gallery essay: small works @ lightworks
I
they say the pictures in this show are very small, but actually i disagree. the size of a picture depends on where you stand. if you look from one end of the room, of course you will say, âoh bethan, thats tinyâ, but if you stand really close, you will say, âwow, thats massiveâ.
the greatest trick the french ever pulled was enforcing a five metre barrier in front of the mona lisa. now when people return back from the louvre they say, âoh yeah, i saw it... it was actually pretty smallâ. if theyâd been allowed a proper look, theyâd come home saying âoh, the mona lisa? it was simply ginormous, extremely sublime, i shivered all over... it was a very religious experienceâ.
from a conservatory point of view, i understand that one shouldnât stand too close to paintings. hot breath causes discolouration and the grease from oneâs nose has even been said to physically raise the surface of a painting slowly over time, as was discovered in a sacred indian miniature painting from the 11th century, which had apparently gained eight millimeters over its lifetime and achieved a mirror-like sheen. furthermore, the coarseness of oneâs beard can even erase a whole painting if rubbed hard enough. i learnt all this in my brief stint at agwa.
the most ethical way to look at small paintings is to buy a magnifying glass, or better yet, binoculars. i bought a pair on my holiday and they have vastly improved my life. binoculars make things that are far become very near, and if something is too small, you can make it big. if a thing is too blurry, you can turn the wheel and make it crisp. i am severely impressed by binoculars.
II
the first thing you ever learn about art theory is that the place you see an artwork changes the way you see an artwork. think of a pollock. is it in a white wall gallery? is it in a mining engineerâs house? is it at the salvos? or is it on a fridge magnet? are you watching some kid with broccoli hair pointing up at it and shaking his head? or is he smirking and nodding? these factors will influence the way you relate to the artwork and the value you place on it. some would say that reproduction technology has spoiled the way we encounter art, but i think that art is spoiled by the world no matter where you see it. so can there be a pure way to see a painting? yes. binoculars.
when i look at a painting with my binoculars, there is nothing to distract me in my peripheral vision. if i stand in the right place, i wonât even see the edges of the frame. if i also put in my earplugs, and resist the urge to smell or breathe, my aesthetic experience will be even purer. by removing all external stimulus so to look objectively, i can arrive at the paintingâs true essence.
yet the physical context of an artwork is not only physical, but physiological. if i have pneumonia or swine flu, it will colour my understanding of the art. we also know that our physiology is linked to our psychology, and how i am feeling and what i am thinking about will also change my relationship with the art. if i am feeling self-conscious in the art gallery, overly aware that people are looking at me as i look at the painting through my binoculars, my hands will begin to shake, and now all of the sudden, the swan river landscape has a blair witch camera effect, and now instead of peaceful serenity, the painting is a picture of dread. furthermore, my mindâs activity is no longer looking at the painting, but looking at myself. i will be looking at myself from afar, no longer caring about the paintingâs essence. what about my essence? what about my meaning and value? how does my meaning and value change for others when they see me looking at a painting with my binoculars?
naturally, if i saw someone doing this in an art gallery, i would think them very cool and interesting, but if i was a normie and saw someone doing this, i would probably find it so entirely aberrant, so outside of my world view and experience, that my brain would filter it out. if someone later asked me if i saw the guy with binoculars, iâd say, âwhat guy?â so really, your existing network of knowledge and experience will not only affect the way you see things, but will affect your ability to see things at all. if you are a normie, youâre screwed.
III
every tourist in europe is an abject chump. but not me. i have brought binoculars. for them a cell phone is enough. âwhen i pinch it, it zooms in,â they say, âand when i zoom in, it gets bigâ. but what they dont consider is the camera-zoom paradox. that the more you zoom in, the blurrier it gets. binoculars have no such problem. everything you see is as clear as siberian ice. your vision isnât limited to your model of ipod touch, and you dont have to mess around with the brightness and contrast. your only mediation is glass.
i have been attending a weekly writers workshop with people who are three generations above me. they are always saying that they have âhad the best of itâ and that they âdonât envy their grandchildrenâ. i agree with them. at the colluseum, no one has brought binoculars. thereâs nothing to see anyway. its just a big ring of bricks choked with mud. why would anyone travel to rome when they can see the same shit at the ascott kilns? to paraphrase nathanael west: the colluseum is your bullfinch. you can learn nothing there.
i know i probably should have done a guided tour, but entry was already thirty six dollars. ripped off and smarting, i had the sense that if i couldnt find something worthwhile to see, i would be sourminded for the rest of my holiday. i would start trying to even out the cosmic bank balance, stealing small items from the hotel minifridge. i must make this worth it, i thought, so i pointed my binoculars away from the man feeding the rest of his hotdog to a baby and fixed to examine the ancient masonry. if i could study the techniques of these roman bricklayers, i would return with new knowledge for my family.
at the time my brother was, and still is, underneath the house, digging a tunnel to connect the frontyard with the backyard. the whole family is worried about him, but have made no efforts to help. even my dad, who once helped build the english chunnel, is gatekeeping his knowledge. if i could integrate some roman ingenuity into my brotherâs shovelling, he would be much much safer, and together, we would create the eighth wonder of the world.
binoculars let me see the bricks up close. sometimes the bricks are long and flat and arranged like normal bricks. sometimes they are pasted together into an arch. and sometimes they are rotated 90â° degrees on the z-axis and 45â° on the x so they appear to the naked eye like small diamonds in a chain fence. this is horribly inefficient, but it looks quite specky. after three minutes of looking i have learnt everything i need to know.
