The average American experience is clamorous and image soaked, with mass production and digital media acting as the chief agents of saturation. In this newly digitized society, the screen has become a major player. Televisions jockey for ocular attention at bars as well as dentists’ offices while the Internet is readily available at any and all times (thanks to the Blackberry & its counterparts). Walking the streets of Center City Philadelphia, it is nearly impossible to meet the gaze of one’s fellow (wo)man, as most heads are tilted down in electronic concentration. How has this over-reliance on visual perception coupled with the digitization and multiplication of imagery affected our corporeal experience? It is my feeling that our relationship to the physical world as well as two-dimensional art has been greatly compromised in the sacrifice of the visceral to the LCD gods.
LG- Girl on the Left
RG- Girl on the Right
It is blush inducing to admit that it was only just one year ago that I came to this shocking state of awareness, horrifying in its simplicity. This discovery arrived in the form of a Renoir or, more specifically, his depiction of a dress. In the few moments before the museum closed, I stood basking in the blushing cheeks of Two Girls. They are seated in chairs set outside, in what appears to be a field. Because the composition is cropped fairly close around them it is hard to officially discern what sort of activity engages them. The girl on the left (LG) is looking straight out in front of her. Most of her back is to us though the composition is angled as such that we can see a portion of her left side as well as her cheek and the curve of her eyelashes. The girl on the right (RG) is turned toward LG; as a result her face is also turned outward toward us though her vision is not directed at us. She is dressed in a bluish black while her companion is more lightly attired in a yellowish-pink pastel. RG’s eyes are deep, wet violet and she looks somewhat forlorn; there’s a weight on those smallish shoulders. Why so sad? The day is bright and the two girls are seem to be caught in an act of leisure, though their mode of dress is a bit constricting and formal.
Up to this point, my attention as a viewer had been directed exclusively towards the second dimension until a small three-dimensional “fold” in LG’s dress pulled me out into my own fleshy reality as well as Renoir’s. One small swab danced out from the composition to declare “Hey! I’m paint!” In that instant the dual reality of Two Girls’ existence became abundantly clear. This painting exists as both representation and object. Through Two Girls we are exposed to three moments/cycles of time:
1. A sunny day, if not multiple days, in a field with two fresh faced girls.
2. A year’s worth of physical labor on the behalf of Renoir, which may or may not have occurred on site, in the field.
3. The painting’s existence from completion to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
All of these lifecycles carry informational tools essential to the enrichment of artistic and humanistic experience. In this object we are given access to many hands and lives, but only if we are able to perceive it as just that: a physical object. Though Two Girls is plenty beautiful and interesting, we lose much by regarding it as composition alone.
As a painter, it feels as though my world has been rocked, my artistic reality shifted by the revelation of a simple card trick. His handling of the paint speaks to both a love of the act of painting as well as tenderness towards his subjects. The flowers atop LG’s hat burst as the fold of her dress does. There is an excitement about the application of pigment to which I can surely relate. Renoir and I share a love for the action. However, these formal flourishes do not detract from Two Girls’ representational function. LG and RG are not beside the point. As painting is an activity I likewise relish, I am quite familiar with that gray area between action and representation. How could it be that the sheer magnitude of this gray area (between image and object) has only recently emerged in my conscious?
As earlier stated, I believe digitization, mass production, multiplication and screens have all played alternate roles of importance in this sensory imbalance and confusion. While rummaging around on the third floor of my apartment, I found a stack of my housemate’s photographs. The images elicit memories spanning from adolescence on up to adulthood, middle school to college. Hair went from brunette to blonde back to brunette while noses were pieced and plain once more. The photo’s themselves were caked in plaster, an obvious result of being stored with art supplies.
Though a photograph is a flat representational window, it is the product of a number of physical reactions and processes. A button is pressed on a cool autumn day, light hits gelatin and burns an imprint onto a strip of film. The roll is then brought to one’s standard photo-mat of choice in order to be processed, perhaps by a tired teenager, only to be excitedly reclaimed days later. The photos themselves then travel from place to place, apartment to apartment, shoebox to shoebox. That photo has a history and life beyond the one it documents. At this point in time, digital photography has almost fully replaced film-based photography in recreational usage. Whole albums have come to exist completely on the computer, in virtual folders and assemblages. They are easily posted online, to be tagged and accessed by others thanks to social networking sites. The Internet is flush with personal imagery. In this format, it is more and more difficult to discern the difference between one photograph and the next. If you’ve seen one girl in a fedora vamping for the camera, it feels as though you’ve seen them all.
