Life Highlights: Norton Simon Museum

Went to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena with Ike today!

I picked him up around 10:30, and we began the trek to the Norton Simon, which was a museum recommended to me by my friend Maddie, who is an art history major.

On the way up, we sampled car snacks, talked about this blog, Ike's latest projects, and generally caught up on life.  I also spiritedly encouraged him to listen to some Bowie (read: forced) on the drive up.  We predominately sampled "Low", since I figured it would be the closest to Ike's musical tastes.

Once there we parked and had a nice picnic on the side of the museum, while we waited for it to open.  We amiably chatted about my recent contemplations about art that I posted a few days ago, and how I enjoy the Companion role (see: Doctor Who post) in creating said art.  Below is a picture of the path we took around the side of the building to find the perfect picnic spot.

When we got inside, we were going to immediately go to the Sculpture Gardens, but we got sidetracked by the first 20th-century paintings room.  Inside we saw some excellent Van Goghs.  We considered the techniques used and Impressionism versus realism.  I particularly enjoyed "Winter (The Vicarage Garden under Snow)", and we talked about our admiration for Van Gogh's mastery of colour as we examined "The Mulberry Tree" and "Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier)".

Then we went outside to view the Sculpture Gardens.  I really liked the lemon scented gum trees from Australia and the lilies in the pond that were a part of the beautiful gardens (photographed below).

Ike and I also viewed the sculptures, of course.  I was particularly proud of the fact that I recognised Henry Moore's name amongst the artwork.  I loved his sculpture "Family Group" which was auctioned off last September with Bowie's art collection by Sotheby's.  I contemplated that statue for hours, wishing I could buy it - something about that piece really spoke to me, and his artwork at the Norton Simon was equally impressive (although the heat outside was not).  However, below is a photograph of Ike contemplating an outdoor statue not made by Mr. Moore.

Once we made it back inside, we wandered past an Indian chess set from the 1800s which was at the entrance of the European Art galleries.  We contemplated the pieces (distinguishable only by the facial hair of the different armies) before I insisted we check out the Asian art downstairs.

Once down there we saw some excellent art from India, Pakistan, Thailand, China, Cambodia, and other regions of Asia that all depicted some sort of image from Hinduism or Buddhism.  Most of the pieces we saw were statues made out of stone or metal, with a few pieces related to religious texts and other icons.  We talked about the eastern religions in comparison to our Faith, and how we wished we knew more about non-western cultures and traditions.  We also talked about how the eastern pieces portrayed more graceful, dynamic movement with their figures than in western art, how there was an abundance of female images being the subject of their art, and, of course, all the phalluses there were.  So many phalluses.  Then we went outside to look at the Asian garden (of which there were only a few statues).

All of this, however, was merely the precursor to the main event that we stumbled upon, which was a temporary exhibit called "Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California".  Below is a picture of Ike amongst portraits of Galka Scheyer created by her various artist friends.

A few years ago, thanks to my friend Alex, I had found an inner love and appreciation for modern/contemporary art that I never knew existed, but I knew Ike didn't enjoy these sorts of works as much as myself.  However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much Ike and I were both moved by the pieces on display.

Ike's favourite pieces were all by Lyonel Feininger ("River Bank", "Sailing Ship", and "Peaceful Voyage III"), while mine were by Vassily Kandinsky ("Heavy Circles" and "Unequal") and Paul Klee ("Aquarium Green-Red").  Ike said he couldn't believe how Feininger came up with his compositions and was blown away by the lack of a figure-ground relationship.  Meanwhile, I loved the colours used in "Unequal" and the use of shape in "Heavy Circles".  I was particularly enamoured with the cut-up method Klee used to create his pieces.  I couldn't believe he cut up and rotated his pieces to create new, dynamic compositions.  Very Bowie-esque of him.  I would've never thought that such a method, used to compose some great music and prose, could also be utilized in the visual arts.

I was also fascinated by Ms. Scheyer's story of being an art collector and US liaison for "The Blue Four".  I loved that all the art in the temporary exhibit had little anecdotes about how the pieces came to be in her possession and her relationship to the artists.  It's stories like that which I wish were preserved with all the art we have in museums, galleries, etc. so that we can know the relationship and backstory between artist and audience.

