It is raining, raining, raining. Our mud room has flooded. All sills are wet. The foxgloves and roses are leaning over to examine the streaming earth. My husband’s tin can of a boat almost came a cropper but was raised just as it was sinking. I have not a penny, because the bank is closed due to flooding. The house smells of all the years between now and 1808, when it was plumb and had the fragrance of new-cut wood.
And I am thinking about the hedge maze in the back yard. There is no hedge maze in the back yard, but my children desire one, particularly the youngest, who likes to dash about the little one at the Farmer’s Museum.
This morning I sent my friend Phil an ecard from Peter Randall-Page’s web site: a picture of a curvilinear labyrinth tucked among the ecards of Peter Randall-Page’s sculptures. I suppose it is his own. The card didn’t go, which seemed about right. If life is a labyrinth with a hidden center, it’s meant to embrace confusion. Then I read an essay by Jo Edkins called Making Your Own Maze, and after that I looked at Tom Baxter’s brick maze, a front-yard extravaganza that a-mazes passers-by and brings a note of the eternally wacky and wacky eternal to the neighborhood. It looks quite wonderful in winter, when the bricks melt the snow. I cannot make one like that, because I refuse to do trigonometry, and I can’t see myself wielding a diamond-bladed saw to turn severe bricks into obliging curvilinear segments.
Privet. That is what I see in my future. It is suitable to the period, flourishes in dratted Yankee zone 3 (the front yard is 4, the back yard closer to the lake is 3), and settles down to be a hedge with relative ease. We have an ancient privet hedge along the driveway in front, and it’s quite healthy. I will plant more privet in the back, and I’ll find all sorts of interesting things—like the doll’s plate, clay marble, clay pipe, and shards that I have already found, digging holes with my favorite spade.
Most of my plans for the back yard have been cramped by The Dog, Susquehanna. My ideal is to have a place where children want to play. I already have two sun gardens and a shade garden out front, so I don’t try to make Hanna behave in a flower border—as she gets older, I might. Despite her, I do have a square garden room enclosed by wooden fence and lilac, rose wall with arch, and stone wall. Inside is a dining table and chairs and bench and assorted jungly plants. And I have a tiny gazebo covered with Dutchman’s pipe, assorted lilacs and rugosas, a lovely Bali cherry (there were more before my husband ran wild with the lawn mower), a wild plum, a Maiden Blush apple tree, a stone fairy table by a birch tree that is growing out of an apple-tree stump, and several raised beds for vegetables. There was also a splendid hydrangea standard before the Amish roofers dropped their dumpster right on top of it. A yew hedge loops around a greenhouse connected to the garage, but it looks fairly awful, because the dog uses it as a giant body-scratcher. That’s why yew is out of contention for the hedge maze. I don’t think privet will be as satisfying, but I might be wrong.
Nothing can happen until thousands of dollars tumble down the drain; the skyscraping killer ash that throws limbs about the yard must be dragged from the clouds. I hate to see her go, but since she is under stress and has already impaled the van and filled the yard with branches on three occasions, I think she is doomed, despite the best that cabling can do. As a mother on three on days that can be wild and windy, I have a fellow-feeling for her…
What, I wonder, should the maze paths be? Grass? Isn’t that a pain to mow between hedges? Pebbles? And how small can a hedge maze be and still be satisfying?
It’s raining. The ground is nice and soft and easy to dig. I suppose when the ash comes down, the soil will be hard and tough and resistant. As it should be, I suppose, since a labyrinth is not meant to be too easy.
***********
A site for turf labyrinths, by Jeff Saward.
Online copy of W. H. Matthews’ Mazes and Labyrinths (1922).
***************
The lake has entered the town, going far past the STOP signs and far past the No Parking Past This Point signs. The number of tourists is delightfully down, and most shops are closed. Lake Street will soon be Lake Street. Daring people sit on benches, neck deep, and six hapless teens try to raise a sunken boat and motor. Susquehanna-the-dog stinks. Susquehanna-the-river is green milk. The overflow drain in the lakefront park is a pretty little fountain. The garden of boulders and flowers and informational sign is giving pleasure and knowledge to the freshwater mermaids.
