Arriving at the Guermantes for dinner, the Narrator mentions to M. de Guermantes that he would cherish a chance to view their private collection of works by the painter Elstir. M. de Guermantes graciously lets him into the room, and then leaves him alone so as to rejoin the party.
Soon the Narrator loses himself in one painting in particular, which depicts a "waterside carnival." At first his eyes merely roam over the canvas, picking up details here and there:
"The river, the women's dresses, the sails of the boats, the innumerable reflexions of one thing and another jostled together enchantingly... What delighted one in the dress of a woman who had stopped dancing for a moment because she was hot and out of breath shimmered too, and in the same way, in the cloth of a motionless sail, in the water of the little harbour, in the wooden landing stage, in the leaves of the trees and in the sky" (GW, 576).
Suddenly, something happens. The Narrator enters into a work of art. The images seem to speak directly to him:
"...Everything is is equally precious; the commonplace dress and the sail that is beautiful in itself are two mirrors reflecting the same image; their virtue is all in the painter's eye" (GW, 576).
"This eye," the Narrator reflects later, "had succeeded in arresting for all time the motion of the hours at this luminous instant when the lady had felt hot and had stopped dancing, when the tree was encircled with a perimeter of shadow, when the sails seemed to be gliding over a golden glaze" (GW, 576). But this timeless luminosity is paired with another awareness too. He continues:
"But precisely because that instant pressed itself on one with such force, this unchanging canvas gave the most fleeting impression: one felt that the lady would presently go home, the boats drift away, the shadow change place, night begin to fall; that pleasure comes to an end, that life passes and that instants, illuminated by the convergence at one and the same time of so many lights, cannot be recaptured" (GW, 577).
So there is luminosity, and fragility too, and they are felt at the same time.
I was stunned by this section. The description of the Narrator responding to Elstir's painting fit so well with my personal experiences of entering into works of art, on those rare occasions when they break through my usual filters and habits.
I have always felt that art, good art, that is, expands my heart -- for a brief time, under its spell, I have the impression (true or not, I do not know) that I am making fewer petty distinctions, that on the contrary I am making more profound ones, and I seem to experience other human beings more generously, with heightened sensitivity.
At the same time, though, at these moments I always feel more aware than ever of the passing of time and the unavoidable loss and despair underlying our every action.
This is the twofold nature of art to me, and Proust put it into words in a simpler, more straightforward way that I had never encountered before.
So this is how the discussion began. I shared these passages with the group, and my response to them.
My friend Oliver was, I believe, the first who spoke up. He wondered whether not only the more familiar modes of art -- painting, music, theater, etc. -- fit under this definition, but perhaps other sensory experiences do too. Prompted by this question, he shared with us a recent experience he had at a museum in New York dedicated to the history of scents. Walking in, he encountered, arrayed at various positions around the gallery, a series of small basins. When he bent his head down to the first of them, it blew a scent into his nostrils. It turns out that the exhibition started with the first perfume, "Jicky" (1889), and led all the way through some of the most iconic scents of the last 125 years, ending on what the program described as a "neo-brutalist" scent, "Untitled" (2010).
Could we also consider these scents art? Oliver asked.
Jumping back in, I questioned whether a scent or a taste, however directly they might invoke involuntary memories and trigger powerful emotional associations (as Proust's madeleine, dipped in tea, did for him), could be considered art, as a film or a painting or a musical composition is. I added all "design" to this same category of experience-producing objects, crafted by human hands, but nevertheless falling short of being art.
These creations can be exquisite, I agreed. They can be complex (certainly perfumes are complex). It may take extraordinary care to produce them. Still, I argued, if they do not conjure this twofold effect that Proust describes -- to make the world at once luminous and fragile -- then they do not fit under my definition of art. They are products.
This set the group off.
Florence, who works in the wine industry and appreciates in a very sophisticated way the sourcing and the scents and the tastes of wine, insisted that fine wines can, no doubt, be considered works of art. It astonished her that anyone could deny this.
But I persisted. "Florence, how can wine -- let's say a sack of wine so that we don't get taken in by the prestige of a bottle -- give you a sense of shared humanity, or the passing of time, and loss, and fragility?"
"But it does!" she said. "I drink it knowing the varieties of the grapes, the role of the earth, the sun, the aging, the care taken by the winemaker..."
"Well, then you could say any beverage is a work of art. Milk is a work of art then, too?"
Florence looked at me with deep concern for my sanity. "Milk is not produced by a process," said Miriam. She made the gesture of pulling an udder. "Tom, do you know where milk comes from?"
"It depends," I said. "There is a different taste produced by different grasses. The condition of the cows. Or goats! Or sheep! There are different temperatures at which it can be served. Is it low-fat, non-fat, pasteurized? Raw?" I turned back to Florence. If you don't grant that milk can be art as well as wine, then your argument for wine loses its credibility. Your preference is exposed as a cultural construct."
Florence just shook her head.
Miriam spoke up again, saying that art, to her, it is more than direct experience. So wine cannot qualify: art is the mediation of experience through an artist's sensibility.
"Yes," I added. "And it is doing more than producing an experience. That's why furniture design or landscape design are not art. They are producing experiences of beauty or comfort, illusions of perfection, but they are... stopping there. They leave off the fragility part.
What about the gardens at Versailles? Or Villandry? asked Alex.
Well, I answered, perhaps those are exceptions, since they are serving a performative function, not unlike a Japanese zen garden. They are intended as art.