Which brings me to the Debate of the Day - when Ike and I were examining Edward Weston's photography (also in Ms. Scheyer's collection).  Ike was excited to find his piece "Pepper", (since one of his friends talked about the personal significance of the piece of him), while I was fascinated by the placard's backstory on the photo "Kelp" (pictured below):

On the placard was written a quote from Weston about Ms. Scheyer and her friend getting into a two-day debate about which way to hang the photograph.  She and her friend agreed that the image was "stronger" when it was upside down, but disagreed about whether or not it should be hung that way.  Ms. Scheyer's friend said it should still be hung "right-side up" due to the objectivity of photography, while Ms. Scheyer insisted that such an outlook limited freedom of expression and that the piece should be hung upside down.  Weston then commented that in regards to the particular piece itself, he had to agree with her friend.

I asked Ike if he thought it would be acceptable to hang the photograph upside down, and he responded that he thought it should be hung right-side up.  Unsurprisingly, I disagreed and sided with Ms. Scheyer's opinion that the photograph should be hung whichever way was "stronger" (in this case, upside down).  The term "stronger" threw both of us for a loop since neither of us could agree on the definition of the word, and it was ill-defined on the placard  (unfortunately, I still can't find the quote's context in full on Google).  But we still had a rousing discussion about their debate all the same.  We then launched into outlining our arguments for why we would or wouldn't hang the painting upside down.

Note: I will attempt to reproduce Ike's perspective to the best of my ability, but because I disagreed with him, his argument may inadvertently come out weaker, less defined, and potentially misinterpreted in comparison to my own viewpoint.  We also agreed not to add in the extra components of "gift giving" or "purchasing" artwork, since that complicated matters too much to debate in the span of an afternoon.

Ike argued that the medium of photography demanded an objectivity to its essence.  A photographer worked hard to create and craft a certain image.  Moreover, the artist is the one who claims ownership over the piece and puts in the most energy to create the work (as exemplified by the fact the photograph is called a "Weston" rather than a "Scheyer").  Therefore, that image should be reprinted (and subsequently hung) in the composition the photographer designed because it adheres to the spirit of objectivity inherently found in the art of photography.

He also argued that all art is objective regarding the ultimate meaning behind the piece.  Therefore any art piece is an objective medium that the audience interacts with in order to discover the true meaning of the art's objective form.  This true meaning could be anything from an array of Biblical truths about Reality, Life, etc.

I argued that the picture should be hung upside down because the audience has more of a say in how an art piece's meaning is derived than just following the artist's intent and supposed objectivity of the medium.  I thought that if the audience (Ms. Scheyer and her friend) thought the piece was indeed "stronger" upside down, then the right way to hang the piece was upside down.  This is because I thought the piece wasn't finished with the act of taking the photograph.  For instance, in filmmaking, the movie isn't complete after production.  Editing enables filmmakers to make changes to their final outcome, even removing entire scenes that cost a lot of time, money, and resources to produce.  Therefore, flipping an image "in post", as it were, is totally valid ("fix it in post" looms in the back of my head).

I also cited the fact that I believed the meaning of the piece, although ultimately based in Gospel Truth, could be actively pieced together by audience and artist.  This means that both components play a role in contributing to the meaning of the piece, and therefore both parties are able to claim authorship to the work.  I used the example of creating a sculpture with the intent to show God's mercy.  However, as an audience member, Ike could view the sculpture and think the piece was about God's judgement.  In this example, I believed that we both contributed our perspectives in order to derive the true meaning of the piece.  The perspective of "mercy" and "judgement" here being weighed against the objective standard of - "Are both of our viewpoints speaking to a larger, legitimate Biblical Truth that the piece is about?"  Therefore, the work of art was unfinished before the audience came to it with their personal perspective.

Ike and I discussed our terminology, and that perhaps I should use the word "discover" instead of "contribute" since the true meaning of the piece was unchanged and objective.  I, however, wanted to use the word "contribute" because I liked that the word felt more active than "discover".  That isn't to say I believed that the act of discovery took no effort to perform.  Rather, I liked the idea of contribution because then audience and artist took equally active roles in claiming the piece as "their own" (redefining authorship in the sense of who "assigned" meaning to the piece).  In this fashion, a work of art could speak to each one as passionately as to the other party.

Ike also argued that from my logic of the audience "finishing" a piece of art, no work would ever be finished since one could have never-ending audiences view the piece.  I agreed and said that I didn't have a problem with this perspective.  I mused that art may never be truly finished since we were still coming to works thousands of years old and offering our own perspectives on the different pieces.  However, that thought was still being developed and I couldn't offer a larger defence to his point that there was an inherent problem with the idea that we would be stuck in a never-ending cycle of unfinished art.