Mass production and multiplicity throw individuality and specificity right out the window. Yes, the girl with the fedora is a particular girl in a particular fedora. Perhaps she cries at sad movies and is allergic to strawberries. Perhaps her fedora is soft and velvety. Perhaps it was her father’s and that’s why she wears it. Mass production of both objects and imagery washes those particulars clean in such a way that we cease to wonder what they are and where they went. Human hands are seemingly removed from our objects. A chair from Ikea may seem quite neutral, free from human touch; it is actually the product of numerous human-made systems. From design (conception) to delivery, that chair passes through many human hands and minds. However, automation wipes these crucial individuals clear from our minds.
For a potter produces his forms by placing his hands and fingers in particular positions to make clay shapes. And when we are able to find these positions with our own fingers a pot can spring to life in an extraordinary fashion. With more standardized and repetitive ceramics these positions may be rather stereotyped; with mechanization they don’t exist at all. (Rawson, 20)
The generic make-up of an Ikea chair likewise prevents us from making a specific relationship with it. You’ve sat in one you’ve sat in them all.
Finally, computers and the Internet combine to create a rift between our consciousness and our bodies. Like a disembodied eye, we go forth and ferret. Though hands are crucial in the act of surfing great swells of information they swing on mechanically, as an afterthought. Chairs hold aching buttocks, backs curl in a rictus-producing hunch while minds expand under the expanse of overabundant KNOWLEDGE. Corporeal existence is almost forgotten in this act of acquirement. “Car-bodies, stainless steel gadgetry and especially television images all conspire, by a sort of sensuous castration to destroy for us the whole realm of touch experience.” (Rawson, 19/20) I believe Philip Rawson’s statement is easily applied to the computer. It is there that I may travel to Hawaii without ever having to, as if the computer could fully translate that experience.
It is not that the procurement of online information is completely evil; it is both beautiful and wondrous how many doors the Internet has been able to open. Access to knowledge has always been a class issue and the Internet has the power to level the playing field. That being said, it is worth analyzing its affect on sensory perception. It is also worth pointing out that for every nugget of genius, the Internet has 10 nuggets of garbage. The garbage combined with the “need for speed” and immediacy in this cultural moment does not foster intelligence. What it does foster is the concept that a little bit of information is enough. As with the Hawaii example, for all the digital images (both mobile and static) I’ve seen in my life, I do gain a vague sense of familiarity that masquerades as concrete experience. A friend told me recently that he loves, Loves Kandinsky but had recently realized he’d never seen one of his favorite paintings in person. When he was finally given the chance, he felt a disappointed air of ruination and he got grumpy. He left the museum disillusioned.
As this friend of mine just so happens to be a bit of a curmudgeon, I can’t help but feeling that had he spent a bit more time with the actual Kandinsky, something may have come forward, an element misplaced in multiplication and reproduction. Or maybe whatever Kandinsky had to offer my friend did not exist in the physical realm at all. It is possible that in this case the painting had little to offer that particular fellow in that particular moment. I would argue that since the object begs a consideration of physical process and production, a live-read has much to offer. It’s simply up to the viewer to enter into a dialog with the object as object. Though Rawson focuses his attention upon three-dimensional objects, I don’t think his points have to be limited to them. Touch is very much a part of looking at a Renoir. Apparent brush marks bring his arm back to life, alive in the mind of the viewer. This affect is not easily achieved via Google images.
I do not blame digital media as the sole dictator, holding court over my senses and my artistic consciousness. If I want to know something, but go no further than Wikipedia or the first website I find, the Internet is not to blame but myself. The choice is up to me. I must decide how far I wish to go in order to gather the richness of artistic experience. However, I do think it [digital media] has had a robotic hand in my development, not fully realized until a warm summer afternoon in a quiet museum.
Bibliography:
Rawson, Philip. Ceramics. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1984. Copy.
