#blarty

Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty almost looks like something out of a fever dream, some Dalí landscape mistakenly displaced into the real world. Under the sweltering Utah sun, you might even believe it were a mirage. The form and plain existence of Smithson’s earth art is something stranger than fiction, and I would even argue, something greater than fiction. Visiting the landscape one day takes its place of pride on my bucket list for the Spiral Jetty represents one of the noblest virtues an artwork could ever embody: putting the life before the art.

Located in a quiet corner of the Great Salt Lake, the Spiral Jetty throws a gauntlet before its travelers to complete an often underestimated, grueling pilgrimage. No matter how prepared a journey may be, there are undeniably inevitable hitches along the way that can stall or even compromise the mission. From nebulous directions to the creeping sense of anxiety from hours on the road, the trip to the Spiral Jetty is a deprivation chamber of sorts. Confined with only the time, company (or lack thereof), and space of your vehicle, should you venture to Smithson’s scroll, you will be forced to confront your identity across deep and primal lines. There are truly few experiences quite like it that can cut through the masks of formality and inauthenticity we put on to survive every day, to homogenize with our everyday.   

Due to the increasing severity of Utah droughts, the Spiral Jetty is now clearly visible for the majority of the year, but prior to the shift in climate, Smithson’s magnum opus was largely covered by the lake’s overflowing waters. Everything from the vibrant pink aura from the surrounding crustaceans to the trodden path itself was completely obscured. So why spend unrecoverable hours on the trek? Why sacrifice meaningful relationships and virtues of self-assuredness for a reward so seemingly arbitrary?

It’s that risk, that raw vulnerability alone that justifies the journey. The Spiral Jetty is little more than a cover for a personal odyssey. For better or for worse, the landmark demands its travelers to meet it halfway in the spiritual aspect of the adventure. While the natives and terrain provide enough to juggle with on the way there, what the image of self-discovery looks like, is an abstraction painted entirely within your own mind. 

639 years. That’s 233,235 days, 20 billion seconds, roughly 9 lifetimes. Even when put into specific and deliberate numbers, such a timeline is hardly fathomable to us. It is no new thought that time, much like art, is relative, but is it so simple to enhance the legacies of our creations by prolonging their mortality? If so, what’s the date of expiration? How long would it be until the parts of us we try so desperately to leave behind are invariably forgotten and eventually die?

A fascinating project that might shed some insight on such heavy questions is an ongoing performance of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible in the Halberstadt Cathedral of Germany, or more accurately, a 639-year performance of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible in the Halberstadt Cathedral of Germany. The context behind this installation’s set up can seem deceptively contemplative, surely such a project must be the brainchild of some deeply brooding cliché of an artist trying to communicate a sentiment the general public just wouldn’t get. How the Halberstadt performance came to be is much more of an Occam’s Razor type deal. A curious coalition of composers and musicians saw the potential in the practical permanence of the organ to perform the renowned Cage composition truly as slow as possible. The determination of the location and the seemingly random timeframe of 639 years was equally as straightforward. The Halberstadt Cathedral is home to the world’s oldest, permanently installed organ, an achievement the institution laid claim to for 639 years prior to the start of the music project. 

As simple as the Halberstadt performance’s motivations were, such an ambitious installation cannot help but garner questions concerning its greater significance to the art world. Of the many conversations sparked by this longstanding sentinel, I’m most excited about the performance’s implications on the death of art. Assuming perfect maintenance, this truly will become a unique capsule of change no generation for a considerable amount of time will be excluded from. Comparable projects that come to mind are Manfred Laber’s Time Pyramid and the Great Mosque of Djenne.

