August 5, 2003
Art Gallery Pages
I wrote this at the Art Gallery with my class on August 5, 2003. Do not consider me too artful, I was required to write five pages and this is what came out:
It is difficult to believe in truth and sincerity when approahced by a homeless person. Most people are conflicted. On the one hand, the person with their hand is mor eoften than not obvoiusly in need of something. The natural inclination is to try to help the person. Or it would be the natural inclination, if not for all the doubts we all carry about the people defeated by the worst aspects of human nature.
Some suspect that a hand out will be used to buy alcohol or drugs, some people are convinced of it. Many of us supply th example of a needy father stealing food to provide for his family in ethical debates, but once theft has occured, does anyone assume that to be the case?
It breaks down mostly to person responsibility. With personal responsibility, questions arise asot how much an individual can control or be expected to control. Believers of personal responsibility often assume that it is the responsibility of the individual to be exployed. If someone cannot gain employment due to mental illness, is it their responsibility to try to use recoues they may or may not have to get better and be productive? Or should the government be involved? A decision has to be made as to whether anyone is responsible of taking care of anyone else, and when does taking care of someone cross over to unfair or unnecessary self-sacrifice?
A person should always be trying to be more independent and responsible for themselves. Lately I have adopted a great distaste for excuses or explanations for many actions, especially when the motives of the actions are irrelevant in light of the action. Too often excuses are made to weaken allegations: People are not shitty, they are products of an unhappy home; A racist is not a racist, merely someone is ignorant to the fine art of appreciating others' differences.
If we are going to break down every term we use for identifcation and clarification we are ignoring its meaning entirely. I have to wonder why we have the labels at all. It has often been suggested to drop all labels, cease to make judgements, and leave everything to be as it is in its natural state. But once jdugements are no longer made, apathy begins to set in where analysis and reactions to environment once stood.
Apathy is the worst triat a human being can adopt. It is an indication of lacking mental growth and a refusal to be an active member of one's own life fate. I find it to be uterly disgusting to resign to conflict by throwing one's hands up in the air and describing the whole situation to be hopeless. It's a cop-out and it demonstrates a lack of creativity. There are always solutions waiting to be found. It is acceptable to declare a situation to be too difficult, but if an individual has any respect for themselves and the rational mind, he will concentrate his efforts towards fighting for another cause.
I do not understand why we are all so afraid of being labeled, of being identifiable. Labels can be used to do damage but labels can also be changed, sometimes they are quite accurate and helpful in sorting out some of life's more chaotic aspects. Maybe it is that we have so many problems understanding ourselves that the idea of someone else identifying us becomes appalling.
As a society we seem to seek out misery. We are always desiring contradictions and acting to be hypocritcal. While we do not want someone to be easily led by the crowd, there is something distinctly unsettling about someone who does not appear to act bearing the judgements that will result from their actions. Many seems to be ruled by jealousy more than any of us suspected. We become so jealous of the people who can act in their own self-interest that we bombard them with criticism until they succumb to outside control. No one can fully understand what motivates anothe rperson's heart and that mystery chills most of us. It is only when a status quo is assembled that most of us can rest mor eeasily. Sure, the ideal is to be conflicted, but at least the dispute can be seen clearly.
The hardest place to lay down judgment is in the art world. Even the most seemingly cultured and prestigious doubt theri own ability to independtly assess what is and is not art. I have no assembalence of prestige, but I think everything has its artistic elements. Even war has a sort of artful craft in its design with timing and organization of people and resources.
If thre is any qualifier for what art is, I would describe it to be prupose. The purpose may be aesthetic, innovation, or provoking thought, but the purpose must be there. Granted, my definition is almost no definition at all because everyone works with purpose. The purpose sometimes lies deep in the self-conscious and is only realized after completion, but it is there. It is impossible and irrational to act without purpose. It can even be disdirected, but it is there.
One girl walks through the art gallery obviously unhappy and impatient. She drags foam platform flip flops against the floor as she walks. From time to time she raises a foot in the air or shifts the shoe's angle slightly and a loud thud echoes in the room over the people huddled together around the familiar sight of Nighthawks.
It is essential for every art gallery to have a few famous paintings or works by famous artists within its walls. People become uneasy when they are bombared by too many foreign images, especially if they suspect that at least a few of these paintings would have been recognized if only they were more cultured. A famous painting is like a friend found in a party of strangers, serving as a welcoming beacon that maybe we belong here after all.
