Art's Highest Aspiration

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First, I should acknowledge that to claim to write inclusively about “art” is folly. It is like claiming to write about “life,” or, certainly these days, “truth.”  Art is, perhaps more than any of life’s experiences, in the eye of the beholder. The creator of an object or an experience need only to declare it “art” and, for the most part - wanting to see ourselves as urbane, thoughtful, broad-minded denizens of the 21st century - we nod sagely and let it go. 

I will spare you both my rant declaring how, for much contemporary art, the accent should be on the first syllable, and the story of how upon taking my 93- or 94-year old father to an admittedly pretentious “contemporary" art gallery he loudly proclaimed, “I wouldn’t hang that in my toilet!” Rather, I would like to muse a bit about a less controversial but under-examined aspect of the wide world of “art.”

We are in Colonial Williamsburg where, as usual, we are attending lectures by the Founding Father’s alter egos who seek to remind us of the radical nature of the experiment that became the United States. Interestingly, Patrick Henry, George Mason and James Madison all seemed particularly interested in the last of the inalienable rights guaranteed in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and later in the Declaration of Independence: the pursuit of happiness.

Simply because Happiness trails Life, Liberty, and in Virginia anyhow, Property, does not mean that it is in any way secondary to those other inalienable rights. I would go so far as to argue that the possession of those other rights pale into insignificance if we have not Happiness. Even further - happiness is the ultimate goal of life, of liberty, and of the acquisition of property. We often get that twisted these days believing that the acquisition of property automatically results in happiness, or that life and liberty can meaningfully coexist with profound sadness and in the absence of happiness. 

It follows that, for me, art’s highest aspiration should be the fostering of this most central of the inalienable rights enshrined in the central documents of our democracy - happiness. 

I realize that I am in a bit of a minority here. Much contemporary art, even the works of serious intention, seem dystopian. Cries regarding - and for me a bit repetitively - everything that is wrong with life in the 21st century. And no, I am not suggesting that we close our eyes to the very real challenges of global warming, the distortion of truth in the highest office in the land, the pernicious denial of scientific findings, simmering racism, and all those other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. These are vital issues that demand redress at the ballot box and the judiciary - we remain a democracy, and demagogues who forget this do so at their professional peril. But the works depicting the rise of Slytherin’s Dark Arts are not ones I would chose, to use my father’s words, to hang in my toilet or anywhere else.

I infinitely prefer the works of those who have chosen to beat their swords into pallet knives in pursuit of our inalienable right to happiness.  And just who might those artists be?  I take a great deal of comfort from the fact that Jeff Koon’s has again claimed the title of "most expense living artist." I know, I know, he can rub you the wrong way and just how much money do you have to have to spend 91 million dollars on a three-foot tall shiny rabbit? But at least when you look at Rabbit or most of Koon’s other works you smile, you get nudged, if only for a little while, toward happiness.

And there is a much less expensive option, a free one: Bob Ross.  

For those of you unfamiliar with the name, you will recognize him as the Mister Rogers of the painting world, the guy with the big hair and the soporific voice.  He was the host of a PBS program called The Joy of Painting that ran for 31 seasons from 1983 to 1994 and lives on via YouTube. Ross demonstrates landscape painting - completing a painting in each 27 minute program - using a wet-on-wet method. One could easily get the impression that Ross made up “wet-on-wet,” but in reality the method had been around for centuries used by such high fliers as Frans Hals, DiegoVelázquez, Caravaggio, Paul Cezanne, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, and Ross’s own mentor, Bill Alexander. One would never confuse Ross’s half-hour one-offs with the works of Caravaggio, although there are a few Cezanne and Monet moments. But the fact that Ross’s half-hour works rarely, if ever, rise to the level of timeless art isn’t really the point. The point is that the programs, almost without fail, do rise to the level of happiness.

And that move into gentleness and happiness is quite intentional.  During a lengthy military career Ross was the guy who hollered: "Do this! Do that! Clean this! Clean that!"  Ross decided that if and when he got out of the military he would never raise is voice again, and he would use that gentle tool to guide his listeners toward their inalienable right to happiness.  He goes on to report: “I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, "Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy." That's for sure. That's why I paint. It's because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.” 

I doubt if any of Ross’s students end up making a living selling their paintings. But again, profit really isn’t the objective, happiness is.  In my classes we often had cause to think about why artists created.  A few points often surfaced. There is a group of artists - living and dead - whose works appeal to collectors who buy art with their ears: 

Guest: “Is that a [insert name of hot artist]?”

Smug owner: “Yes it is. Don’t you just love his/her work? Set me back a pretty penny, I’ll admit.”

