Exposing Art to Our Selves

Human nature baffles and amuses me. This past weekend, we were in New York for a quick vacation. During our visit to the Metropolitan Museum, we noticed signs leading to "Michelangelo's First Work." We followed them, only to find a huge crowd gathered in front of this tiny painting like the monsters clinging to poor Saint Anthony. Now, don't get me wrong: The Tormenting of St. Anthony, attributed to a 12 or 13-year-old Michelangelo, is intriguing and historically significant. But it was interesting that the Renoirs, Vermeers, Monets, and Van Goghs were, in comparison, almost ignored by tourists intent on crowding around this small canvas.

Was it the "first"--that drew in the crowds? The novelty? The sense of seeing something that others haven't seen (despite the fact that the painting is owned by another American museum)? I've experienced the same thing myself -- I had to see the REAL David in Florence, the actual object, not a copy, despite the fact the the cast outside the Palazzo Vecchio is almost identical and is in the exact location where the original once stood. There's something incredibly moving and transformative about seeing the real thing.




And, like the typical American tourist, I, too, bought the souvenir mug. (Mine is of a work I didn't even get to see -- Hokusai's "Great Wave." The Japanese wing was closed the day we were at the Met. Nevertheless, I love this print and will enjoy drinking my coffee out of the mug.)

I also observed another phenomenon that was equally baffling but less amusing than the desire to see the real thing: Drive-by art snapping. At least half the people in the museum seemed to be trotting through the galleries with cameras glued to their faces. They raced up to paintings, especially those by famous artists, snapped a quick photo, checked the photo in the screen of the camera, then quickly moved on, spending virtually no time looking at, much less seeing the actual work of art in front of their eyes.

The drive-by photographers reminded me of a man I once saw at Cape Canaveral videotaping his wife as she bought souvenirs in the gift shop. At what point do these tourists stop framing everything through the lens of their camera and start living the actual experience? Do they need the photo to confirm they were there? Isn't the t-shirt (or mug--mea culpa) confirmation enough? That couple at Cape Canaveral actually led me to stop carrying a camera on my trips, a vow I kept until I visited Iceland and couldn't resist taking pictures of that glorious landscape. Now, too often, I find myself lapsing back into the mindset of seeing something beautiful or remarkable and instantly framing it as a photo, in my mind or in my viewfinder. I do take photos when I travel, but far fewer than I used to.

Watching and thinking about the drive-by art snappers reminded of "The Loss of the Creature," an essay by Walker Percy in which he writes about the difficulty of living an authentic experience in modern society. As summarized on Wikipedia:

"The more or less objective reality of the individual is obscured in and ultimately lost to systems of education and classification. Percy begins by discussing the Grand Canyon--he says that, whereas Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, who discovered the canyon, was amazed and awed by it, the modern-day sightseer can see it only through the lens of "the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer's mind" (47). Because of this, the sightseer does not appreciate the Grand Canyon on its own merits; he appreciates it based on how well or poorly it conforms to his preexisting image of the Grand Canyon, formed by the mythology surrounding it. What is more, instead of approaching the site directly, he approaches it by taking photographs, which, Percy says, is not approaching it at all. By these two processes--judging the site on postcards and taking his own pictures of it instead of confronting it himself--the tourist subjugates the present to the past and to the future, respectively."

That describes the drive-by art snappers to a T. And me, with my mug. If I ever do see an original print of the Great Wave, I wonder, will it live up to the expectations formed by the reproductions I've seen on calendars and coffee mugs?

(Here's an article about the Michelangelo painting.) Read more!

The Neon Blue Laser of Death

I have two questions for the universe: When did red lights on electronics become blue? And why do our TVs, CD players, clock radios, and laptops have little glowing laser beams anyway? Are they all going to come to life some night when they get a secret signal from the Technology Overlords and steal our firstborn children?

At some point in the last couple of years, things that once glowed red started to glow blue. This just seemed to happen one day when I wasn't paying attention, like the sudden change of Peking to Beijing, or Bombay to Mumbai, or B.C. to B.C.E.