#2
As MFA students, we ferret and forage. Tromping in great clusters through gallery and museum alike, we hungrily search for meaning, beauty and sublime transcendence, damn it! In this way, it is easy to overlook the richness to be had on our own front porch; we are so fervent in our exploration. Quietly hanging on the north wall of Rosenwald-Wolf, a mysteriously untitled painting awaits its much-deserved glory. It shall wait no more.
The title card simply reads “Teresa Palmer, Third Year.” This nameless painting is just one part of This is Complicated, a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants curatorial endeavor at the University of the Arts. Purportedly, pieces were chosen on a Wednesday, installed on a Thursday, and surrounded by wine, cheese and judgment on a Friday.
For all its spontaneity, the show has served one important purpose: to bring graduate art out of the private quarters of the artists’ studio into the world, prime for public consumption. And consume I have. Palmer’s surfaces are luxuriant; they drip with sumptuous glazes and pigments. Her handle on color is breathtaking, whispers of orange interplay with great swathes of viridian. Not a single pigment has been muddied in Palmer’s practice; her grays are the product of careful consideration. Though Nameless* could exist as a purely formal feast for the color hungry eye, there is much more to the work than simple ocular penny-candy.
Within Nameless’ borders, a strange present has been created. Palmer’s painted world breathes. Though her chosen pockets of definition are still somewhat ambiguous, color generates a potent tenor. The sky feels threatening; dark trees are silhouetted against its tranquil purplish-menace. Two female figures exist in the foreground, positioned in front of a greenish architectural space. The space is open and well lit. The angling of the structure is almost reminiscent of Hopper’s Nighthawks’, though the tenor is quite disparate.
The figure on the left (LF) stands, while the figure on the right (RF) appears to be seated. LF’s face is a space of modulating, flat warm grays. On the right edge of this facial field lay a few careful swathes of brownish pink. Palmer’s delicacy has allowed these marks to exist both as “face” and “mark”, representation and abstraction. The woman stands with weight but is also somewhat form-less. Her knee is a burst of orange red that almost fades into a warm gray field making up the floor.
While LF is turned at a sort of three-quarter profile (she looks out toward the right), RF looks outward and down. Her body is curled and turned toward the second figure. RF’s pallor is composed of pinks and purples rather than the warm grays and oranges of her counterpart. One of her arms is bent out and around, as if she is holding something; a swirl of brown is met by chunks of pink and white. Her face is somewhat more defined but her eyes are warm, dark holes. The little definition Palmer has included creates an air of uncertainty and pain about RF.
After a long close inspection, Nameless feels both definite and dubious. Forms are found through scrapes and drags; from chaos this semi-serene nocturnal-space finds structure. A strange and ambiguous narrative exists somewhere between Nameless’ borders. Palmer’s pockets of definition seem purposeful, but by no means controlling, points of departure. The power of interpretation seems to have been firmly bestowed upon the viewer. LF stands as if attention, ready for orders while RF shrinks and shrugs into a loose ball. She too acts as a receptacle for meaning.
At first visual stab, the full weight of this dominion feels slightly uncomfortable. Confusion is not a fair exchange for pedantry. However, after all intellectual performance anxieties have calmly subsided, Nameless is given a chance to fully appear. This manifestation of meaning is in no way static. Just as you feel as though you have a handle on the piece, something changes and falls away. RF and LF are fleshy ghosts; they are both inhabitants of space and wandering wraiths without residence. There is very little interpersonal or environmental communication. Though RF sits, her interaction with the entire space is minimal. What is created is potent atmosphere of isolation and physical alienation, not unfamiliar terrain in this digitized age of mechanization.
Where does Palmer stand in this psycho-emotional haze? Perhaps Palmer is commenting on the weakness oft assigned the female sex. One could draw meaning from the neutrality of LF’s color structure played against RF’s more traditionally feminine coloration. She, the more feminine female figure, seems feeble compared to the strength of LF’s stance. LF’s hair is back while RF’s hangs down about her bare shoulders. Cultural mores and rules regarding femininity frequently involve hair. The figures exist in a seemingly domestic space. Domestic space, in turn, reads as feminine space, though the sharp angularity of the structure could be construed as strictly masculine according to a system of stereotypical gender binaries.