28 June
Oh, and the book promotion page will float back up, now and then, during the summer, like something tossed up on the Susquehanna, now a green muscular carrier of death and fertility. I hear that, down by Binghamton, at least one house slipped from its foundations and sailed down the river... And 25 miles of I-88 have vanished, so they say, along with some tractor-trailers. I hope the ferrying-to-camps goes well, or well enough.
Hmm. Can't take the van in for repairs, because "Portlandville is underwater." The dam is just a wee bit out of control. That sounds ominous. Maybe I'll try to check out the back roads this afternoon. Early tomorrow part of my crew is heading to faraway Turkey, but it's funny--so far we can't manage getting to the car rental! Dry us out, sun!
29 June
Blogger is being very, very whimsical. If I vanish, you know why.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Advice to an aspiring writer
Hi my name is L---. I'm 39 years old and I love to write in my spare time. I'm wondering if you have any advice as to what kind of education is necessary to become a successful author?
The only ‘education’ that is essential is a great deal of reading and a mastery of the mechanics of the language. It is quite possible to gain these things without ever crossing the threshold of a “school.” Schools give a structure, a reading list, companions, teachers, and deadlines. If these things would help you, then go for it.
I would love to publish my book someday, but I know I need to strengthen and sharpen my skills to complete it.
I have inquired about college, writing schools like Winghill, online classes (writer's digest)...not sure which is the best way to go.
Well, I looked up Winghill’s web site; I know nothing about it, and would want to see what sort of person is involved. I’m always dubious until I see the roster of instructors. Then sometimes I’m even more dubious, so tread with care and try to talk to somebody who has gone through their program. (Maybe the whole world knows about Winghill, and I’m a dunce! But make sure.)
If you would like critiques, there are online writer’s groups like “Critters,” or you can try to join a local writer’s group. In-person groups can be useful or can be harmful, so don’t feel that you can’t quit and look for another. I sometimes share pieces-in-progress with other writers via email.
Are you interested in a certain 'kind' of fiction? There are intensive writing programs in the summer that could be useful and give you a circle of friends who write—and who might like to continue a relationship afterward. I’ve never done anything like this, though I’ve taught week-long classes, but I’ve noticed that some summer workshops are extraordinarily useful. The very competitive ones seem best. People who go to Clarion, for example, are followed by that achievement for years, and have an advantage when they submit stories to markets in speculative fiction. The graduates keep up with the people who were in “their year” and support them; in addition, one works closely with six different writers and editors in the field. I’ve thought about this way of going about a writing life quite a bit, because I have a child who wants to be a writer/illustrator of fantasy and science fiction. The path from working on fiction and reading to going to Clarion to being a 'known' figure in speculative fiction circles seems to be a common one. I have no doubt that there are counterparts to this sort of workshop in many genres. I haven’t really paid attention to this subject otherwise, but I know there are long-established literary workshops in Squaw Valley and Saratoga and many other places.
Please let me know what you did to become a sucessful writer.
L--- H---
New Jersey
I don’t think that much helped me except my obsessive nature and my passion for reading and writing, plus--in discouraged moments--the knowledge that certain people I respect in the field thought that my writing was very good. My education had little to do with it, though I did read many things in school that I might have skipped otherwise.
The question of ‘success’ is an interesting one, and I’m not really sure what is meant by it.
In some ways I am a very ‘successful’ writer; in other ways, not. I’ve written books and stories and poems, and I’ve haven’t stopped striving toward what’s beautiful and alive and true. Yes, I’ve won some awards for short and long fiction, gotten plenty of pleasing reviews, and I'm grateful to the writers and publishers and editors in the field who have volunteered wonderful things about my writing. Most of my books have been published with what is, arguably, the premier major publishing house. I have a wonderful new agent. Best of all, I still take deep pleasure in the act of writing.
If that is “success,” I have it.