Sandro Botticelli’s La Primavera is hailed as one of the greatest pieces of the Florentine Renaissance. Currently housed at the Uffizi, the painting strays not far from its origins in the old master’s studio. La Primavera is true to its name as a blizzard of Greco-Roman and 15th century Italian symbols of love, peace, prosperity, and most importantly, life were lavished upon the canvas. The work brings with it a new magnitude to the label “masterful” as Botticelli showcases his sophisticated grasp over the human anatomy and botany, with La Primavera containing at least 138 accurately depicted species of plants. So how does a painting such as Botticelli’s Spring, that is brimming with so much life and celebration for human exceptionalism, act as a harbinger of the death of art?

Best known for his paintings The Birth of Venus and today’s focus, La Primavera or Spring, Botticelli was a favorite of the Early Renaissance. Though Botticelli was one of the talented Florentine artists fortunate enough to be in the generous employ of such institutions as the Catholic Church and House Medici, he was certainly the black sheep of the group. Whereas other Medici painters and sculptors such as Donatello or Michelangelo were constantly experimenting with and redefining the western canon, Botticelli was unique in that his style dwelt steadfastly and stubbornly in traditional Quattrocento artistry. Botticelli worked by a doctrine of perfection rather than proficiency, and so his career bears evidence of his noble intent to constantly elevate and refine the fundamentals so many artists that followed him sought to move past from. 

Though he founded a comfortable and consistent lifestyle off the Florentine aristocracy’s dime, Botticelli’s piety and artistry were brought at direct odds with each other come Savonarola’s reign over Florence. Authoritarian Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola briefly usurped social prowess from the Medici family in the early 1490′s. Amongst the sea of his enamored congregation was Sandro Botticelli. The first changes to Botticelli’s work eerily paralleled that which was earlier damned by Savonarola in his fiery sermons. Shortly after Savonarola lamented over how contemporary depictions of the Virgin Mary dressed her as a whore, Botticelli’s renditions of the Virgin became noticeably more conservative. His paintings gradually adapted to fit Savonarola’s severe ideal of proper Christianity until art itself became a cardinal sin. 

Likely the most recognizable act of Savonarola, the Bonfire of Vanities engulfed the decadence and luxury that practically defined Renaissance Florence in great pits of licking flames. Inspired by the intense insistence of his spiritual leader, Botticelli took some leave from painting and threw many of the pieces he did have into the Dominican friar’s violent show of fanatic spectacle. Though there is no consensus over what became of Botticelli’s career after the few tumultuous Savonarola years, the tangible effect it did have has left centuries of questioning and for some, a faint sense of loss. 

La Primavera is one of several Botticelli’s paintings that were fortunate to have survived the supposed purge, but there must be some feelings of inquisition for what happened to the rest and the extent of this body of lost Botticelli work. Personally, I see the mere existence of the question behind the unmourned tragedy of Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities as a true representation of the death of art. As discussed with the Bamiyan Buddhas, remembrance is an integral component of the life of a creation. Without the soul, without the physical aesthetic, what do these lost Botticelli paintings possess but a vague conjecture of once being? Forever shrouded in anonymity, these pieces still have some strange hold, at least on me. They leave an indelible and bittersweet mark upon my impression of existing Botticelli paintings like La Primavera or the Birth of Venus in that I think I will always wonder about what potential, what great capsules of culture, were lost to the fire. 

Along with the Mona Lisa and American Gothic, Edvard Munch’s The Scream has become one of the most ubiquitous pieces in all of art history. It has been parodied and referenced in TV shows and movies spanning from The Simpsons to Home Alone yet despite our virtually inherent familiarity with The Scream, we’ve forgotten so much about the meaning of its content and the man behind the canvas. The entire history of the painting’s eras of cultural progression and regression is incredibly extensive and nuanced, certainly an area of study I couldn’t do justice with a 500-something-word post (for a more in depth discussion of Munch and The Scream, I’d recommend reading So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch by Karl Ove Knausgaard). Suffice it to say, I’ll do my best to give an adequate introduction to Edvard Munch through a basic analysis of his most famous painting, a story that--for our purposes--we’ll start in 1893.