Those artists, if living, can hardly be faulted for taking advantage of these “commissions from the marketplace,” and creating similar works to cash in on those demands. There is however another group of creators who listen to what Ansel Adams called “commissions from within,” expressions of thoughts and feelings that the artist feels compelled to create. Many of today’s dystopian artists fall into this group. Rage, anger, and sorrow color many of their commissions from within.

Fortunately there is that other set of creators who hear a different internal muse.  They are Bob Ross’s creative kin who "can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it.”  It is important to point out that Ross’s painting is in some ways secondary to the almost lullaby narrative that accompanies his demonstrations.  I watch The Joy of Painting in bed via YouTube with my iPad propped on my stomach, ear buds crooning softly.  Inevitably I will doze off, startled awake by the iPad tumbling onto my chest.  I return my gaze to the screen amazed that entire mountain ranges, or rivers, or forests have appeared on Ross’s canvas in the interim. I shake my head, determined to attend more closely:

Ross: And look, maybe, maybe, maybe, yes, here it is, another little bush over here. And he needs a friend, so let another one fall out of your paint brush here - or wherever you’d like it. Because this is your world and you can make it however you want it to be .  .  .  

Slowly your eyelids conspire against your artistic will and you drift off to sleep wrapped snugly in your inalienable right to happiness.

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Nero's Fiddle

I am listening to Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra. Quite nice, however, I blame it for this bit of doggerel that popped into my head in the tiny hours of the morning:

Nero's Fiddle

The repugnance one feels

Over history’s assertion 

That Nero fiddled

While Rome burned,

Varies, in inverse proportion,

To the geographic,

Philosophic, political

And moral affinity 

One retains for that
Fabled metropolis. 

Stuck Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

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While grading final papers this evening I encountered, far from the first time, one of a group of aphorisms I think of as “sophomore certainties.” They aren’t actually restricted to second year college students. In reality they can occur at many, or at any, time in a life. But college students, actively seeking “truth” of one kind or another, seem uncommonly prone to embrace them. This one goes something like this: “Do what you love for a living, and you’ll never work a day in your life!” I haven’t actually seen it on a T-shirt or a coffee mug yet, but I have no doubt they are out there somewhere. So in providing a comment on the paper I did my standard “Let’s unpack this a bit” response. That is where I try to draw a distinction between a beloved avocation that shelters us from those “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and the reality of turning that shelter into an occupation. The devil, I opine, is in the details. One may love teaching, but hate lesson plans and faculty meetings. Love singing, but hate life on the road. Love painting, but hate marketing. Very few of us are Enya who loves making music, and confronts her paralyzing stage fright by self-producing and marketing her music from the safety of her home studio while keeping her audience at more than arm’s length. For most of us the devil is in those mundane “but” details, details that have a nasty habit of turning that activity we love into something called “work.”

So here at about 2:00 AM, I am toying with the idea that I am facing a similar, but inverted, version of the “beloved avocation versus work” paradigm.  When I talk with friends and family about the inevitable anxiety of retiring after having spent literally my entire adult life on one side or the other of a desk in a college classroom, they often respond along the lines of “But think of all the time you will have for drawing and writing!” Well, let’s unpack that a bit.

It is not as if I want to go on teaching. We are currently binge watching Boston Legal, and while I am enjoying it, I must admit to occasional moments of uncomfortable identification with Shatner’s character, Denny Crane, who is grappling with what he chooses to call “Mad Cow Disease.” In reality it appears to be more the very common “Where Did I Put My Keys?” or the “What’s That Student’s Name?” disease.  Anyhow, in one of the episodes we watched tonight Denny says to his buddy Alan Shore, “l wish I had never been great.” The notion, at least the one I heard, was if he had never been great, he wouldn’t have to confront the possibility that he was great no longer. I’m not sure how my “teacher-now” stacks up against the “teacher-used-to-be” who won a sack full of teaching awards, but I do know that “teacher-now” has to work harder at it, and frankly doesn’t carry the same passion into the classroom. So it is time to move on. The sticking point is move on to what?

Yes, I am looking forward to exploring my beloved artistic and literary avocations. But will that turn them into work? Will the devil be in those details? I find no guidance in the ads I see aimed at “people my age” that show tanned seniors playing golf and tennis, hiking the Appalachian trail, climbing Kilimanjaro, sketching the Parthenon, surfing and sipping cocktails at the club. They strike me as saccharine, verging on nauseating. I also find my colleagues who hang around the edges of the university into their 80s a bit creepy - sort of like the elders still allowed around the edges of the campfire, but being gradually nudged further and further from the meaningful flames. I guess I feel a bit like I am trapped in that old Peggy Lee song: “Is that all there is?”

The trouble is I don’t know what else I want there to be. A dear friend who preceded me in leaving the academic life gave me a bit of advice which, at the time, I found strange. He said “For six months after you retire, do nothing.” It doesn’t seem so strange to me anymore. Doing nothing seems a hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

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