But perhaps that is not what the world means by success. I have a novelist friend who always calls me the Artist of the Beautiful; he means that I hew to my own course and have an instinct for the beautiful. Yet in Hawthorne's story of the same name, while the artist is utterly fulfilled and transformed by his magical artistry, he is wholly a failure in the world's eyes. Meanwhile, there is absolutely no doubt that in Hawthorne's eyes, the artist has triumphed. What could be more ambiguous--or more accurate about the artist's plight in our own time?
If success is having a large readership (something I would, naturally, like) or making filthy mounds of money (not bad, especially for paying back the sort of student loans you may be contemplating!) or being a ‘name’ (meaningless to me, but a corollary to having readers), then I do not have it.
Why not?
Like most in the vanishing 'mid-list,' I have never had a ‘push’ from a publisher. I’ve done many things that are ‘wrong’ for success. I don’t like to do the same book twice. In fact, my books often leap to a very different audience. I am fatally ‘nice’ and undemanding. In addition, the world has changed greatly since I began publishing, and writers have a new challenge in trying to find a niche in a frenetic electronic landscape. But I don’t regret not being pushy. I don’t regret not writing variations on the same book, over and over, as many writers do.
And I often feel an intense joy when the words are streaming onto the page. I guess that means that I’m going to go on doing what I want to do in the way I like to do it, and that I accept all of the consequences.
I don't know if any of this is a help. You may feel differently about many of these issues. However it is with you, I wish you much pleasure in making stories.
*****
I spent the afternoon grubbing in my garden, so the picture above is in honor of my little Eden. It's from Laurelines--lavender with oyster shells, at www.laurelines.typepad.com/. Okay, I see that Blogger says "no." Imagine it! Or go find it.
The only ‘education’ that is essential is a great deal of reading and a mastery of the mechanics of the language. It is quite possible to gain these things without ever crossing the threshold of a “school.” Schools give a structure, a reading list, companions, teachers, and deadlines. If these things would help you, then go for it.
I would love to publish my book someday, but I know I need to strengthen and sharpen my skills to complete it.
I have inquired about college, writing schools like Winghill, online classes (writer's digest)...not sure which is the best way to go.
Well, I looked up Winghill’s web site; I know nothing about it, and would want to see what sort of person is involved. I’m always dubious until I see the roster of instructors. Then sometimes I’m even more dubious, so tread with care and try to talk to somebody who has gone through their program. (Maybe the whole world knows about Winghill, and I’m a dunce! But make sure.)
If you would like critiques, there are online writer’s groups like “Critters,” or you can try to join a local writer’s group. In-person groups can be useful or can be harmful, so don’t feel that you can’t quit and look for another. I sometimes share pieces-in-progress with other writers via email.
Are you interested in a certain 'kind' of fiction? There are intensive writing programs in the summer that could be useful and give you a circle of friends who write—and who might like to continue a relationship afterward. I’ve never done anything like this, though I’ve taught week-long classes, but I’ve noticed that some summer workshops are extraordinarily useful. The very competitive ones seem best. People who go to Clarion, for example, are followed by that achievement for years, and have an advantage when they submit stories to markets in speculative fiction. The graduates keep up with the people who were in “their year” and support them; in addition, one works closely with six different writers and editors in the field. I’ve thought about this way of going about a writing life quite a bit, because I have a child who wants to be a writer/illustrator of fantasy and science fiction. The path from working on fiction and reading to going to Clarion to being a 'known' figure in speculative fiction circles seems to be a common one. I have no doubt that there are counterparts to this sort of workshop in many genres. I haven’t really paid attention to this subject otherwise, but I know there are long-established literary workshops in Squaw Valley and Saratoga and many other places.
Please let me know what you did to become a sucessful writer.
L--- H---
New Jersey
I don’t think that much helped me except my obsessive nature and my passion for reading and writing, plus--in discouraged moments--the knowledge that certain people I respect in the field thought that my writing was very good. My education had little to do with it, though I did read many things in school that I might have skipped otherwise.
The question of ‘success’ is an interesting one, and I’m not really sure what is meant by it.