To start, Munch was a prominent artist of the school of Expressionism. Stylistically and dogmatically running along a similar vein to movements such as Neo-Impressionism and the Vienna Secession, Expressionism sought out to capture human experiences and emotions in a way that didn't conform to the traditional ideal of realism. This general philosophy is well exemplified in The Scream. In the foreground, the sexless, waif-like namesake of the work stands as the focal point of the piece. Any clue as to the identity of the figure is left intentionally ambiguous as they possess only the most elementary characteristics of a human being; they aren’t any person in particular, simply a representative of anyone and everyone. The backdrop surrounding the figure is hazy and distorted, though not calming. The fiery sky violently streaked with hues of warmth sinks to meet the cool and neutral world beneath it. Munch didn’t disguise his bold brushstrokes or the chaotic energy of the piece. The distressed character in the foreground seems to be the only one cognizant of their threatening environs as life seems to continue outside of their anxiety: two passerby stroll along the bridge and boats ferry across the horizon. Though cartoonish and obviously not a literal reflection of our world, The Scream is especially relatable in that it captures the essence of the almost claustrophobic helplessness of coming into solitary adulthood in a rapidly evolving social climate.

The Scream is Munch’s best known work, but the whole of his portfolio with such collections as his Frieze of Life, strengthens his claim as one of the most inventive and talented artists in conveying emotion. Ranging from bleak devastation to joyful celebration, Munch’s basis for his art was deeply nestled in his reality, a reality passable as a modern Greek tragedy. Munch’s childhood was shrouded in paralyzing fears of death, loss, and trauma. He lost several of his siblings and his mother at a very early age and was primarily reared by his paranoid, obsessively religious father. He spent his early life bedridden with thoughts of losing himself to mental illness and disease only to be met with an end of righteous punishment. In summary, Munch’s life was tragedy, an inescapable one at that. In his established career as an artist, Munch finally found an outlet in painting, one of the few joys he had growing up. Through his work, Munch expressed indescribable sensations of longing, contentment, feeling at home, and feeling like there was no place of belonging at all.

Though a significant portion of Munch’s work like The Scream evokes objectively negative feelings, in the same sense, there’s also a feeling of morbid comfort in looking at it. To know that, someone understands and sympathizes with how you feel even if that connection is built vicariously through their work. The Scream certainly isn’t a pretty painting, but it’s undeniably powerful. It confronts us with what we should already know about ourselves in a way that's scarcely been challenged. Though it approaches us through some inherent familiarity, The Scream and other Expressionist work have catalyzed novel discussions of how we relate ourselves to our psychology. In other words, the real legacy of Edvard Munch is his art’s propensity to inspire social change. With that, Munch will likely always be initially recognized as the painter of The Scream, but it would greatly serve us to also remember him as Edvard Munch, champion of the human experience.

Six Persimmons was painted by 13th century Song Dynasty artist, Mu Qi. Simply, yet masterfully executed, the timeless ink wash has established a legacy of eliciting more questions than it answers. While its enigma may continue to stand in perpetuity, answering the ultimate question of what the piece means is one I often revisit. Every year or so as I take the time to reflect on its significance, my answers seem to paradoxically become less assured and my familiarity with the painting more questioned. Though in the beginning I was first troubled by this, I don’t see it as a point of insecurity anymore; rather, it prompts necessary of times of self reflection and motivation to expand my mindset and reevaluate where I’m at mentally and emotionally. While some might consider this to be somewhat of a non-answer, the Six Persimmons is both an emblem of how far I’ve come in personal maturation and self-esteem and a reminder of how far I’ve yet to go. My answer may change tomorrow or next year, but the spontaneity of my regards to Six Persimmons is what initially attracted me to the piece, and it’s what continues to strengthen my bond with it. So, in a question that has no true answer that has been entertained by historians, philosophers, Renaissance men, and⁠—briefly⁠—by this art history blog alike, when you see the Six Persimmons, what does it mean to you?