These inferences of signification, while interesting, do not come any closer to an effective solidification of Nameless’ contents and meaning. In this case especially, a concerted effort to substantiate intentionality would be an exercise in self-limitation. To simply dissect and classify Nameless’ more definite parts is not the best way to get at this work’s meaning, as there are many meanings and experiences to be plumbed from Palmer’s painterly depths. Nameless’ refusal to be pinned down, between materiality and meaning, specificity and ambiguity, makes for a rich viewing experience, one that demands re-visitation.
And that’s a good thing.
***Go, see the painting and if you still don’t agree—I’ll eat my hat. Tell ‘em Jessie sent you*** #3
Start of paper:
In a darkened sky punctuated by illuminated tufts of clouds, the hazily obstructed light of the moon softly grazes a single sail. Extending from the mast of a lonely seafaring vessel, the resilient cloth is taught and wind-filled. It is curved dutifully in a course presumably set towards the other side of a rocky bluff. Two figures emerge from the shadows a few hundred feet up the beach, just left of where I stand. The same soft lunar light smoothes a yellowish landing strip stretching hazily from the frothy waterfront right up to the tips of my toes. However, were I to feel the sharp and grainy squish of sand between my toes at this particular moment, I’d be much disturbed. It is linoleum upon which my rubber-soled feet (squeakily) rest and pristine walls surround me, not a blanket of stars. This ghostly beachfront does not extend beyond its angular gilt captor.
How is the viewer to reconcile his/her temporal experience of that which occurs betwixt ridiculously ornate frames with the reality beyond fancy rectangles (white walls, hushed tones) all within a single moment: a single confused “present”? Such is a confusion oft produced by simultaneity.
RS: Rocky Seashore
ST: Spatialized Time
LT: Life-Time
Since this beachfront scene (Rocky Seashore) is naught but a succession of marks laid upon taught canvas in 1876 by a fellow named Ivan Konstantinovitsch, shouldn’t the guard telling my boyfriend to shut off his cellphone be more “present”, “real” and “now”? Can the two presents be equal when one is obviously past? This line of questioning is limited by its linearity, it employs what Soren Kierkegaard called a “spatialized”* understanding of time: a sort of temporal understanding and measurement he found much lacking. In its stead, Kierkegaard has provided a more self-centric understanding of time (“life-time”), a solution to this problematic Aristotlean construct. It is this theory of tensed time and measurement that has much to offer the average museum-attendee; the application of which is a definite act of expansion.
Before moving forward with an explanation and application of Kierkegaard’s theory, it is essential that I provide a couple of clarifications. Firstly, much of my own understanding of both “spatialized time” and “life-time” is firmly entrenched in Mark C. Taylor’s “Time’s Struggle with Space: Kierkegaard’s Understanding of Temporality.” This work has proved to be a crucial reference point. Though Taylor’s article is thick with direct passages from both Aristotle and Kierkegaard, the level of understanding I have achieved has undoubtedly been influenced by Taylor. Though I will continue to refer to Aristotle and Kierkegaard directly, the reader should be forewarned of Taylor’s indispensable role. As my intention is not to prove or disprove Kierkegaard’s theory, this divulgence should not prove utterly devastating. Secondly, if “Aristotle’s discussion of time [has] remained decisive” (Taylor, 312), why should Kierkegaard’s LT prove more pertinent to my analytic endeavors? Aristotle’s name is well marked in the annals of time (capped with an “A”, set atop a well-smoothed marble pedestal). I’d imagine his theories have survived for a reason. What could Kierkegaard possibly have found insufficient in Aristotle’s version of temporality?
ST is the measurement of an object’s movement through space. These movements can be viewed as a progression of points along a single line. The line of time (upon which the object moves) is composed of an “infinite number of points,” each point acts as a “successive present[s] differentiating past from future”(Taylor, 315). There is no overlap between the tenses of time, the “boundaries remain well defined” (Taylor, 315). According to Taylor, one of Kierkegaard’s primary difficulties with Aristotle’s theory is that it does not allow for human perception and consciousness. ST is applied “universally and irrespective of…character” (Taylor, 315). A human, a bar of soap, and a painting are all treated identically. However, a bar of soap has no awareness of time whereas a human most certainly does. Within human perception, the past and future can exist (in some form) in a simultaneous moment of “present”/”now”. Taylor has included a passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions, which seconds Kierkegaard’s emotion.