the crowds were so thick that the lines to get out were longer than the lines to get in. everyone around me had also seen enough. amidst the squawking of tourguides and rumblings of dads telling their kids to stop crying, the colluseum was filled with cicada-like clicking: a thousand trap beats from a thousand sub-par speakers. i was wrong. the colluseum is not boring: one only has to look down. wherever i looked i saw eggs getting whisked, karens getting pepper-sprayed, and women with eyelashes demonstrating the application of lip balm. that there is no free will is not up for debate, but i think i probably have it. with my binoculars, i am free to look at anything i want. if i get sick of the bricks, i can look at the people, and if i get sick of the people, i can look at the clouds, the sky, the sun.
just kidding. it is the height of summer. the men are all dressed sensibily and look like beavis. some of the women are wearing athleisure, but half at least are dressed like cruella deville. one woman is coated neck to foot in ermine furs, appearing to be in a state of anguish, fanning herself with a pamphlet while pouring the dregs of her water bottle onto her hair. another woman looks like a cross between fran drescher and bertie beetle, and leans her back and elbows upon the balcony rail with her left eyebrow raised to suggest, âyeah, thats right: i own this place.â i donât know who she thinks sheâs fooling. its the colluseum with a thousand people in the background. the men also take boastful photos that imply private ownership, but they are far less convincing. when they lean back against the ballustrades, they donât know what to do with their hands. sometimes they fold them tightly to their chests, or sometimes, just before the flash, they stick both thumbs up limply to suggest, âyep. its good.â i donât know who they think theyre fooling. the colosseum sucks.
IIII
jaunted from big thing to big thing, i was disgruntled by my first day in rome. i had not a single impression of the city. it was canberra to me. the next day i vowed i would not see a site of interest more. i would just walk, as aimlessly as i could, hoping if i followed a vague sense of intuition, or what enoch emory called wise blood, i would experience something pretty good. i walked in a twelve kilometre loop that turned out to be the shape of a K, trying to go through whatever alleys and parks and courtyards i could find, but i still could not get excited. wherever i went, i felt i were still in the east perth of rome. furthermore, i could not see... i had forgotten my binoculars.
in the painted word, written in 1975, tom wolfe argued that modern art was increasingly just painted words. from the colour fields and gestural splatters of abstract expressionism to the nothing-at-all of conceptual art, most art of the avante-garde seemed to be nothing more than visual metaphors for the essays you had to have read beforehand. like the normie blind to the man with binoculars, if one hadnât read the manifesto, it was impossible to see the art. quoth wolfeâs normie: what art? and while i do believe in affect, that art can give you a crazy feeling before youâre even conscious of what youâre seeing, wolfe makes a debatable argument that anyone who shivers at a barnett newman probably already knows that the shiver is expected of them: âhow they tried to internalise the theories to the point where they could feel a tingle or two at the very moment they looked at an abstract painting⌠without first having to give the script a little run through in their mindsâ (55). and while wolfe writes with trickster hyperbole and is perhaps unfair, he is mostly right. if you come to rome not having read the word, of ancient rome and/or catholicism, you are likely guaranteed to see nothing. you can look, but you wonât see, and you can see, but you wonât care. this is why i should have done the guided tour: to give me the word so that i could see, so that i could see what i was too lazy to read.
on my way back to the hostel, i heard some music coming from the courtyard of a 19th century building complex. i saw a boomgate, but no security guard, so i walked in and looked around and followed the trail of the beautiful music. it sounded like someone playing the harp. i moved closer to make it louder and louder and soon i realised it was coming from an open window just above my head. i looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was there and then hoisted myself up, resting my elbows upon the sill, and there, i saw a sight i will never forget. with the evening sun beaming in behind me i saw a room of golden curtains and oblong mirrors, the mirrors gilded with gold. everything was amber, the floorboards shining like leatherwood honey, yet about the room, absorbing no light at all, were dark forms too austere to be called beanbags, and stark against their blackness, almost blindingly bright, were the pale glowing bodies of four ballerinas who draped themselves in languour like unfolded laundry on a sharehouse couch; and as my eyes adjusted, i slowly realised something, something i should have noticed immediately⌠the ballerinas were wearing nothing! nothing but their tights! and naturally, i screamed and i dropped from the window, and i donât know if they saw me, but i ran and ran, as fast as i could, not stopping til i reached the courtyard of my hostel where i climbed up the stairs and got into my dorm, shutting all the windows and blinds.
let it be a testament to my good virtue that i didnât linger any longer beyond the initial shock, and truth be told, i didnât see long enough to see any details: i just remember the buns of their hair and the long roman noses, but of their nudity, i canât recall a thing, just illuminated white-gold flesh, and even in that very moment, i could barely separate what i was seeing from the paintings iâd been seeing all day, and whether they were renaissance or baroque, i donât know, but in actual fact, now when i close my eyes and try to picture the scene, it all just looks like something by cĂŠzanne, one of those bathers painting. he knows what it looks like to look without binoculars.
but imagine if i was looking in with binoculars! instead of my story being wholesome and kindhearted, it would be deeply sinister. iâd look like a sicko. so it is a good thing i had left them behind.
i have much more to say about the paintings in this show, and i know i could speak a long time on the works of annabelle, phoebe, angus and bethan. theyâre really good, but i wonât take up any more of your time.
small works @ light works was a one night gallery show of miniature paintings by phoebe campbell, angus bowskill, bethan power and annabell gallon, of the collective third.place ari. thank you to all.