A few times I went to my hometown art gallery all by myself. It gave me a false sense of being a person of depth and substance, a person who could perhaps be described as artistic, the closest society comes to accepting what it considers to be otherwise "weird."
Going by myself was almost as important as the destination itself: it was a sign that I was my own person who could act with or without public support. It also made for a better trip because I could move at my own pace, looking at each work of art for as little or as long as I liked.
My childhood theater class background convinced me it was always necessary to costume myself appropriately for "The Gallery." If it looked trendy it would simply not do. A trip to the gallery was always an opportunity to experiment with mixing prints an dfabrics. If my ensemble came anywhere close to matchinig, one article of clothing or another would be tossed aside in favor of something more vibrant.
I also came to the art gallery with a delusional hope for romance. If I brought a notebook I envisioned myself writing intensely and drawing the attention of some boy with a similiarly assembled Art Galery look, except in the fantasy he never played dress up.
He would inevitabley sit next next to me after watching me and he would strike up some kind of witty conversation. At some point he would ask what I had written and I would be shy or coy and call it worthless. He would insist on reading it, and eventually I would succumb, because he was the Art Gallery Fantasy after all, and I would read him something not worthless at all but brilliant and insightful.
More talk would reveal that he too was a writer and he too was brilliant, but neither of us were threatened by the other's talent. Sly smiles and intesense eye contact would finally make the mutual attraction clear, then we would move our discussion on to a coffee shop.
I always knew it was a far-out fantasy, but it is only now that I realize just how fantastic it is. Barely anyone feels confident enough to approach a stranger in an art gallery of all places. A gallery is not only a house for all that is beautiful, but it is a comforter that lures out the inferiority complexes we all carry along with us.
Even if approaching another preson in a gallery was not doomed, a person writing indicates the construction of a silk screen around the holder of the pen. The writer can always see what is surrounding him beyond the screen; sometimes the surroundings can observe the writer; but the silk screen is not designed to be penetrated. Most times the destruction of the screen is considered a violation both by the person wearing it and the person wielding the knife that must be used to cut it open.
The fantasy is also fantastic because even if I were brilliant, I doubt I could eve rbe so brilliant that I would not feel at least a small pang of jealousy upon witnessing others' brilliance. Ultimately I am always ready to be threatened whether or not the situation calls for it.
Part of what makes a gallery so fantastic is it lets even part of our mind consider this kind of fatnasty to be plausible. When Picasso, a genius, but also a man, can create something as amazing as his cubist paintings, suddenly the idea of Monet-inspired romance does not seem so impossible.
Even without the boy, the art gallery can be a very seductive environment. Its images can leave us breathless with its beauty.
My roommate Eve describes the most attractive men to be so beautiful it "hurts"; the gallery creates a similiar pain that we are all anxious to experience not because we are masochistic in nature but because the pleasure spiked with pain (to borrow a line from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers) reminds all ofus there is so much in the world we do not know. It is also refreshing to be reminded that we have not all become so cold and cynical that we have grown to be entirely unaffected by the world.
The art gallery shows that apathy is not meant to survive for long, if it meant to exist at all.
In front of me there was an elderly man who came to alert his friend of what other wonders were yet to be explored by either of them on the floor.
He would have escaped my notice in his turquoise collared t-shirt and white tennis shoes if not for the blue belt covered in white bicycle outlines that held up his gray slacks.
An accessory like that always brings up the kinds of questions on motives that entertain rather than frustrate me. Inevitabley the accessory was a gift, an accessory in honor of his appreciation for seeing the world on two wheels rather than four.
Without being crude, perhaps for him less is more. Maybe his sense of humor is dry and he shows his teeth after someone has played with words or circumstance or irony. If he is retired, maybe he was an engineer, focusing on the smaller details that make things work, diagnosing small problems and leaving the larger obstacles for other men.
At some point in his life I am sure he faced a large obstacle that could not be passed along to someone else. He must have approached either by continuing to fix the kinks one bolt at a time or by the force of the problem he altered his tried and truth keep it simple approach, throwing out the soft kisses in favor of sweeping gestures.
At the gallery he probably comes with a small list of paintings he feels he must see to consider his day productive. I hop ehe examines the other paintings on his way, even if the whole gallery is a little too imposing for him. he probably forgets that there are many out there as weak in the face of details as he is when faced with the big picture.
Love,
Mandy