jim, or a number of other "Greats." I'm still embarrassed. But--something your piece touched on--we do deserve to grant ourselves some personal discrimination when it comes to art, with or without training. And there's the matter of time. Do I spend it revisiting the art that initially failed to touch me in the hope that my more enlightened self will, finally, "get" it, or do I spend it on what I know is likely to move me or give me pleasure? The answer, I guess, is both. That balance thing. Don't you hate it?

[cali]

4. I find that sort of.... delightful

What does work for you in the way of novels?

What novels do you love?

[Brainstormy]

5. I cut my teeth

on Victorian lit. The moody stuff. I devoured Hardy and he's still a favorite, yet I was nearly drummed out of school for saying that I thought Jane Austen, if she were alive today, would be writing for the Soaps. I can't stand the novels of manners that are such a part of that period. I went through all the modern American masters. Updike, Roth, Mailer, Bellow, Vonnegut, Cheever, etc., and still read them. I've always been in awe of Graham Greene, Wallace Stegner, Margaret Atwood. So many! I check in on one of the bestsellers from time to time but I'm usually disappointed. Just pushed my way through The Goldfinch based on Stephen King's praise, but it was a slog. My favorite contemporary author is Barbara Kingsolver, hands down. I read most everything but crime, vampires, zombies.

How about you?

[cali]

6. Interesting. I love Austen and I believe you're wrong- though for sure I wouldn't

drum you out of anywhere for holding that position. She was a miniaturist. Do You know the Elizabethan miniaturist portrait painter Nicholas Hilliard? Her work reminds me of his- sly and yet not unkind, perceptive but not a know it all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Hilliard

I too like Stegner very much. He summered down the road from where I live- nearly drummed out after publishing some of the novels he set there. I've been meaning to read the Goldfinch, but I think now I'll put it off.

I love EM Forsters novels as well as his essays- particularly the back and forth he did with Bertrand Russell- What I Believe.