All this I do in the huge court of my memory…I can take out pictures [mental] of things which have either happened to me or are believed on the basis of experience; I can myself weave them into the context of the past, and from them I can infer future actions, events, hopes, and then I can contemplate all these things as though they were in the present.
(Augustine, 218-9/ Taylor, 312)
The boundaries of Aristotle’s point based system are created by the spatialization and visualization of time. One cannot exist at two points at once just as one cannot exist in two places at the same time. With consciousness, overlap does occur. Perhaps Aristotle’s line of time would work more swimmingly in a world unconscious to time, because it is in awareness of ‘present’ that the problems of linearity occur. “As far as the non-human world is concerned, time remains a perpetual flux in which there is no differentiation between past present and future”(Taylor, 329). Tensed time “emerges only in connection to man’s purposeful activity”(Taylor, 329). The concept being offered here is that, though Aristotle’s theory does function, time measurement is a human tool and it would do well to allow for the inner workings human consciousness. What need has a panther for Aristotle, however objective his stance?
Though a painting is a conscious-less object, it is the projection of consciousness. A painting is perception made manifest, put forth to be perceived. The object itself is a conflation of multiple points of time into an objectified whole. Multiple hours of “studio-time,” sittings and whatnot, are condensed and received as one. Post-completion, it moves from wall to wall, from cozy and private to stark, cold and public. The object then moves through minds. There is no allotting for this experience with ST. It is because the art object is so linked to human perception that Kierkegaard’s LT is far more applicable to the temporal experience of art.
Kierkegaard’s structure for tensed time is fully derived from the “lives of the selves” (Taylor, 318). It is born from the temporal interplay of man as object (matter) and man as subject (consciousness). One is finite and limited while the other feels limitless by way of imagination. Selfhood is not a simplistic entity; it is an intricate system (Taylor, 319); a vessel of duality. Within the self, the finite is put in relation to the infinite, as is possibility and actuality. Selfhood creates the relationship; the pairing is a synthesis.
Finitude of self is comprised of the concrete elements that compose one’s situation; it is the place “from which the self must proceed” (Taylor, 322). Meanwhile infinitude of self is, in part, the “capacity of the individual (historically situated) to imagine alternate courses of action” (Taylor, 322). It is his/her ability “to entertain different possibilities” (Taylor, 322). Actuality and possibility are essential to a human comprehension of the finite and the infinite. The actuality of one’s “historical position,” will affect the amount of seemingly infinite possibilities a creature of finitude is able to comprehend. The self is free, but only so free as one’s position allows.
This system of self and synthesis has close ties with the construction of (measured) time. Temporality is put in relation to its twin (eternity) within the “self system”, though it is not the self that synthesizes these factors. According to Kierkegaard these dual elements are mated and processed inside of “Oieblikket”. Unfortunately much is lost in translation (as Taylor is so good to acknowledge); this can have a grave effect upon writings of a philosophical nature. That being said, the Danish word “Oieblikket” loosely translates to “the moment” or “the instant”. A concept of the “present” is a mixture of these two syntheses: self and Oieblikket; it is the inter-play of the possible and the actual inside an instant. To put it simplistically, the present “is the moment of decision” (Taylor, 324). Here the past and the future touch, overlapping ever so slightly through thought on the verge of action. If the actuality of self is established through one’s past sufferings and actions while possibility exists as a future not yet realized, human consciousness can allow the tenses of time to exist in partial simultaneity through decision. There is no clear dividing line between past and future. Taylor proceeds to insert three more consciousness-based terms into the pre-existing tenses of time; past, present and future become remembrance, decision, and expectation. All three are actions that can be executed in the present tense.
