art & wilderness: a year after the London trip

Slick. Heathrow had changed a lot since the last time I'd been there.

A year ago today I was wrapping up a trip to London. I had met Eli there—he’d just finished a two year stint in the Philippines with the Peace Corps, and was dinking around Europe on his way home.

On arrival, at customs, when the officers asked about the purpose of my trip, I told them, “All the museums!” And I explained about meeting the E-man. After chatting about places to visit, the officers smiled and waved me on. “Enjoy your time with your son!”

Of course I have been remembering the visit, especially seeing photos pop up in my Facebook memories. But the pictures and my own actual memories put me in mind of an article I read last March, a cranky-pants opinion piece by Jonathan Jones on museum guides. Dang, did this get my knickers in a twist. Here’s a snippet:

“From smartphone-using bluffers to PhD students in art history, we all need to put aside our screens and our supposed knowledge when we look at art. Let the images flow in, let your intuitions rave. Art is an adventure in the wilderness or it is nothing at all.”

One wonders. Has Mr. Jones ever spent any time in the wilderness?

Eli and I went to a different museum each day. And it was immediately apparent that we could easily spend the entire trip in just one and not even begin to experience all that was available.

Of course I remember the visceral experience of color and shape and beauty and terror. But those visits were not limited or reduced to information points because I had access to “facts” on my smartphone. I did not have the egregious app that Mr. Jones describes, but I did have Wikipedia.

And I was grateful for Wiki, darn straight. At the Tate I fired up my smartphone to quickly access information about William Blake when I was disturbed by the whiff of misogyny in the collection of etchings. And while I wasn’t comforted by what I read, I was able to place the works in a context that helped me to accept what they were about and what they had to offer.

On our last full day we finally ventured over to the Victoria and Albert. They were refinishing the doors, so I will remember the almighty stench of the varnish as much as any “raving intuitions.” (In fact, I can smell it now as I cast my little thinking thoughts back to that day.) We laughed when we scurried past the stink and spotted the giant Chihuly dust-collector.

“We can’t get away from that guy! He’s everywhere!”

We live in Dale Chihuly’s hometown, and many of our friends are active with the glass museum here. So when I saw that V&A installation, I didn’t experience a frisson of excitement, a gasp, “Oh! Wilderness!” Instead, memories and stories surfaced in my mind: the exceptional quesadillas I’ve eaten at the pub where Mr. Chihuly’s mum was a barmaid;  the conversations with the team of glass artists who work with Mr. Chihuly—the money, it seems, being in marijuana paraphernalia now that it’s legal in our state; and the time my ex-husband, on a photo assignment, wandered off in Mr. Chihuly’s house and was then apprehended by security. (“Sir. You can’t be here.”)

So while there wasn’t much “shock of the unknown” for me when we saw the V&A Chihuly, it was still a surprise, and I was delighted—despite, or perhaps because of, the dust. I cannot “put aside” my “supposed knowledge” because these stories form a backdrop in my imagination, are part of my very identity.

We hustled past the stink and the dust collector, and just inside the entrance to the Asia wing I found a bench. I sat down to look at the map of the museum, and Eli eventually wandered over to join me. I was strategizing the best way to spend our time when I noticed Eli didn’t seem to be listening. “What’s wrong?” He was looking at a gorgeous Buddha. “I know these people, the people who made these things. I lived with them.” He was visibly upset, still adjusting to reverse culture shock. So I hustled him right out of there to another section.

We had joked all week about the plunder aspect. When we’d met some of his fellow returning Peace Corps volunteers at the British Museum, they laughed and hugged. After the introductions, E said, “Let’s go find some loot!” And I suggested that it was pretty much all stolen. “And there’s a lot of it, honey. Maybe we should pick a continent!”

But sitting there in the V&A on our last day, it wasn’t funny anymore. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before he remembered his old self, and recovered from the dark shock of seeing palimpsests of the whole and real world he’d just left behind. I caught up with him taking a picture of an unremarkable wardrobe. “What’s happening here?” I asked. He smiled and said, “Narnia.”

Perhaps that’s what Mr. Jones meant by “wilderness”—the door to a lively world of magic that can, at once, expand our world, transform us, and bring us back to ourselves. I would not presume to know.

Were there moments when I felt deeply moved by a work? Yes. But the experience of each particular work did not exist outside of time and place, in some nebulous “wilderness.”

“If a painting can just be reduced to some sterile information, what’s the point of it?”

If a painting can be reduced to one inept wilderness metaphor, what’s the point of it?

We are walking storytellers, and if a smartphone gives a person access to story or facts that hint at story, giving a patron a “hook” to hang their experience on, to integrate into the narrative of their lives, who are we to judge?

And the judgement, I think, is what disturbed me most about Mr. Jones’s plea to put down the screens. Because it was from Mr. Jones himself that I learned that museum visits are down. For goodness’ sake! Why wouldn’t we want to give potential patrons tools to approach these works? But his condescension toward “pathetic” smartphone users being “spoonfed” facts is offensive and will only serve to keep potential museum-goers away. What a shame.