In some ways I am a very ‘successful’ writer; in other ways, not. I’ve written books and stories and poems, and I’ve haven’t stopped striving toward what’s beautiful and alive and true. Yes, I’ve won some awards for short and long fiction, gotten plenty of pleasing reviews, and I'm grateful to the writers and publishers and editors in the field who have volunteered wonderful things about my writing. Most of my books have been published with what is, arguably, the premier major publishing house. I have a wonderful new agent. Best of all, I still take deep pleasure in the act of writing.
If that is “success,” I have it.
But perhaps that is not what the world means by success. I have a novelist friend who always calls me the Artist of the Beautiful; he means that I hew to my own course and have an instinct for the beautiful. Yet in Hawthorne's story of the same name, while the artist is utterly fulfilled and transformed by his magical artistry, he is wholly a failure in the world's eyes. Meanwhile, there is absolutely no doubt that in Hawthorne's eyes, the artist has triumphed. What could be more ambiguous--or more accurate about the artist's plight in our own time?
If success is having a large readership (something I would, naturally, like) or making filthy mounds of money (not bad, especially for paying back the sort of student loans you may be contemplating!) or being a ‘name’ (meaningless to me, but a corollary to having readers), then I do not have it.
Why not?
Like most in the vanishing 'mid-list,' I have never had a ‘push’ from a publisher. I’ve done many things that are ‘wrong’ for success. I don’t like to do the same book twice. In fact, my books often leap to a very different audience. I am fatally ‘nice’ and undemanding. In addition, the world has changed greatly since I began publishing, and writers have a new challenge in trying to find a niche in a frenetic electronic landscape. But I don’t regret not being pushy. I don’t regret not writing variations on the same book, over and over, as many writers do.
And I often feel an intense joy when the words are streaming onto the page. I guess that means that I’m going to go on doing what I want to do in the way I like to do it, and that I accept all of the consequences.
I don't know if any of this is a help. You may feel differently about many of these issues. However it is with you, I wish you much pleasure in making stories.
*****
I spent the afternoon grubbing in my garden, so the picture above is in honor of my little Eden. It's from Laurelines--lavender with oyster shells, at www.laurelines.typepad.com/. Okay, I see that Blogger says "no." Imagine it! Or go find it.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Things That Should Not Happen
Here are some handy guidelines for the nearest committee about to committ the error of a Middle School graduation ceremony.
1. Principals should not--never, no time, no how--be allowed to choose a poem to read at a graduation ceremony, particularly if they once served in the classroom not as English teachers but as P. E. teachers.
2. If Principals do get away with choosing a p-o-e-m by some awful happenstance, particularly chuckly little poems by Anonymous, they should not be allowed to read it to our Youth.
3. Principals should not invite their friends who manage local sports centers to speak to said Youth.
4. Principals should not invite people who will talk too much about themselves. Overheard conversation between two locals: “Why’d they ask X to speak? He just talked about himself!” Reply: “That’s all he ever talks about!”
5. People who cannot write their way out of the Proverbial Paper Bag should be muzzled shortly after approaching the podium. It is impossible to stifle too many of these guileless souls who clutch the podium with unwonted, beamful enthusiasm and burble forth to our Youth, and to us, who have neither the Youth nor the stamina nor the helpful swaths of innocence to help us endure.
6. Let’s all vote for a bit less of this freedom-of-speech stuff at the podium, a small but dangerous place, clearly booby-trapped.
7. Phrases that fill the minds of young people and their unfortunate families and friends with a subtle ache and a dense white batting, somewhat approaching the nature of cotton candy, should not be allowed.
8. Phrases that, with a little polishing, would feel comfy and meet and right in the mouth of Polonius (the guy standing there behind the arras, with the blood and so on) should not be suffered to live.
9. Anything that smacks of "The Lion King" must be booted toward the moon with cruel boots tipped with steel and hobnails galore. No more of this circle of life crap!
********************
I could add a picture of graduating 8th-graders, looking remarkably adult. I could add a peaceful picture of a classroom after hours. I could add a picture of a big yellow bus on monster wheels. All this I could do, if only Blogger would be sweet and not so recalcitrant about the posting of pictures! Later, maybe. Update: Later, afraid not. More suggestions for graduation frolics in the Comments...