So here I am back at The Rocky Seashore, to experience this pictographic present for a second time. In this two-dimensional Oieblikket, the moonlit strip reaches for my toes once more. How does Kierkegaard’s LT apply to my experience of RS? We know that within a theory of ST, the representational contents of RS could be distinguished as a past that had ceased-to-be. An experience of RS’s still waters must be somewhat unattainable in my present (due to its non-existence). ST defines the past as something that is no longer there to be referenced; it cannot exist in simultaneity with the present. In defiance of Aristotle I (my body) stand(s) in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while my mind is on the beach. It swirls murkily through a blended cloud of actuality and possibility, engrossed in the instantaneous cycle of decision. Isn’t this present, this Oieblikket, a bit more illusory than the average “moment of decision”(Taylor, 325). Though it feels as though the boat may continue on its course toward the rocky precipice, I know it cannot. Two shadowy figures hold me in their gaze. What questions might they have for me as we meet further down the beach? None, because such a meeting cannot and will never occur.
If the present moment is one of decision, what can I decide that will translate to actualization regarding the contents of this painting? There is nothing I can do to physically change this painting (on the right side of the law). Anything I can and would do on the wrong side would only shatter the illusion of a dual-present. I’d need the artist’s hand to further the boat along its course: a hand that is long since deceased. It is ultimately through imagination that my application of LT is made both fitting and appropriate.
We will now think of a youth. With his imagination he constructs one or another picture (ideal) of perfection, whether it be one handed down by history, that is, belonging to a time past, so that it has been actually, has possessed actuality of being, or whether it be formed by imagination alone, so that it has no relation to the time or place and receives no definition by them, but has the actuality of thought. (Kierkegaard, 185/Taylor, 323)
Though the picture to which Kierkegaard refers to an idyllic youthful creation of self, an imaginative essence far more changing and changeable than a painting on a museum wall (physically speaking), it is on the quality of imagination I’d like to focus. Though Kierkegaard describes imagination as “endless remoteness from actuality,” (Taylor, 323), it seems as though it can achieve “actuality of thought.” The latter picture (based on imagination) is termed as having this sort of thought-based actuality.
I would suppose thought-based actuality could be accompanied by similarly imagined possibilities. However, James Elkins, Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, may beg to differ. “Painting is an art based on inherently motionless figures, which are very different from frozen figures that are captured by the camera…I cannot imagine a painted figure moving or talking unless I am willing to settle for comic travesty…If I am more serious about painting, I have to acknowledge that motion is not just absent but inconceivable” (Elkins, 220-1). What Elkins has pointed out makes sense in literal manner; if I were to conjure the sight of the boat moving across the water the result would, in fact, be cartoon-ish. However, I have the ability to stave off a complete visualization of the boat’s possibilities. Though imagination is the means by which “an individual can envision different possibilities” (Taylor, 322), the execution need not be sight-based. The existence of the art object within the mind of the viewer is somewhat separate from its physical presence. Its imaginative presence (within the viewer) is an actualization of thought. It is mostly up to the viewer what possibilities are allowed to affect this picture. This is a part of the process of “deciding” (in viewership).
In many ways an art object has two cycles of “life-time.” These cycles exist through different selves: the artist-self and the viewer-self. The life-time within the artist’s self system is one of physical actualization. Each brush stroke is a moment of decision made physical/actual. Though an artist may work from a sketch or a plan, deviation and/or adaptation often occurs. Colors may react differently than originally anticipated, creating an effect outside of intention. In such a case, the artist must change the route of execution, or risk changing the entire result. Even when choices are seemingly made in advance, there is room for decision and change. The artist steps back and, in this moment of completion, the painting is released into its second life-time within the viewer.
Some paintings are better at engaging the viewer in a more active present (Kierkegaard’s present of decision) than others. Compositional tricks such as perspective and an outward looking gaze can do much to actively involve the viewer, to make the viewer feel as though s/he is an active participant. In the case of Konstantinovitsch’s Rocky Seashore, it is both perspective and atmosphere that give me a feeling of present/presence within the frame. The aforementioned strip of moonlight plays upon the beach; its brightest beach- front point echoes the enveloped moon and stretches right out to my bodily position. Despite its limitations (in actuality the “moonlight” is only able to reach the bottom of the canvas), my physicality has successfully been activated. The two figures seem to turn towards me. Shadowy as they may be, it is not a far leap to feel acknowledgement in their affectation. Here, though it is a figment of my imagination, it is as if the painting has engaged my actuality in its air of possibility. The possibilities held in the atmosphere of RS’s darkened sky resonate with those I’ve felt under similar skies. The particular deep purplish-blue of the night sky punctuated softly with the muted and cloud-gauzed moon is of the kind that can fill the chest with the magical potentiality of life. This is the sort of night charged with happening. In the busy-ness of day as well as the business of city life, it is easy to feel caught and constrained by routine, no longer cognizant of freedom and potential (decision). Under such a quiet sky, however, all is silent, clear and possible.
