One week ago we were asked to read an extract (pages 3 to 21) of the book “Art Objects – Essays on ecstasy and effrontery” by Jeannette Winterson for discussion at the Visual Studies tutorial of 29 October. We all agreed at the tutorial that the text was easy to read which, according to the lecturer that assigned it to us, was part of the reason she chose it.
Please note that the following version has been updated as I was rather lazy in my original blog and did not cover the whole of the extract or the class discussions.
“Arts objects” was written in 1995 by Jeanette Winterson, a writer who was born in Manchester on the 27 August 1959. I checked the customer reviews and ratings for this book at the site http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Objects-Essays-Ecstasy-Effrontery/dp/0099590018 and saw that the majority of readers gave it a 5 stars rating. Art objects is a collection of essays about art which is provocative and inspiring. Here is a comment a customer put as a review from the site http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Objects-Essays-Ecstasy-Effrontery/dp/0099590018 “This collection of essays on the Arts is a refreshingly different take on the place of culture in our lives“.
She writes about her trip to Amsterdam in the segment we were given. According to http://www.goodreads.com/ book/show/15048.Art_Objects “Winterson begins by writing about falling in love with a painting and then with painting in general–extending a trip to Amsterdam to spend full days at the art museum and nights reading about painting“. When she saw the painting, she was moved by it but couldn’t understand it since she had never been interested in the visual arts before this. She deduced that art must have a language since it speaks to the viewer and touches the emotions and that this language is both subtle and impactful. She states on page 4 that “art, all art, not just painting, is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar.” Her problem is that she does not know the language and now wants to learn it desperately. The only way she can do this, and so learn to love art in general and modern art in particular, is through reading books about art by writers who are adept at the language. However, she does not wish her view of modern paintings to be influenced by modern writers, so she restricts her research to writers from the past, particularly Roger Fry who did more than anyone “to promote and protect new work during the first thirty years” of the twentieth century. (p6)
I believe that this idea that art has a language of its own is true and relevant to photography. For example, a photographer may decide to stop photographing for a period and would be surprised by how far the world of art had changed in that period. The art world is constantly changing and as such we can never truly be familiar with it or understand it.
Jeanette Winterson then goes on to affirm that “human beings can be taught to love what they do not love already ” but they have to work at it to succeed – “I have to work for art if I want art to work for me.” (p6) So she spent her time reading from art critics from the past on the one hand and looking at modern art on the other so as not to be influenced by the Old Masters syndrome. (This seems similar to John Berger’s claim in Ways of Seeing that certain paintings like the Mona Lisa are canonised and revered automatically simply because of their status and reputation). Eventually through her hard work and effort Jeanette Winterson learnt how to look at pictures and appreciate their emotional impact since “Art opens the heart” (p7)
Then we get the author’s description and condemnation of a typical gallery. “The public gallery experience is one that encourages art at a trot” and there is a “thick curtain of irrelevancies that screens the painting from the viewer” (p7) such as guide books and videos full of unimportant facts and gossip. “Experiencing painting as moving pictures, out of context, disconnected, jostled, over-literary, with their endless accompanying explanations, over-crowded, one against the other, room on room, does not make it easy to fall in love. Love takes time.” (p8)
In class we began to dissect the essay and discuss sections that we found most impactful. One such section is the following quote on page 7 “Art takes time. To spend an hour looking at a painting is difficult.” I think this is true on a practical level since you can only get to look at paintings in an art gallery for about 5 seconds each. There are a mass of other painting on the walls of the gallery, drawing your attention away from the one you’re looking at. You can also be distracted by other people trying to shove past you to see this painting too.
Mentally, it is also difficult to stay in focus on one painting for a long time because your attention wavers and you get distracted by other thoughts. Art may require time to be understood but it is very difficult if not impossible to stay long in front of one particular art piece. The lecturer said that she took a group to a gallery previously and had them stay looking at one particular image whereupon one person actually fell asleep and others got distracted by their phone and other items.