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
One Day Closer to Paradise
Exhibit 1201
Among the assorted notes and debris in my box this morning, I found an Opinion Journal (WSJ) article by Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin (HarperPerennial, 2004) and winner of The Orange Prize. It is an interesting little commentary on the state of art, rather like the tales of janitors sweeping up an exhibit or mistaking an artwork for trash left by a visitor at the Tate Modern.
It seems a hastily-prepared plinth was separated from the sculpture it was intended to support. The head, a work demanding two months of careful attention from sculptor David Hensel, was rejected by the Royal Academy. The plinth and the head's little boxwood prop were accepted as "Exhibit 1201."
Here's the good and the bad news, as Lionel Shriver sees it: "For those who despair that artists these days seem to have lost the skill of fashioning meticulously crafted objects, don't blame Mr. Hensel. While the slate base took only four hours to hack from a mortuary slab, and the little boxwood prop less than an hour, he had painstakingly carved and polished that laughing head for two months. But alas, the sculpture itself has--shudder--emotional content. It was originally christened 'One Day Closer to Paradise,' a far too expressive title; Mr. Hensel would have been better off with the portentously enigmatic 'Exhibit 1201.' His laughing head is not only fatally well rendered, but exudes a sense of joy and hilarity, and the overtly evocative is declassé."
We are not amused! We are not amused!
As has been pointed out before, all parody dies in this constricted, airless view of art. Shriver offers an example: "Me, I just put a brick on my desk. I gaze in wonderment at the contrast in textures--the smooth, unyielding sides of the brick, the rough, almost sexual crumble on its chipped corner, the humbler, more submissive sensuality of the scarred plywood desktop. I marvel at the fierce, affirmative perpendicular of the brick, in firm opposition to the languid, taciturn serenity of the lateral . . . But that's not even funny, is it? Joseph Beuys has piled bricks on a floor of the Guggenheim and called it art. How exasperating, a field so far out in la-la-land that it is impervious to parody. You see what I mean about being out of a job." She ends by pointing out that artists are out of a job as well, in this context--and likewise the R. A.
Who ain't?
As Twain said, "Who ain't an artist?" Well, almost. Those famous words were, "Who ain't a slave?" But I think either line will work in this setting.
Déjà Vu all over again
If only David Hensel had intended "Exhibit 1201," the "work" would be no different from one of Marcel Duchamps' "readymades" (they seem not to have been entirely "found" objects but often slightly-different duplications of found things, thus adding a slightly odd and interesting note to the whole enterprise.) And that would suggest that in 2006 some of us are stuck in 1913, the year of "Bicycle Wheel"--or perhaps 1913, the year of "Bottle Rack." Or perhaps some of us are abiding in 1917, when a urinal titled "Fountain" shocked its day, almost a century ago.
The Most Official Work of Art in the history of the Royal Academy,
and, perhaps, the world
The plinth-with-boxwood-support was seen by the Royal Academy as a work of art. Therefore it is a work of art. Therefore, it is titled by the Academy. Therefore, "Exhibit 1201" is actually a Duchampsian readymade created by the Royal Academy!
Sadly, "Exhibit 1201" offers neither humor or playfulness, shock or surprise. We feel only weariness that once again the art world of 2006 should befool itself with faded shadows of Modernism.
More on that little matter of surprise...
Indeed, we in 2006 cannot be shocked by anything much in the way of art--except, perhaps, by an unexpected and masterful incursion of the beautiful.
Daddy Duchamps at the chess board
What would Duchamps think? Duchamps turned his back on many modes (post-Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism) and on groups of artists in the course of his progress. It certainly made him an interesting figure. Perhaps he would refuse to reply, turning his back on art--as he did in life--and sit down at the chess board. As he said, chess "has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized."
Oops!