This dual Oieblikket between RS’s painted contents and my own bodily organism engages both of our actualities. The actuality of RS as representation is very-well set. Whatever could or would occur to change RS would only work to change it as an object, not an image-based narrative. Smashing, damage and discoloration all affect the object as a whole. The narrative would, in many ways, remain unscathed. The other actuality engaged is my own, by way of my past. That which is necessary is “given to the self” (Taylor, 322). It is the point from which the “self must proceed” (Taylor, 322). My actuality (past and necessity) and the physical actuality of RS as a completed artwork are dual precipices, towering over the possible in conjunction with one another. My actuality, my past contributes to the possibility held in such a sky (however unchanging); it is a possibility held within and actualized by my imagination.
DFTP: Departing for the Promenade (Will You Go Out with Me Fido?), Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens, 1859
The outward-looking gaze is another potent tool elicited in the engagement of the viewer. Would the Mona Lisa have ascended to such notoriety without eye contact? In Departing for the Promenade (Will You Go Out with me Fido?), the visual hook of two-dimensional eye contact is a flourish, an aside; though it would have been no more effective at capturing my attention had it been a central focal point. A young woman, fully clad in a mode of dress befitting none other than Vivian Leigh/Scarlet O’Hara (but perhaps a tad more modest), is the central (human) figure in DFTP. Groupings of long cylindrical curls fall out of her open bonnet. Her chest is fully turned toward the door, while her face angles over her right shoulder. Her right arm is extended; its right hand holds the door handle. The doorway is not quite parallel to the rightmost vertical edge of the canvas; the wall-line recedes diagonally inward from the bottom-right corner. Behind the young woman, the doorframe meets a sidewall edged with a well-upholstered couch. Over the couch, hangs a portrait holding a grey-wigged woman inside its borders. As the woman steps toward the door, the glance thrown over her shoulder tips down toward a small, poof-y white dog. The dog’s gaze is pointed upward in turn, towards the woman, and you can tell by its gate that it is quite excited. This canine-human rapport is buoyed by the playful parenthetical addition to the main title of DFTP (“Will You Go Out with Me Fido?”).
My first impulse, due to the painting’s fine execution, is to engage the piece as an artist in admiration of another’s craft. While breathtakingly executed, the dramatic atmosphere of RS couldn’t help but expedite sensorial experience well ahead of a colder craft-based appreciation of the work. DFTP, however, had me at “cufflink”. The doorknob bound hand is lovely, but the white cuff encircling it is lovelier. It is pinned by a single golden button that sings: a single point of delightful reflection that fills me with envy. I will never paint such a cufflink; it’s just not feasible. Each wooden “V” of the floorboards seems perfect, straight and efficient. Upon closer inspection, the sienna hue of the flooring thins out on the left side of the composition (revealing the surface of the panel as well as the artist’s hand). This chink in the painting’s seamless armor only works to further connect me to the craftsmanship of the work: the painting’s first cycle of life-time. It is the be-wigged vestige above the extravagant couch that pulls me into the moment, the narrative-Oieblikket.
Here in “the instant” my wandering eyes meet those of this woman, gazing out from her own golden frame (a rectangle within a rectangle), and I feel as though I’ve been caught. Until now, I’d been able to peruse as I wished, unencumbered and unnoticed. Such freedom could not continue under this doubly framed gaze. The spectacles of professionalism are knocked from my unsuspecting brow, all by an inanimate and be-wigged duchess-of-so-and-so. My eyes return to her over and over again, each time in reception of recognition. In this one quiet detail (an afterthought perhaps) I am brought into this two-dimensional world anew. However, it is not in totality I enter. I feel like a ghost, a spectral presence spotted by a sister specter. Perhaps she stares from her own portal, a portal where it is she who is flesh and I that is artistically rendered. Of course I do not believe this to be possible but imagination brings potential no matter how false.