We then considered the fact that we didn't disagree, but were instead talking about different things.  We agreed that the other had a valid point, after hearing them out, and then moved on to a different topic shortly after.  But now that I have had time to process it, I want to record my further reflections on the debate because I have had more time to consider Ike's good critiques to my viewpoint.

For a start, I realised we appealed to the parts of the debate that we were both personally attached to.  Ike discussed his recent quest to be more objective in both his personal and professional life.  While I realised how my belief in Bowie's radical perspective on art deriving meaning from audience and artist shaped my perspective in the debate.  Thus, after further contemplating if my bias toward Bowie was clouding my perspective, I referred back to his quotes about art that I have been ruminating on for the past year and a half. 

In the debate, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was trying to argue for a relativistic view of meaning based off of the concept that artist and audience can "contribute" to saying what the piece means - that the "true" meaning is whatever both participants agree upon.  And even though I think that Bowie talks about this as an accurate description of the current state of the art scene, I don't agree with this particular aspect of pluralism (again, see the previous article).  So I went back to basics and looked up my past article.  And after reviewing his quotes, I have realised that perhaps in our debate I meant the term "finished" in a different fashion than Ike.

In my argument, I think I was referring to Bowie's words from his excellent 1999 interview, "The idea that the piece of work is not finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation and what the piece of art is about is grey space in the middle."  The term finished here is, I believe, referring to the fact that now the meaning of an art piece doesn't stop at the artist saying "this is what I intend my work to be about, and that's all it can ever, should ever, and will ever be about".  A piece of art is still "unfinished" as long as the meaning can be "discovered".  This is in comparison to if the work is "finished" when it has been completed in whatever medium it takes (post production will end, the composer will stop writing, the painting will have a last brush stroke, etc).  

This is further elaborated on in his 1995 interview when Bowie states:

What it comes down to is that my interpretation of my work is really immaterial. I mean, I'm not really a believer in art and music being institutionalised or put in galleries and stuff like that. I think art is something for the use of the public. It's for the public to interpret it and use it almost like a sustenance for life. So it's the interpretation of the listener or the viewer which is all important. Authorship is in question now. [x]

And I suppose this is the other fashion I meant when I was considering the audience "contributing" to the art piece's meaning - the fact that audiences can take an active role in interpreting the meaning of the art, and that this interpretation is just as important as the artist's role in creating it to determine (or to "discover") what the true meaning is.  Therefore, authorial intent as to the meaning of the piece, or "authorship", is in question now.

Quick side-note here: I do want to point out that debates like these are one of the many reasons Ike is my best friend.  I think if I had a debate like this with anyone else it would turn into an argument or an "agree to disagree" truce.  Especially because more often than not Ike and I have extremely opposing (we prefer the term "complementary") viewpoints on pretty much everything.  But he's willing to cross into debates with an open mind and an open heart to eagerly seek Truth which is difficult to find and absolutely awesome.

Finally, we had to stop before our heads exploded.  It was an art overload.  But not before we took a quick detour into the "European Art of the 17th and 18th Centuries" because I really wanted to see "Portrait of a Boy" by Rembrandt van Rijn.  And it really was a brief stop.  I literally rushed straight back to the end of the hall, while bemoaning the fact I couldn't stop to look at all the other art.  Here I am at the end of the hall reading about "The Triumph of Virtue and Nobility Over Ignorance" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, which was hung on the back wall of the wing.

We then had to backtrack through the gallery to see the Rembrandt, since we had missed it in my determination not to look around the wing.  It was hung on the back wall of the entrance, so in my single-minded quest to press forward, I forgot to look back.  I felt like this was some sort of metaphor for life, but my brain was already fried from rousing debate we had and the amount of excellent art we consumed.

But the stop it was totally worth it! To have a peak at Rembrandt's artistic process in the unfinished portrait was awesome.  We sat in that room of the gallery for a little while we discussed how interesting it would be if we replaced the ornate frames of fancy paintings with something like a cheap Target frame, and changed the gallery space to have stark white walls.  We agreed that it would definitely change the way we viewed the pieces, and we were happy that museums had gallerists to cultivate good spaces in which to view good art.  We were also happy galleries don't impose dress codes where the public has to match the colour scheme of the different rooms.

Finally, we went back outside to take some prime selfies at the entrance before heading home, during which we talked about (unsurprisingly) more art and how to find our ultimate identity in Christ.  So a pretty successful day day off overall!