A couple of years ago we splurged and bought an LCD TV for the bedroom. The TV has been great--there's nothing so decadent as crawling under the down comforter on a snowy night and watching a chick flick or M1-5 with your sweetie -- except for one little thing: a neon blue laser beam that seeks out the unwary retina like a searchlight or the evil eyeball in The Tell Tale Heart. If the TV is off, that blue light is on. Always. Glowing much brighter than a nightlight. So bright that we have to put a candle in front of it so we can sleep.

And when we bought a replacement for a defunct digital clock, the new one came complete with neon blue light. Now, I don't know about you, but I find the blue lights much more difficult to read than red. My eyes are bleary enough when I wake up without having to try to decipher that blurry blue glow. Granted, this isn't global warming or swine flu or anything. But it is one of life's little annoyances. And one of life's little curiosities. What are these lights for? And what happened to good old-fashioned red? Come to think of it, didn't digital clocks used to have a sickly green glow? Now, those were the days.


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The Naminator and the Furminator--Another Cat Post

Sam-I-Am the cat loves life more than any creature I’ve ever known. He’s a dark-toned, bow-legged Siamese mutt, with piercing blue eyes, stubby legs that barely keep his belly off the floor, and a head too small for his chunky 18-pound body. Sammy is a dog cat. Like any puppy, he loves brisk belly rubs, and he comes trotting and mewing when he is called. When you pick him up, he wraps his short chunky arms around you in a kitty bear hug and nips your nose. He goes by many nicknames: Sammy, Green Eggs and Ham, Penguin, The Doings Kitty, The Naminator. He drinks by dipping a paw in his water bowl (or a glass when he can get away with it), slurping the water off his paw. He winters on the heat grate in the kitchen and summers on the printer in my office window.

The Naminator loves to play, despite a chronic breathing condition that makes him snort, wheeze, and occasionally sneeze ribbons of brown snot. Sam-I-Am was found on the street when he was barely a week old, suffering from a respiratory disease that left his sinus cavities in tatters. The consensus among the half dozen vets we've consulted is that there is nothing we can do to stop his sniffles (except the one vet who tried to sell us a $2600 surgery that might or might not work and might or might not kill him), so we toss him on the floor whenever he gets ready to erupt, wipe off his little nose when he’s done, and make do.

Sam-I-Am enjoys tearing up paper and batting paper balls we throw at him. But his favorite treat of all is being brushed with his Furminator. I bought the Furminator at the vet’s office. This was a new vet for us, and I was annoyed that they had a tv in their small waiting room running a looping infomercial for a pet brush. I resent being a captive audience for advertising, but this time they got me. I sat watching the tufts of fur fly off the cats and dogs, and by the time I left the vet, I had succumbed.

The Furminator was the only good thing that came of that vet visit. The doctor was sure he could cure Sammy’s sneezing and prescribed some antibiotics that nearly killed our cat. The pills made SamIAm so nauseated that he stopped eating. He lost 6 or 7 pounds in 3 days and had to be hospitalized. The (new) vet told us that some cats who become anorexic never start eating again, refusing food until they starve to death. When we brought him home, we spent days spoon-feeding SamIAm soft food, rubbing it on his mouth until he finally remembered how to eat. We never returned to the vet who nearly killed our Sam, but at least one good thing came out of it: The Furminator.

Every morning, the Naminator races to the bathroom and leaps up to the edge of the tub with a little cry, demanding to be brushed. His Furminator throws him into paroxysms of bliss. He rubs his nose and cheeks on the shower glass and writhes as the fur comes off in fluffy bunches. And I am happy to report that he can spare it: Our one-time anorexic kitty is back to his fighting weight, plus a few extra pounds to spare.

