The other night I sat with Aine on the couch, and I decided I would treat myself to turning on that odd plastic square we have in the house, the TV. I still don’t know how to use the remote, and in some ways am overly proud of it. I do know how to program the television to get our local PBS station. I clicked on it and there was the Antiques Road Show, which is a great show to watch people act very surprised over objects they found at a rummage sale.
I came into the program mid-assessment, with a lady who was presenting a picture she had to an expert. The expert was British (or at least had a convincing accent) and was pointing out the wonderful parts of this painting the lady had. It was an artist who I had never heard of and the artist, a woman no less, had painted this piece in 1927. The lady who owned the picture listened to the expert talk with great enthusiasm about the scene. It was a lovely alpine village, with a snow covered road leading up into the mountains. Not overly detailed, but detailed enough to evoke a dreamlike picture, that invited the viewer to travel into the village itself. The price the expert gave the picture at auction was somewhere from $180,000 to $200,000. The lady herself was now enthusiastic. “And this was something I just decided at the last minute to bring,” she gushed.
“Papa!” said Aine. “Can we watch something fun?” She took the remote that controls the world and soon we were looking at a zillion kids cartoons with plots and characters that gave me a headache.
That brief encounter with the Road Show made me think about my own life and art. So many artists I know and myself included, will find that one moment when one wonders if it is all worth it. To be “the tree in the forest falling down and there’s no one to hear it” sort of feeling when it comes to art.
If I were a betting man (and I only bet on Powerball) my guess is that the lady who painted that picture that now commands these prices died wondering if she made a difference. I would bet she sold that picture for a mere fraction of the cost it now commands. She knew her art would outlive her, at least for a while. But would anybody really care about her, the artist? It is a question that drives artists to a sort of rage against the world.
Such angst doesn’t seem to exist on a wheat farm or a dentist office. But in the world of the artist, it is front and center.
The reason is that every offering of an artist is a sliver of their soul. As the great poet Joyce wrote “I spread my dreams beneath your feet, tread lightly for you tread on my dreams.” These slivers of one’s soul hurt to deliver into verse and performance and hurts even more to see it ignored. Or trivialized. One of the reasons I dread going to art fairs is all the souls hanging out there, each piece an entity alive now, asking to be honored and affirmed. The creator sitting there, looking at you with those eyes, wondering if you will see them, their soul, passion in that art. For the average human being it is too much to comprehend. The artist toils for the most part in obscurity (except for those lucky or unlucky few, depending on how you look at it) and dies.
What is said about them comes years later when one comes along with a sensitive enough soul to see that sliver of soul, still living, still there on the canvas or CD in the used record shop. Those rare people are the ones who, medium-like in their perception, can see the essence under all that paint, ink and chords.
Yes, that expert on the Road Show was one of those folks, I suspect. He knew the value because he knew the soul of the artist. The lady who owned the painting wasn’t, I am guessing. She was thrilled by how much it was worth. Will she immerse herself into understand the life of that artist? Will she sit there on a winter morning, cup of coffee in hand and stare at the scene and wonder what was going on in the artist’s mind? What was going on in the artist’s heart?
To matter is a difficult, fragile thing. To be beautiful enough to tell others they matter, even more difficult, fragile and rare.
You can read Martin's other post here.