Jeanette Winterson states that looking at a particular painting for a long time will cause the viewer ever increasing discomfort, distraction and eventually irritation. “Admire me is the sub-text of so much of our looking” (p10) but the painting has shown up the viewer’s inadequacy through his failure of concentration and inability to understand the painting. “True art, when it happens to us, challenges the `I` that we are.” (p15)
Art is truth and can therefore be painful to experience. Western society has avoided “painful encounters with art by trivialising or familiarising it.” (p11). I think this is particularly true today with our mass reproduction of images through new technology and media. People often disparage modern art as rubbish while canonising the old without realising that canonising can kill paintings and that the influence of art can be seen through generations. The connection between artists is always present in subsequent artists’ work. “Leonardo is present in Cezanne, Michelangelo flows through Picasso and on into Hockney.” (p12)
This is important because human beings crave connections – “Connections to the past, to one another, to the physical world, still compelling in spite of the ravages of technology.” (p13) All art has the ability to bring back memories, to capture a moment. Art is an extraordinary transmitter and it is up to us to ensure we can receive and understand its messages. According to Winterson we should always ask whether or not we like a particular painting and question why we like or dislike it. This is fair to the painting and will clarify our feelings by revealing any prejudice, anxiety or mood.
This approach should banish the facile automatic claim of the lazy and ignorant that they don’t like or understand the painting. “The fashion for dismissing a thing out of ignorance is vicious.“ (p17) According to the author our current “I know what I like” approach is a consequence of school time conditioning and media culture. Mass media ransacks the arts for advertisements and reproductions. This bombardment makes us crave instant satisfaction and “fear what is not instant, approachable, consumable.” (p16) The only way to develop a palate for art is to look at as many paintings as possible and always use tested standards to evaluate them. Art requires effort and so it is easier to ignore it.
According to the author the universe is infinite and has everything we need, yet humanity feels a sense of lack and loss, “a primitive doomsaying that has not been repealed by technology or medical science.“ (p19) Art attacks this doomsaying. Art objects “to the lie against life, against the spirit, that is pointless and mean.” Faith and optimism, love and generosity are made visible through art. Art is a light of hope.
A customer review on the site http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Objects-Essays-Ecstasy-Effrontery/dp/0099590018 on the book in general is quoted here to give a wider picture of Jeanette Winterson’s interests and views:- ” She then moves on to literature and the defining qualities of good writing, pithy observations on truly reading a text “I do not mean the endless dross-skimming that passes for literacy” (page 111). There is a lovely digression in the essay entitled “The Pyschometry of Books” about her passion for book collecting (pyschometry is the occult power of divining properties of things by mere contact!). Much of what she says will strike a chord and her engaging writing style is very entertaining. But it is a tough read and best taken in small doses”
I found this essay interesting and insightful as it made me look much more deeply into the art world and the deeper meaning behind individual paintings and photographs, and appreciate the importance and value of art to society in general. However, I do not completely agree with the whole of her complaint about art galleries. as I personally found information about the artist and collections extremely useful in learning about the exhibits and appreciating them. Refreshments are important if you want to entice ordinary people in as John Berrger advises in his book “Ways of Seeing”. Additionally, art galleries in their present state are preferable to none – we can’t all be in possession of our own collections!
Moreover, In would not want to psycho-analyse myself with every painting I see. I think we like or dislike a painting instinctively depending on how it affects us and doubt that we could learn to love a painting we dislike merely by reading about it. I think that would only happen through age and more experience.of life.
Finally, I found the following review interesting and relevant and so decided to include it in this entry:-..
“In these ten intertwined essays, one of our most provocative young novelists proves that she is just as stylish and outrageous an art critic. For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the “Mona Lisa” and Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves,” she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us. Art Objects is a book to be admired for its effort to speak exorbitantly, urgently and sometimes beautifully about art and about our individual and collective need for serious art.“– http://www.goodreads.com/book /show/15048.Art_Objects “Los Angeles Times”
“Art Objects – Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery” (p 3 to 21) by Jeannette Winterson. Jonathan Cape, London 1995 f
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Objects-Essays-Ecstasy-Effrontery/dp/0099590018
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