Miriam came to my aid. Any piece of landscape design, or piece of furniture, or even a bottle of wine, could be considered art, she argued, but first it would have to be de-contextualized by the artist. (Thus the gardens of Versailles are de-contextualized by their status as artistic works from their inception). Ken mentioned the dadaists use of "found art" to support this idea. In this way, Miriam continued, intention plays an important role in the distinguishing between art and product.
"Yet it is important to remember," I interjected, "that even though an artist's intention may be necessary for something to be art, it is not sufficient. There are many bad artists with the highest artistic intentions. But if there work has the effect, on me at least, of closing off my mind, creating the illusion of perfection or pleasure, then I would have to call it "kitsch art" not art. The singer Lionel Richie comes to mind: when he sings "Well I'm eaaaaasy, I'm easy like Sunday morning," I feel, I admit it, a surge of pleasure not unlike standing in a living room with an inviting interior design. But I don't feel the twofold effect that Proust describes: I don't feel the... luminescent fragility, to use a short-hand way of referencing those passages that started us off.
Florence insisted that when she drinks a bottle of good wine, or merely tastes it, she does feel transported, in much the way that Proust describes. She senses the humanity and intention that went into it; she appreciates the process of aging, the barrels used, the care that went into the whole production process. And she appreciates the elusive quality that is achieved by a great bottle: its uniqueness, never to be repeated. "How is this not the same?" she said, squinting at me fiercely.
"Well, based on the experience you have it certainly sounds like art," I said. "But really it is any ecstatic experience that you are describing. We can have it when walking in the rain. We can have it during the ritual of a summer evening's candlelit dinner-party with friends. We can have it, certainly, in all of our most intimate encounters. We appreciate all of the planning, the work, the choices, the combination of aesthetics -- from the muddy path taken... to the hand-me-down tablecloth under our plates... to the color of the lingerie worn. We sense our shared humanity. We experience intense pleasure. And it all combines to make us feel elevated, perfect, soaring -- all, I'm afraid, an illusion. In fact, as art tells us, we are all of that -- and ALSO dying, broken, losing coherence, failing at all times. Art, as I define it, combines both modes of awareness at once, both true but in opposition to each other.
Jaimey spoke up to say that he too could not see that wine or food or furniture design could meet his definition of art. He said that, to him, art, to be art, requires a mental process, a community to appreciate it, and a lineage or history. Wine, when drunk, does not require a mental process, or a shared community, and it lineage is limited to a few variables (the grape, the soil, etc.). There are relatively few ways to speak of it or interpret it. "Don't get me wrong," he said, "I love a good glass of wine as much as anyone, but I have to say that I don't like the colonization of art by food and drink in our culture. I think we lose something in that."
Renée spoke up to say that although she didn't really care to take a position on this (I know that such questions of definition hold very little interest for her -- she wants to live it, and not worry to much about the idea of it), she wanted to share a story. At a family reunion one time she had the opportunity to chop, flavor, boil, stir, and all the rest, while preparing a chicken soup. As she did so, her extended family, cousins, nephews, uncles, her great grandmother, all stood around her, talking and laughing. By the time she ladled the soup into each family member's bowl the experience had become tremendously moving to her. It had, she said, something close to the enchantment she feels when she experiences art.
That's beautiful. I said. I am certainly not privileging the experience of art, as I define it, above the experiences of life, of love, of dining, of friendship, of ritual, of making chicken soup. I wanted to be clear to Florence at this point that I have the utmost respect for her and even for her love of wine. But, I continued, these rich emotional experiences, these moments of catharsis and change, these unforgettable times when the floodgates of perception open wide for us in our lives, come in many forms. Serving chicken soup or tasting wine can certainly qualify as these. But that does not make them the same as art. Why should we want to make them the same as art?
Why does it matter to me to argue the definition of art? Is this just an intellectual exercise? Or an elitism? No. I care about this because the stakes, to me, are actually very high. Bad art, kitsch art, the rejection of art in favor of pure sensuality or limbic brain excitement, the preference for video games or horror movies or roller-coasters over the experience of art -- this actually matters to me. Why? Because I believe that art, true art, has the potential of opening our hearts, increasing our capacity to love one another. And if we lose our interest in it, in favor of wine or food or roller-coasters, we lose something precious.
"But James Joyce did not accept photographs as art!" Walden exclaimed. "He didn't accept them simply because he wasn't used to thinking of them that way. You see? It's all subjective, Tom. The definition is different for every person."
"I agree with you that it is subjective," I said, "I agree that we cannot say definitively if one painting, one genre, one work, is "art" or "good art" or not. You may respond to Elton John in exactly the twofold way that Proust lays out; I, on the other hand, may consider it catchy, hook-heavy, but kitsch. Neither of us is right or wrong. But we can still agree that there is something different between art that opens you to complexity and art that closes off complexity, can't we? There is a difference between art that engages you in way that equalizes between people and reduces our reliance on petty distinctions, and art that propagandizes or lulls or embitters, isn't there?"
Jaimey too insisted that we don't have to be entirely relativistic about art just because the distinctions are "subjective." There may be a standard that we can agree on but our assessment of where works fall against that standard is unavoidable going to be different. He mentioned Adorno's definition of art (Jaimey? Can you send this to me? I'll add it in.)
Miriam groaned: "Do you have to bring in Adorno?"
"What is the point of art if wine is art?" I asked, trying to locate the deeper question that we were asking. "Is it just to experience pleasure?" Alex and Florence said, yes. I said, "Pleasure is the least of my concerns when experiencing art!"
By this time we were standing in the kitchen and Oliver was saying under his breath, "heard that tape before" at each turn in the conversation. So we all laughed and hugged and agreed to keep talking.
A great discussion. Can't wait to revisit it many times and never find the answer but all get clearer nevertheless.
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