Ways of Seeing

I am no expert on any art form, artist, or work. I like to learn. It is my greatest passion. The best way I know how to learn is to write on what I think about subjects, what I see in them and that surrounds them. It’s a discursive practice that forces the mind to find order in the otherwise blitzing thoughts that clutter human consciousness from nearly one second to the next at every waking moment (hell, why stop there? Dreams change just as quickly, no?). I feel elation when I find associations between one subject and another—particularly between non-art forms (the socio-political milieu; the culture of discontent) and the human condition expressed in art through the millennia. Writing asks for order, concentration on a single (or perhaps two) subject, and, most importantly to me, demands honesty (if not integrity) in how the expressed thoughts use examples and evidence to back up an essayed opinion.

When I write I learn about what I know and where my ignorances yet lie; I see relationships between what I have read and what (and how) I have lived. Now, arts culture is rich in its breath and scope. From novels that describe art, to paintings that tell stories; from film and music that dissect what it is to be a human, to dance & ballet that cross generations and history to express … what else? Humanness. It all matters. It does not matter any more in this century than it did in the last, or the 1800s, or in 900. Humans have not changed substantially in their approaches to life, and less so to art: only the mechanization of ease has made us more diversified, if we so choose to be.

And that is my point, alas, with Ways-of-Seeing.com. When so much arts-culture is available to us, why are so few people able to discuss it beyond the stage of “Oh, I like that!” or “That sucked!”? As I used to explain to my students in writing and literature classes through the years that I taught at Columbia College-Chicago and at St. Pete College in Florida, “I don’t mind that you think something is stupid, but you’d better damned-well have a thought-out and reasoned opinion why you say that. Otherwise, you have proved yourself an ignorant ass.” I believe they got the point after only a small amount of further prodding.

Are people’s lack of discussion of art & arts culture because they don’t know what they think about a novel, a painting, sculpture or play? Or perhaps they don’t know how to think about what they think because they find themselves unable to use language like the “experts” use language on those subjects? If either or both are true, I think these people are being terribly unfair to themselves. They are cheating themselves out of the experience of exchanged thought, opinion and ideas. Possibly they even feel embarrassed about “being wrong,” whatever the hell that means. ‘Tis a pity to be afraid for that.

There are pockets of arts culture lovers out there, worldwide, and they will find their way to these essays, as is their wont. But I don’t wish only to talk with my brethren, so to speak. It is the wider public, the interweb surfers in search of something stimulating, something different, who I’d like to reach across the lines and say “This is what I see, this is how I think today (cuz it might change tomorrow), so What is your opinion?”

I’m sure this blog is already starting off in a variable direction to what other blogs you read “do.” Good. That’s my intention. In the coming days I will have begun to post essays in a variety of categories along the arts culture spectrum: literature, books culture, visual art, dance, theater, music and film. I hesitate to include television because it’s difficult to put your hand in shit and extract a diamond. However, there are some programs that do slip through the cracks in industry. I don’t watch much television for that reason alone (as if there needs to be a second reason), but early in the morning, after my tea and Swiss chocolate habit keeps me going, I will flip through channels. Behold, there are some quality arts programming out there, but I ask myself, What the hell is it doing on at 3 a.m.?

Finally, I must give a nod of recognition and thanks for the Ways-of-Seeing title to John Berger. Berger first produced for the BBC in England the program “Ways of Seeing” in 1972. He and his collaborators presented an arts dialogue by examining how the visual describes our world. Berger developed a book of the same title following the television program, in which were presented seven essays, some using words and pictures, others only the pictorial. In the first chapter, Berger immediately defines his purpose, and I gladly quote those words that are inspirational and were an inspiration as I developed my ideas for this site:

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.

“But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

Tags: Film, Literature, Seeing in Progress, Theater, Visual Arts //