For some time now, the De Young has been ferociously advertising for its Diebenkorn special exhibit. Inhabiting the exhibit are several of his Berkeley works, amongst them abstract depictions of local landscapes (santa cruz, berkeley, chabot valley and others), along with more reflective and meditative pieces emulating the still-lifes of Cezanne and the nudes of Matisse. There was also an extensive collection of works that didn’t fall within either of these categories.
Others were depictions of interiors, of the the worlds in which we reside and from which we look out on to the public world, not to mention the places where we find our solitude, spaces for personal reflection and recreation, of ourselves as human beings. These were the most intriguing to me, in fact, and perhaps both because they publicly displayed the private worlds of people, the objects and totality of things they use to live out their daily lives and create whatever it is that they are, and their perspective on the world outside, informed as it may be by their class status and the attendant ‘protected visibility’ that their elevated balcony or two-story building may privilege them.
What can be said to be depicted didn’t at all overshadow the makeup of the composition. Just as enchanting were the colors, which he used both to fill voids and to populate centers. Even before I attended the exhibit, I was enthralled by how vivid and vibrant some of his works were (as seen online or elsewhere). Visiting DY, I was not disappointed in the least. Layered over one another, and sometimes melded carefully into one another, the bright reds, florid yellows and bold blues he used captivated me. It is almost a travesty to leave the exhibit and to return to the mundane normalcy of everything else, when one can find such visual ecstasy found in one such place. My experience with them still satiates and seizes my body.
His theoretical observations on his work were arguably more telling of his motivation than any compositional aspect. Aware of his artistic categorization as an abstract expressionist, he retorts, visually and discursively with his protests on the implications of being situated into a greater historical ‘movement’. In one commentary, he notes that abstract expressionism was a ‘stylistic straitjacket;’ he felt the constraints of the style and the desires of others to locate him within it were so limiting that he was unable to experiment to the degree that he yearned for. I sympathize with him here, too; I have worried something similar with regard to the academy, and I haven’t resolved this worry either. I wonder if he ever did. He reflectively continues, describing his own creative intentions and overall mission. He postulated that he was not experimenting in the ways others were and was not trying to push envelopes or create something entirely new and offensive or novel; he was trying, instead, to extend and develop a tradition, to deepen and explore its formalistic qualities and implications more completely. At first glance, I read this as a dismissive Dylan-esque deflection, but reading it again, I sense that they both must’ve been more honest than they intended to be. But it is hard to tell.
As I casually strolled through the gallery, I thought on how watching others appreciate art was as pleasurable as any other part of the experience. I typically walk very slowly through exhibits, if I have the time. I dote on particular painting and note their colors, study their texture, attempt to discern the form and consider its placement juxtaposition with other pieces. This way of looking requires a kind of casual relationship to art that it really deserves but that often we don’t have time for. In contrast, I see others passing so quickly, some moving at a middling pace and others just glancing as they walk by. A few, however, took much longer and fixated on only one or a few paintings, some even brought sketchpads and had attempted to recreate some of the works. One man drew what he saw adorned in the galleries, attempting to imitate and emulate its forms, shapes and composition. Others converse about the art in the context of their lives, talking about what they’ve seen, what other art they’ve witness and perhaps any art theory or history they may know. It’s a very social activity for many, but I just as much appreciate being there alone. Being with others entails a kind of obligation to move at their pace, an attention to your relationship that might detract from your observations and interactions with the paintings. When I’m alone in a museum, I can casually stroll and reflect as I will, taking time to stop and sit or study a description or a painting, even to view others as a they view. So much happens in such a small, enclosed place. If only there weren’t such high income barriers to the enjoyment of art by all.
As I walked around in the exhibit, I was reminded also of my own desire to think on art as part of a social totality, or as much as is possible without impinging on a sense of artistic and authorial autonomy. I don’t want in the least to tell an author, an artist, what they are doing, but I do like sparking conversation, asking the right questions, bringing relevance of an art work to a debate about money, about politics, about other things. A close friend and I had a conversation about this last night as he revealed some of his new work to me. We conversed on the particularities of the art object he was working, something I had no idea he was doing. I didn’t impose my own thoughts on his motivations and his work, but I did find occasion to discuss a few things regarding the work. And all the while he maintained his desire for it to be a conversation starter. Perhaps this can be the place of the art theorist, of taking what is out there and meditating on what it might be implying, done only in conversation the artist and others. I’m still unsure of how I might situate myself in this regard, and I certainly don’t want to remain in the abstruseness of academic art or ‘high art.’ Popular culture interests me just as much. But I diverge. My experiences sparked these conversations, this is what Diebenkorn did, too, or at least the presence of his works.