Even with the power of imagination at my disposal, I remain on the periphery. The little white pup’s attention remains eternally clasped upon the exiting woman. She returns it in kind.
MF: My Friends, Viggo Johansen, 1887
Viggo Johansen’s My Friends takes my perceived marginality one step farther. My experience of MF is Scrooge-like in quality, only in this case I have visited the Christmas Past of another. Blushing faces, aglow in the light provided by a single gas-lamp, circle round a table in festive conversation. A smile plays on a handsome blond woman’s face; her blue eyes are edged and lightly creased with warmth. Two male figures stand to the right (our right) of the table, barely visible in the outskirts of the dim room. Though the room is dark and intimate, I do not feel inclusion. These are not my friends; with nowhere to place myself I am barred from the occasion. Such an impression may simply be the bi-product of my own propensity for social awkwardness (I’m shy!). As I am only able approach the painting from my “historical position” and my base of experience, this initial sensation of distance cannot be helped. I am left on the threshold to observe, not participate. As Scrooge, I move unseen, unheard, and unable to act upon this merry scene. Just as there is nothing he can say or do to affect Christmas’ Past, I feel similarly ineffectual.
Perhaps the viewer is powerless; the narrative is the past tense, having already been decided. S/he may see traces of a passed present by way of a brush-mark, evidence of the artist’s once-lively hand. As the mark represents a decision made, a potential actualized, the viewer is perpetually off by just one moment. Two-dimensional narratives will remain perpetually on the verge of progression, to no avail. To this argument I’d offer a similar experiential comparison, to that of the theatre. In theatre, the audience has no control over the narrative; the narrative cannot be changed. An audience can affect a performance, but to do so would only break the illusion between story and stage. The players are affected but the characters remain intact.
Theatre is an art that continually challenges the idea of the “present”. Actors, in their best moments, are able to experience and project scripted and predefined moments as if for the first time, in defiance of reality and tensed time. Because the play is written, read and practiced, the most gifted actors are able to make a moment of remembrance one of decision and possibility. The audience knows all has been decided and can know what has been decided in advance. They too have the power to defy time and hope where there is none. Macbeth will forever kill the king; Romeo and Juliet will never live happily ever after. That we enter into any play with any modicum of hope is a triumph of imagination.
Theatre as a time-based medium allows for a more seamless experience of “present tense” (the moment of decision) in narrative, while suspension of disbelief and imagination fills in any gaps. Such a suspension is slightly more difficult when approaching an object fully formed; there is a great difference between the act of reading a script and that of watching it performed. If theatre audiences as well movie audiences settle in all the same, for a story felt and projected in real time, why can’t the museum attendee? The power of decision, though limited to imagination, can bestow a great gift upon the viewer. Even its limitation can provide the viewer with a far richer relationship to art. Though there are gaps in its relevant application, Kierkegaard ‘s “life-time” (as imparted by Taylor) has most definitely expanded upon my concept viewing as a temporal act.
Why not spend an afternoon in transcendence of linear time…at the museum? It’s up to you.
Bibliography:
Elkins, James. The Object Stares Back. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Taylor, Mark C. “Time’s Struggle with Space: Kierkegaard’s Understanding of Temporality.” The Harvard Theological Review 66.3 (July, 1993): 311-329. Jstor. Web. 14 April 2010.
Hardie, R.P. and Gay, R.K., trans. The Works of Aristotle Translated into English. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970.
Augustine and Warner, Rex, trans. Confessions. New York: Mentor-Omega Books, 1963.
Kierkegaard, Soren and Lowrie, Walter, trans. The Concept of Dread. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957.
Links to images (experienced in person):
Konstantinovitsch, Ivan. Rocky Seashore. 1876. Painting. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Philamuseum.org. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/102719.html
Johansen, Viggo. My Friends. 1887. Painting. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Philamuseum.org. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/101698.html
Stevens, Alfred-Emile-Leopold. Departing for the Promenade (Will You Go Out with Me, Fido?). 1856. Painting. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Philamuseum.org. Web. 29 Apr. 2010.
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/104330.html
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