Or, words & the wrong worldview
While Shriver is dead right that the well-rendered and the emotional is still far out of fashion (in academic and intellectual circles and often elsewhere), another element surely came into play. Think of Duchamps and his titles--The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (commonly called The Large Glass), Prelude to a Broken Arm (a "readymade" snow shovel), or Fountain. Many were whimsical or included rude puns intended to upset the bourgeousie. Now think about the title of Hensel's piece.
Words are things of power, and David Hensel used them in a way clearly forbidden by the art world--indeed, by a whole segment of the powerful and educated in Western society. Whether he 'meant' them, I don't know, but I do know where he made his fatal error. "One Day Closer to Paradise" emphasizes the joy of the sculpture, but the title also makes clear reference to a wholly unacceptable world view in the realm of the arts--a religious world view that affirms space for joy and that calls on the artist to fulfill his call not with detritus and evidence of the meaningless but with well-made things of truth and beauty.
What was the poor man about? In our era, this sort of thing is patently a thought crime!
This view reads the world as a place of trial, defeat, redemption, and victory--as a region bursting with complex and dramatic story, where joy is still alive. It is a view that proclaims that men and women--even artists--have souls, and that they can damage them by perverting their gifts. To borrow from Keats, it still affirms that a thing of a beauty is a joy forever.
And to point with a scattering of words at that out-of-fashion vision of the world and art and the role of the artist is, quite possibly, the source of David Hensel's downfall.
**********
There is a picture of the sculpture here. I'd borrow it, but Blogger is feeling whimsical and will not post images!
**********
Postscript: Laura's comment made me think that I should have pointed out that there is a great lively jumble of sites and organizations devoted to the return of beauty and the renewal of art--and just as surely, there are other sites accusing the "renewal" sites of squelching the "wildness" in art. Here are a few disparate examples: the Art Renewal Center is "committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence," and has sited itself firmly in the frying pan; Terry Teachout's article, "The Return of Beauty," deals with the subject--and even talks about the little Yankee snowdrift where I now reside (look for Glimmerglass Opera!) The sidebar of this blog contains links to Makoto Fujimura’s International Arts Movement, web site, and blog, with reflections on “a 500-year art,” suffering and beauty, the resurgence of beauty, and many other topics.
Among the assorted notes and debris in my box this morning, I found an Opinion Journal (WSJ) article by Lionel Shriver, author of We Need to Talk About Kevin (HarperPerennial, 2004) and winner of The Orange Prize. It is an interesting little commentary on the state of art, rather like the tales of janitors sweeping up an exhibit or mistaking an artwork for trash left by a visitor at the Tate Modern.
It seems a hastily-prepared plinth was separated from the sculpture it was intended to support. The head, a work demanding two months of careful attention from sculptor David Hensel, was rejected by the Royal Academy. The plinth and the head's little boxwood prop were accepted as "Exhibit 1201."
Here's the good and the bad news, as Lionel Shriver sees it: "For those who despair that artists these days seem to have lost the skill of fashioning meticulously crafted objects, don't blame Mr. Hensel. While the slate base took only four hours to hack from a mortuary slab, and the little boxwood prop less than an hour, he had painstakingly carved and polished that laughing head for two months. But alas, the sculpture itself has--shudder--emotional content. It was originally christened 'One Day Closer to Paradise,' a far too expressive title; Mr. Hensel would have been better off with the portentously enigmatic 'Exhibit 1201.' His laughing head is not only fatally well rendered, but exudes a sense of joy and hilarity, and the overtly evocative is declassé."
We are not amused! We are not amused!
As has been pointed out before, all parody dies in this constricted, airless view of art. Shriver offers an example: "Me, I just put a brick on my desk. I gaze in wonderment at the contrast in textures--the smooth, unyielding sides of the brick, the rough, almost sexual crumble on its chipped corner, the humbler, more submissive sensuality of the scarred plywood desktop. I marvel at the fierce, affirmative perpendicular of the brick, in firm opposition to the languid, taciturn serenity of the lateral . . . But that's not even funny, is it? Joseph Beuys has piled bricks on a floor of the Guggenheim and called it art. How exasperating, a field so far out in la-la-land that it is impervious to parody. You see what I mean about being out of a job." She ends by pointing out that artists are out of a job as well, in this context--and likewise the R. A.