And now I can converse with others on it. Serving as a kind of anchor to our community, his work has been exposed to have an effect on us. Now, we must take our stance and come to terms with it in some way, as so many have and are. This is also what interests me about museums. About how something might be displayed, and we view and engage with and take positions on it. These positions are informed by the work and are not just there. We must be confronted with and by something for us to have such conversations, just as theory does with and to us when we are thinking and want to find ways to regulate and develop it. Art presents us with ways of seeing, with ways of depicting and experimenting with the tools of composition and representation. In viewing such works of art, we can think on what it means to represent, how such things are represented, and on what it says that representation is happening, is occurring in such a way. Museums, in a profoundly beautiful way, open up to the public conversations regarding art. And although they also imprison it, in a way, precluding it from existing in a more-public space or in the original situations of the art, it is the compromise option that provides some context and some accessibility for people like myself, who are where we are.
In this way, I’m as interested in the elements and makeup of art as I am in the ways in which circulates in and around people, and I recognize this even as I was talking with another friend, and as I was thinking about how great art seems to proliferate the references it makes to different times and places, other occasions of the production of works of art in the history of art, inflected with a longstanding commitment to experiencing and thinking and representing what others have already, a kind of homage to what has been and taking account of their perceptual insights necessary for making any kind of advancement into a future of further reflection on what it means to be human and what it means to represent. At the end of the day I was also left with another thought: I wondered if I was as interested in the art as I was in the person producing it, and that the art was just a way of accessing this, in a way. A way to understand them and how they produced, how they viewed the world and thought about color, different aspects of how art is produced, different styles and forms. This is what I appreciate so much about speaking with these friends. I appreciate their thoughtful and intentional contributions to conversations on what it means to be human, what we are capable and the beautiful capacity we have to observe, critique and produce.
Increasingly, however, I feel I am interested in this practice of critique and want to proliferate the ways in which people may be able to do so; how I finally pursue this existential urge is unclear. But it is something of which I’m aware, as critique is a way of rendering our world personally intelligible, of taking all of what it is that we know and applying it to our immediate experience, be that literary, artistic, academic or otherwise. Without critique, we would not be taking necessary stances on our being, on our experiences and knowledge and how they fit up with where we are at a given time. And in this way, critique doesn’t need to have a certain character or cast; it just needs to be inflected with our willingness and courage to confront dominant meanings and rebut, counter and return them, and sometimes forcibly, with our own.
It is in this way that we render the whole world a series of arguments, of debates and conversations, exchanges and decisions. This is how we may make rhetors of the worlds inhabitants yet, of making them critics, as a world of critics is a more reflective and self-conscious and perhaps even happier world, ironically so (but do we really need happiness)?. I realize now that any and all of what I do must consist in and constitute the proliferation of critique. If this means teaching, I must teach. If this means politics, then I must politic. But I most create in others the possibility and habit of holding their world accountable to them and doing so in an informed, argumentatively-respectful fashion that is democratic and accessible. This is how we may create better world, by endowing its participants with the thought and communication resources necessary to express themselves in multiple ways and to render their environments their own, not merely remaining at the level of worlds others have produced. So far, this means art, politics and philosophy, not to mention capitalism and popular culture. I want to give people the means to critique and come to terms with these spheres, to make informed and effective decisions, decisions different from what we see and have seen. This is critique, and this is what I want to give to the world, to leave it with. I just need to contemplate how I might leave it with them.
But, and I must ask this, to live a life contended: are there other ways to create critique, to encourage and cultivate critique? This may get into questions of what critique is and how it is inculcated, and Adorno certainly has his own perspective on it, but I feel I must get into this question on another day. At present, its seems fundamentally philosophical, of taking what is out there and translating it into language such that we understand how it functions. This transcription process may be unfair, but it does give us a way of tangibly holding it, something to grasp and relate to others. This is the power of rhetoric too, of encouraging and developing these skills, of focusing on the importance of critique. This is what I’ve been so intrigued by rhetoric. But before I get there, I know I need to study society more, study art more, study politics more. Study representation and policy and forms of art and artistic composition and Marxism and philosophy and popular culture and the media. There are many things I need to study, and so I must use time effectively and adequately to do so. As there is so little time in the world and so much to do, and we must create the kind of agency that the world needs now, that everyone needs to know how to participate in it and find some kind of happiness and site of contentment while at the same time being honest to themselves about their political commitments and the political realities of their day. Fitting these two together will be the challenge, but whatever I decide to do, I must be faithful to these aims, to finding ways to furthering and advancing these missions, to bringing us together as a community and eliminating what excludes and divorces us from one another, whatever that may be, in whatever form it may come.
This also isn’t a one way process, and it will as much involve being with and around people as it will being in school and learning about what there is to critique. Knowing critique is knowing people and what they need and knowing what isn’t being taught to them. Meeting up these two is my goal, and in whatever way I can, I will do so.
Bearer of Pity 