it makes me wonder a little about the importance of permanence in art, or whether the word permanent plays any link in art beyond the memory we have of it. it reminds me of the way tourists in a famous museum will go about excitedly from painting to painting, photographing every image they feel touched by (or have been told they should feel touched by). who looks at those pictures once they're taken? what does the image even mean once it's been isolated onto a 4x6 inch reprint?
while wandering about a contemporary korean art exhibit the other day, i came across a wall covered in mylar and black packaging tape by the burgeoning artist heeseop yoon:
i immediately cringed with sadness at the thought that all of the meticulous detailing would go to waste at the installation of the next exhibit, but just as suddenly wondered if its impermanence wasn't one of the greater factors in its magnificence. was it the actual piece that made it great? or the reaction it gauged in its audience? what was the eternalizing element?
on my way home, i walked through a puddle of origami papers that had fallen into a large swirling heap in the subway terminal. as i looked back, the wisps of color fluttering gently up here, congregating slowly down there in the breeze of passing footsteps filled me with a sudden and forceful -
oh!
without any sort of disrespect or disregard for the treasures of art that we keep in museums and study in books and pass about in our homes and in our hearts - if art acts as a metaphor for life, surely we can say: life is art.
2 comments:
i think it might go back to our sisyphus discussion--how no matter how many times the rock comes tumbling back down the mountain, he wakes up the next morning and pushes the thing right back up. his task is never finished. and yet it is, like you say, an eternal cycle. and in that cycle i think that renewability becomes possible. and that is the exciting part about art--"permanent" or "impermenant." none of the permanent art is really all that permanent anyway--the second paint starts drying on the canvas it also starts to deteriorate. the image that is put down "permanentlY" is always changing, even the tiniest crack changes the initial composition. and there is a real, honest beauty in that possibility and inevitability of change.
You really struck a chord with me on this one--I have often thought about what art is since it is in reality never truly permanent.
I think art is anything that is recognized, shared, and experienced.
I think your sharing of the oragami papers in the subway is a perfect example.
(What a lovely image by the way...it keeps echoing in my mind, imagined in the amped saturation and increased contrast you are so fond of in your photos)
Those papers were beautiful, but I don't think they were art until you recognized them and shared them with us--and I think it's this act of sharing that is what can make art so powerful.
In a way, art only exists in memory. Those papers have long scattered, but the memory you retain of them and our memory of reading about them preserves the art of that moment. A Rothko is no different. It may hang on the gallery wall in San Francisco a thousand miles away, but for me it only exists in memory. If I saw it again, it would be another piece of art--not necessarily because the canvas changed, but perhaps because I did.
The art is not in the brushstrokes or colors, but in the ideas behind them and the thoughts and feelings they inspire.
I think this is why I love theatre so much. It is one of the most impermanent of all the arts. It is a flash of light and color in the dark and then it is gone. It is never the same twice. Each performance is different and only retained in the memories of the audience and performers--such intimate and unique sharing.
Post a Comment