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Caveat Emptor: Four Commandments of Consumption

Dear Readers: The theme of this blog is things--things that tell a story about life, relationships, society, culture. Things that are in some way significant, beautiful, historical, necessary, or useful. But the fact is, some things are just things. (Or, as George Carlin would say, “stuff.”) And some stuff is, quite simply, annoying. This is a rant about annoying stuff. If rants aren't your cup of tea, I hope you'll scroll down and check out some earlier posts. :-)

A week or so ago I got a new frying pan. Our old one, a copper-bottomed pan that belonged to my mother, had become warped and didn’t cook evenly.(I have a theory that there are two kinds of people: the Matching Pan People--who refer to it as "cookware"-- and the rest of us. We are proud to be among the Unmatched Pan People.)

So anyway, I bring the new pan home, remove the cardboard covering, and peel off the label, which is taped smack in the middle of the pan. I start washing it so I can make a nice veggie and scallop stir-fry. A full thirty minutes later, after scrubbing with boiling water, soap, a scouring pad, and Comet cleanser, I have finally gotten rid of the sticky residue left from the tape, or at least enough of it that I am fairly certain it won't form a chemical reaction with my ginger sauce and kill us. I fail to notice that the pan also has tape on the bottom, so now it is permanently scorched in.

Which leads to one of the vexing enigmas of modern consumption: Why do stores ruin products by attaching labels that damage the things they are selling? For example, those little T-shaped plastic strips holding price tags on sweaters and socks that pull the threads when you try to remove the last little sharp bit that is always buried in the fabric.

Even more annoying are the deliberately shoddy products, where the manufacturer’s only goal is to get you to buy the item, like a fly-by-night snake-oil salesman who will be in the next county by the time your hair turns green and the diarrhea sets in.

Such companies put all of their effort into marketing. What do they care if the thing falls apart or doesn’t work after you’ve paid for it? How many people will take the trouble to return a $1.99 utensil? Example: We have a pasta spoon that is so heavy on the handle end that if you rest it in a pan or bowl, it flips out, flinging sauce and noodles everywhere.

The most annoying of all are the stealth-crap products, those whose shoddiness doesn’t become apparent until a few days or weeks after you buy them. The pants with the hem that falls out after the first washing, the jackets that lose their buttons, the new shoes that lose a heel when you're walking down a flight of stairs (it happened to me).

Case in point: I bought a silver metal bathroom set that included a soap dispenser (the spigot broke in two weeks), a toilet brush and a toilet paper holder. Now, I may be missing something here, but what is the one purpose of a toilet brush? To scrub the toilet. And what is one thing that is always in a toilet? It doesn't take Helen Keller and Teacher to spell out the answer: W-A-T-E-R. So wouldn’t you think a container designed to hold a dripping toilet brush would be made of stainless steel? No such luck. It is made of a metal that rusted through in just a few months, leaving marks on my floor. (I apologize for this graphic photo. I swear the stains are nothing but rust!) Of course, it has no manufacturer’s mark and I can’t remember which of the ubiquitous box stores sold it, so I can't file a complaint or get a refund. Instead, it is one more piece of trash for a future Wall-E to compact and stack into a massive pyramid of waste.

Such experiences have led me to create the Four Commandments of Consumption:

The First Commandment: Thou Shalt Buy No Crap. I will buy quality things that will last, or I won't buy them at all.

The Second Commandment: When Possible, Thou Shalt Buy Used. It's better for the environment -- no packaging to dispose of and it keeps perfectly useful stuff from ending up in a landfill. Best of all, there are no labels to remove!

The Third Commandment: Thou Shalt Ask 'Can I live without it?' Shopping for shopping's sake seems to be the new national past-time, encouraged by shows like Sex and the City and stores piled with doodads so cheap that we figure, well, why not? But a little item that seems to cost just a dollar has hidden costs, from cluttering the house to clogging landfills.

Which brings me to the Fourth Commandment: (non)-Garbage In, Garbage Out. For each new item that comes into the house (excluding groceries and cleaning supplies), at least one object must go, either in the garage sale, Ebay or charity pile, or in the trash. The result? Equilibrium, Koyanaskatsi, Life in Balance, Less Stuff to Dust.

Do you have any Commandments to add? What is your most frustrating product story? Post them in Comments
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