Art on a wall, in a museum, in a cathedral, and so on... they always seem to be outside of time. They're preserved, restored, roped off, and often seen outside of their original context. And after a while, it all looks the same.
Some art does inspire me. But other times, most notably after visiting the Ufizzi Museum in Florence, all that art just made me never want to create art again. We clearly have too much of it so why on earth should I add more to the clutter? ART OVERLOAD!!
We went to Orvieto this past Saturday and saw the Last Judgment fresco cycle by Signorelli in the Duomo. (Which, on a side note, reminded me of a fun house due to the black and white striped marble exterior!) According to the New York Times Travel section, this is "one of the Renaissance's greatest fresco cycles." Good to know.Inside the chapel that housed these great Signorelli frecoes, everyone stood around, heads craned uncomfortably, to get a view of all the flesh and decay of Signorelli's work. (Take a gander! Here and here.)
I looked. And my neck hurt.
Other art students took out their sketchbooks to record whatever details struck their fancy. I whipped out my sketchbook (well, journal) but for an entirely different subject.
Graffiti.
From the 1500's!
Now THAT'S history - a far more fascinating expression and mark of presence than a great Signorelli.
So I spent the majority of my time in the chapel staring at two walls (conveniently at eye level for the salvation of my neck) copying graffiti. I pointed out the scratches to several others but no one else seemed to find it as spiffy and mind blowing as I did.
Dasvbbiano? Dasubbiano? From Arezzo, I'm guessing, in 1540! Or Francescho in 1536. Who were these people? What were their lives like? What did they look like? Did they get in trouble for scratching their names into the wall? Was the chapel a sacred space for them? Or maybe they were bored kids tired of going to church with their parents? When did that space become a look-but-don't-use-or-touch place you have to pay to get into with barriers set up to prevent a wayward viewer from getting too close to the now revered walls?
The 400+ year old graffiti made me notice every bit of modern graffiti I came across while wandering through the streets of Orvieto.
How about some "Hello moto!!" on recent public art? Or declarations of love to a pursued Pulcina scattered around several buildings in the town?
Apparently the human desire to leave a mark of presence, to somehow or another mark a location as a place that you were physically at, is hardly a new phenomenon.
Is the creation of art an expression of that same desire?
4 comments:
The process of viewing "high art" can be so darn boring. *yawn* rope it off, put it behind a sensor, stand a bored soul in front of it. Then you squint at it from 5 feet away, as you shuffle by in a crowded line.
I want to sniff the art, dangit! I want to touch it, and peer at it from 2 inches away...i want to see where a piece of the artists' hair got stuck in the drying paint...I want to see a little odd scratch on it...where did it come from? Did the artist drop a ___ on it 500 years ago (and what precisely would a person would drop on a painting 500 years a ago?), and then proceed to curse in Italian...."spaghetti!!!"..I wonder what the popular curseword of the day was....
The point is....some art can be so darn boring...and can say SO little about anything of any importance. What does this darn landscape have to do with anything?! What does this boring still life say about life...human nature...history? hehehe, the funny thing is that a lot of still life paintings say a TON about the culture of the time...vanitas themes...flemish baroque still life paintings, and the FOOD sysmbolism are terrible fascinating too- I wrote a whole research paper on it! So sometimes I suppose one must slog through art history courses....
i got sidetracked.
What was my point?
I'm basically in agreement with you. Long live urban art...guerilla art....random proclamations of love...and long daydreams and ponderings of what life was like for the maker of that tiny unnoticed, unloved little scratch at a corner of that famous piece of art.
indeed.
So how's that for a comment? nyack!
I truly agree with this blog and with what May said. Art shouldn't be roped, glamorized and have its very soul drained from it. It should be exciting, have meaning and one should be able to experience it first hand, not observed from a far. And this applies not just to what happens to be the current trend, but also with all forms of art. Whether it be fine art, performance art, literature and any other.
Graffiti is in itself a form of expressing oneself to the world, or to a certain someone, as may be the case. Just like you said, 'the human desire to leave a mark of presence is hardly a new phenomenon.' What has meaning is the why and the how, atleast in my opinion. Rather than just looking at the picture itself, one should try to understand WHY this painting made in the first place. How was it made and what did the artist experience while creating this piece?
As in the case of Pulcina, while it may seem that it is just a defacing of public property to most, it is in fact something quite interesting and amazing. Something, or rather someone, compelled this person to step out of the bounderies of society and express him/herself in this manner. While crude, it contains a lot of emotion, and more so than any art created just for the sake of creating art and obtaining fame.
When I visited the Louvre in France, I felt this way too. Even though it contained many, many masterpieces, I could not wait to get out. There were hundreds of people in there and one could only stand (behing rope at times... lol) in awe (couldn't think of anything else) for a few seconds before been pushed to the next piece by a mob of people behind you. And I was extremly dissapointed when I went into the Greek and Egyptian exhibition. The statues and sarcophagi were amazing and really breathless, but once again I couldn't not get the full feel of it because it was rushed and I could not get as close as I wanted to. I wanted to go up there and touch the marble, the stone and ivory, feel the rough and smooth edges of Athena's face, look at every nook in the Pharoes Sarcophagus and see the deatail of each figure on its side. Who created them and why did they coose to do so in this fashion? Who had the honor to model for the face of the Goddess.
The sad thing is that even now graffiti is being glamorized as well, and eventually, if it hasn't already, will one day reach the status of what is considered 'high art' and too will be roped off, become redundant and loose meaning. We have created so much that there is little room for any more creation. What is now being done is taking what we have and modifying it. In fact, most of us have long since accepted these concepts that any completely NEW form of expression would shock and perhaps offend most that it will be rejected until a new wave/generation of people takes over, wraps it up in a nice little package and incorporates it into society. (I think I mayhaps went off into too many tangents.)
Quick thought. Those great pieces of art were never meant for interaction beyond visual contemplation (as far as I know). Also, they have a limited lifespan like anything as far as human interaction goes. So it does make sense for all these things to be roped off so that the human interaction/appreciation can be spread over a much larger number of people over years and years and years. We can fill up the interaction quota by letting fewer people see AND touch/smell/etc it or stretch out that quota by limiting it to seeing from a distance. I had something else to add but I forgot it and another class begins shortly!
I definitely don't believe in the idea of art overload because there will always be the need for people to express themselves and for others to be able to see, read or hear it and relate to it. And the graffiti just shows that. True, graffiti is not generally considered fine works of art, but it is a form of expression (usually an expression of boredom). It just goes to show that art in its many forms is a human necessity.
gee, this is fun
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