I forget the exact train of our conversation, but it touched on movies, books, and movies adapted from books. I remember there was some mention of "Hail, Caesar," by the Coen Brothers, although I don't think it could have played that much of a role in the discussion because it hadn't opened yet. Either way, I probably made some disparaging remark about the Coens, who consistently under-perform their obvious talents. This remark occasioned a comment on her part:
"Thomas, sometimes I wonder about your artistic taste. I'm not sure I trust your sense of beauty."
Broadsided.
The comment itself was made somehow more incisive by the fact that it was delivered in such a delicate little voice. I had no idea what she was talking about, because I generally-ahem-pridefully think I have at least a basic grasp of what looks beautiful and what doesn't. I must have conveyed my bemusement, because she blushed and quickly tried to dilute what she had said: well, maybe I didn't mean exactly that, because, you know, you read a lot and we sometimes like the same things, but I don't know whether I understand why you don't find certain things beautiful when they so obviously are.
It just came to me! I remember what I said that warranted her polite condemnation: I said that I thought G. K. Chesterton wasn't that good of a writer. I think he was a brilliant columnist, but he's hardly deep. When he is, it feels more like he's possessed by a sudden inspiration from on high, not by the organic working of his own talent. He's enjoyable, occasionally delightful, and now and then conveys real insight. However, because Catholics like to lionize their successful laymen, especially authors/artists, I think the devout readers of his work paint him with far too adoring a brush. (They'd use it to laminate Lewis with more comfort, but there's the enduring irritation of his having remained an Anglican in spite of all.)
Comments in this vein spurred on my Polish friend to blast my taste in art and my sense of beauty. I was politely offended, of course, and did my best to degrade the conversation by poking fun at everything she said. This was probably ignoble, but given that I had just been confronted by so unexpected an enemy, it was my "fight" reaction. After I had pushed back a bit, we came to a compromise statement: She was unsure whether my appreciation for beauty had any rhyme or reason to it, because many things I said I liked jarred with things I said I didn't like.
That is a "j'accuse" worth thinking about, and in more ways than one. Is there a pattern to my tastes? And perhaps more importantly, should there be?
The obvious answer to the first question is yes, and the obvious answer to the second is that such a question doesn't make sense.
People are pattern-making beings. We're largely patterns ourselves, for heaven's sake. Biologically, we exist because of a consistency of behavior on the part of genes, cells, antibodies, gut flora (kom-bu-cha!), neurons, muscular reactants, etc. As far as choices are concerned, we thrive insofar as we are able to create and implement patterns of behavior that accord with our natures. Intellectually, we require patterns to understand even the simplest ideas: recognition is largely a function of repetition.
The world of art/beauty is also subject to this law of pattern. Monet's "Water Lilies" are beautiful insofar as one is able to step back far enough to see the full shape of the painting; da Vinci's "Madonna of the Rocks," pleasurable enough on first viewing, takes on greater glory when one can spot and comprehend the intense geometry he worked into the composition. A negative example: critics who view Jackson Pollock's work may gush about its importance, its relevance, its audacity, its challenge to the onlooker, its defiance. Nobody looks at "Autumn" and says "beautiful" with a straight face.
So yeah, duh. Art is about patterns pleasingly done, so of course someone will have a pattern to the art he/she likes and dislikes. This also cuffs playfully at the second question: should we have a pattern to our likes and dislikes? Should gravity affect you when you jump off a cliff?
But! Just because there's a pattern to something, doesn't mean that it has to be simple. It doesn't even have to be generally comprehensible. So the second question really becomes: Should someone's taste in art be guided by a simple principle, easily understood by his cigarette friends?
I don't think so. I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be that way, and I think that if people are honest with themselves, they'd admit that trying to live by too simple a pattern stunts them in critical ways. Religious fundamentalists are a good example: just look at their adult children.
I think that the most important patterns in our lives are the ones we understand the least. Take the operations of cellular dynamics: we know an awful lot about how our bodies work, but we are only able to contemplate one particular thread of the tapestry at a time. Looking at the entire work of life in even a single cell, all at the same time, would break a veteran viewer. Can you imagine holding the pattern of all the activity in the human body in your mind at one moment in time?
Can you imagine holding the pattern of world economics in your mind all at one time?
Can you trace all the vagaries and loop-de-loops of a campaign race for city council, let alone for the Presidency?
Can you imagine contemplating the pattern of give and take in a romantic relationship, all the interplay of attraction, desire, guilt, fire, sorrow, and sacrifice that play out between even the most mundane lovers?
Can you imagine yourself looking squarely at the ins and outs of God's working on a soul through grace and the Sacraments?
This is what God says to Job when he speaks out of the tempest. You don't even understand yourself, boy. How can you possibly understand me?
...OK, so, descending from my poetic vein. Appreciating beauty is natural to us, and like every pattern that comes with the Model-T Human, it's not as explicable as we'd like it to be.
That's why I think I can hold views about art and beauty that sometimes seem to be at variance. Just to take an example: I dislike Lorde's "Magnets" and love Tove Lo's "Habits (Stay High)." Both are songs about complicated love, and both are sung by talented songbirds. But in the first case, the lyrics, which are pretty foul, are uninspiring and dull. There's nothing beautiful in them: it's art, "not of the heart, but of the glands." With "Habits," the lyrics are also pretty rancid, but what a difference there is! The sheer depth of loss they convey is illustrated and gilded by the overcompensation of dirt the singer packs into them. She's trying to shock us, and herself, away from realizing how horribly empty we are, now that the one we love is gone and won't come back.
Just try this trick: imagine Tove Lo singing "Habits" while running from an image of the crucified Jesus. (But I am NOT advising you to watch the music video, whatever you do.)
At the same time that I love "Habits," I hate most everything else about pop music. I prefer singer/songwriter fare, as well as chant and plainsong. Polar opposites that these are, I still believe that there is a pattern to what I like and dislike. Music that speaks to authentic suffering, real love, true experience, is music I enjoy.
Bluntly, then: as far as I can tell, art is beautiful insofar as it accords with reality. And reality is bigger, messier, murkier, and more dangerous than we can understand.
So there, Polish-philosopher-smokerchick-friend. Do I have a pattern to my love of beauty? Sure. Is it simple? Nope. Should it be?
I don't know. Where were you when God created the heavens, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
No comments:
Post a Comment