For the Exchange Aditi M Sengupta Harvard Medical School, Post Graduate Association
Herewith another installment in my continuing effort to understand the umbrella by viewing the large through the small. In the last issue I used the notorious November 18th tenant meeting as a lens through which to see the differing realities of artists and administrators . this time my lens in the eye of the beholder, the point beyond which an art object becomes an art experience.
if you have read Ezra Pound who speaks of art as comprising images that are “instantaneous rather than discursive.” the experience of art is thus not logical, or continuous, but occurs in a series of jolts which produce “a sense of sudden liberation, a sense of freedom from time and space, a sense of sudden growth.” Far from art experience are any sensations of respect of appreciation. However dutifully the critics and lectures hedge it nicely into place, there is something wild and uncanny about a deep art experience. “Heaven blazing into the head,” it brings on a weeping whose tears, real or dreamt, are too much their own sort to fill any verbal canisters.
My question is this: why has this crucial reality of the experience of art, art’s other half, received such short shrift from the from the Emerson umbrella since its outset? We have a gang of wonderful fruit harvesters here, up in trees pulling plums off the branches. Hundreds of children and other community members climb about up there, too seeing how it’s done.Everyone’s neck is craned upward, glorifying in this marvelous concentration of activity.It is a heady vision, to be sure, except that most of the plums, the fruit of the labor, are let to fall unseen into tall grass
Why should such a thing be? Why should the product of the very artists upon whom the enterprise greatly depends be neglected by the enterprise itself and by the surrounding community? it certainly is not solely because it took the artists three years to ask for “a gallery,” or “visibility,” or whatever one chooses to acll the provision for art’s “other half.”No, larger things are operating here, and i will try to elucidate them.
First, there is the familiar reality of art being made for no good reason.”Art for art’s sake” is a creature of our century, and one of the realities threatening the life-bllod of art:its direct contact to daily human life.Like the extended family, local society and its artists have long ago come asunder, ne’er the twain to meet.Indeed, an artwork’s value sems to go up in direct proportion to how far it comes from. New yorkers prefer Soho to village, Bostonians prefer Village to Newbury St., and Concordians prefer any of the above to Stow St.
In such a rarified atmosphere, the Emerson is potentially a breath of fresh air, an idea that could give artists their place, and reunite them with their community through their work.But so far, with sporadic exceptions, the sixty-odd artists here seem more valued for their rare plumage as artists than for what they make and do. Whatever the size of the sacrifice in time, money, and spirit that is part of the opportunity to work here, the net results of that work are largely overlooked.
Linked to this is the popular conception of what “gallery” means.The image this word usually calls up comprises two main items:white walls and track lights. galleries look like operating rooms because we have generally found no more humane ways to put art before the public, which is then justified in its view of them as elitist and disconnected from reality.The Emerson rightfully seeks to escape any tinge of this white-washed elitist cleanliness by wrongfully burying its head in the sand with respect to finding better ways to publicize its artists.
“Visibility equals “gallery” equals “white walls and Kliegs” goes the logic, at which point hands are thrown up in dismay and specialists are called in. Somehow, a basic locus of contact between the work of the Emerson’s artists and the members of the community who enjoy art is seen as something extra, beyond the fundamental purpose of the Umbrella, and thus requiring outside technical assistance to put in place.
The second underlying reason has to do with the allure of an image, the same allure an artist feels as the trigger to production.This time the artists are Concordians devoted to the idea of an old public school suddenly brimming with creative ebergy, bustling with makers and doers of fine things, with it all rubbing off daily onto hundreds of children and other community members, who are thus freed from schoolmarms and lecturers in favor of a process oriented system of learning that takes place against the backdrop of actual artists’ studios.
Such a vision makes fine sense, not only to the myriad parents wondering where to put their children after school(or all day), but to a community pleased to re-field a public building in a public spirited way, and at the same time make a gesture of support to the arts.Such a gesture befits a community justly proud of its past socio-politico-culturo-historical achievements.
Where does the sole beholder of an art object-hopefully amused, and quite possibly shaken to his boots in one of many read Ezra Pound’s instants stand amidst all this?The nooks and crannies are rare. The Emerson’s self-image depends on large numbers and high visibility for its sense of worth. The aim must be broadside, the results dramatic, and everything easily photographable and visitable. the imagery is stronger if you have twenty kids at a time learning to throw pots than if you have Concord individuals, one at a time, merely looking at them. it all goes part and parcel with an era more interested in “how”than “what” or “why.” The Emerson ineluctably gravitates to the “how” of art, which is something neat and clean that stays out of the heart’s resinous heat, and which can be tackled institutionally with greater “eclat.”
The experience of art, though is not a spectator sport, it happens to one person at a time, in one place at a time, at one time at a time, even when the house is packed. the world that has burst loose in someone’s head never shows.And so, neither do this emerson’s plums, hidden in the tall grass.
I believe we must begin to consider all this in ways that exceed the word “gallery.” We must begin to make the Emerson go deeper than imagery for its meaning. we must ask what it si about art that is of deepest value to us and the community. Is not the experience inherent within art the very foundation of its value in the education of children?Is not the moving experience of an artwork the proper culmination of its making? Should not the artists’ horse go before the Emerson’s cart?
Acknowledgements:
1. Jim Lewis 2. Lion’s Club of Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan,2010. 3. Ved Vignan Mahavidyapeeth 4. University of Michigan, Library resources 5. Harvard Medical School, Post Graduate Association
Copyrighted December 2010.