Who ain't?
As Twain said, "Who ain't an artist?" Well, almost. Those famous words were, "Who ain't a slave?" But I think either line will work in this setting.
Déjà Vu all over again
If only David Hensel had intended "Exhibit 1201," the "work" would be no different from one of Marcel Duchamps' "readymades" (they seem not to have been entirely "found" objects but often slightly-different duplications of found things, thus adding a slightly odd and interesting note to the whole enterprise.) And that would suggest that in 2006 some of us are stuck in 1913, the year of "Bicycle Wheel"--or perhaps 1913, the year of "Bottle Rack." Or perhaps some of us are abiding in 1917, when a urinal titled "Fountain" shocked its day, almost a century ago.
The Most Official Work of Art in the history of the Royal Academy,
and, perhaps, the world
The plinth-with-boxwood-support was seen by the Royal Academy as a work of art. Therefore it is a work of art. Therefore, it is titled by the Academy. Therefore, "Exhibit 1201" is actually a Duchampsian readymade created by the Royal Academy!
Sadly, "Exhibit 1201" offers neither humor or playfulness, shock or surprise. We feel only weariness that once again the art world of 2006 should befool itself with faded shadows of Modernism.
More on that little matter of surprise...
Indeed, we in 2006 cannot be shocked by anything much in the way of art--except, perhaps, by an unexpected and masterful incursion of the beautiful.
Daddy Duchamps at the chess board
What would Duchamps think? Duchamps turned his back on many modes (post-Impressionism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism) and on groups of artists in the course of his progress. It certainly made him an interesting figure. Perhaps he would refuse to reply, turning his back on art--as he did in life--and sit down at the chess board. As he said, chess "has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized."
Oops!
Or, words & the wrong worldview
While Shriver is dead right that the well-rendered and the emotional is still far out of fashion (in academic and intellectual circles and often elsewhere), another element surely came into play. Think of Duchamps and his titles--The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (commonly called The Large Glass), Prelude to a Broken Arm (a "readymade" snow shovel), or Fountain. Many were whimsical or included rude puns intended to upset the bourgeousie. Now think about the title of Hensel's piece.
Words are things of power, and David Hensel used them in a way clearly forbidden by the art world--indeed, by a whole segment of the powerful and educated in Western society. Whether he 'meant' them, I don't know, but I do know where he made his fatal error. "One Day Closer to Paradise" emphasizes the joy of the sculpture, but the title also makes clear reference to a wholly unacceptable world view in the realm of the arts--a religious world view that affirms space for joy and that calls on the artist to fulfill his call not with detritus and evidence of the meaningless but with well-made things of truth and beauty.
What was the poor man about? In our era, this sort of thing is patently a thought crime!
This view reads the world as a place of trial, defeat, redemption, and victory--as a region bursting with complex and dramatic story, where joy is still alive. It is a view that proclaims that men and women--even artists--have souls, and that they can damage them by perverting their gifts. To borrow from Keats, it still affirms that a thing of a beauty is a joy forever.
And to point with a scattering of words at that out-of-fashion vision of the world and art and the role of the artist is, quite possibly, the source of David Hensel's downfall.
**********
There is a picture of the sculpture here. I'd borrow it, but Blogger is feeling whimsical and will not post images!
**********
Postscript: Laura's comment made me think that I should have pointed out that there is a great lively jumble of sites and organizations devoted to the return of beauty and the renewal of art--and just as surely, there are other sites accusing the "renewal" sites of squelching the "wildness" in art. Here are a few disparate examples: the Art Renewal Center is "committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence," and has sited itself firmly in the frying pan; Terry Teachout's article, "The Return of Beauty," deals with the subject--and even talks about the little Yankee snowdrift where I now reside (look for Glimmerglass Opera!) The sidebar of this blog contains links to Makoto Fujimura’s International Arts Movement, web site, and blog, with reflections on “a 500-year art,” suffering and beauty, the resurgence of beauty, and many other topics.
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