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ars longa, vita brevis
There is a tradition of medieval European poems which begin with the Latin phrase ubi sunt, which asks "where are they?” Although this term now generally refers to poetry that addresses questions of life's brief tenure and death's inevitability, the tradition was centered on analyzing fate itself: the term is typically expressed as "a poetic motif emphasizing the transitory nature of youth, life, and beauty ...." The most renown of the medieval poems in this vein is probably François Villon's "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis." Its first stanza sets up the form and ends with the lamenting refrain that recalls the snows of years gone by:
Tell me where, or in what land
is Flora, the lovely Roman,
or Archipiades, or Thaïs,
who was her first cousin;
or Echo, replying whenever called
across river or pool,
and whose beauty was more than human?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
This morning I am wondering the same sort of thing: If we truly believe in the existential nature of an act, what difference does it make if the physical manifestation of that act survives? The destruction of artifacts from the Assyrian Empire and kingdom of Hatra by ISIS militants truly shocked me; I was angry and sad and disappointed in what I believed was an act that demonstrated a deep and fundamental depravity of soul. And yet I am the same person that many years ago secretly admired Laszlo Toth, the idiot who (believing he was Jesus Christ) took a hammer to Michelangelo's Pietà and who became, for a time, a cause célèbre among some postmodernist artists.
Creation and destruction, art and life. I'm often confused, I admit, by my abiding appreciation for things and a simultaneous loathing of the burden those things place upon us. I'm likewise troubled by the tension and hypocrisy incumbent in the act of creating something for the sake of creation and then judging it worthy of immortality. Nothing, I'm afraid, lasts forever.
In honor of the Sand Dancer, here is a short from the film by Olympia Stone on James Grashow, an artist who worked for years on a cardboard sculpture inspired by Bernini's Fountains of Trevi in Rome. Like performance art (before such care was taken to record and preserve it), I can appreciate the act of creation over the creation itself, like a secret kindness no one observes and which is never recorded for posterity.
To counteract my somber mood this morning, I poked around for songs about artists and, not surprisingly, came across some links to Daily Kos diaries. For instance, BFSkinner did a great diary on Songs About Art and Artists, which included some of the songs that I would have included here. Inspired, I searched on and found samples of songs I barely remembered and others that were like old friends I hadn't seen in some time.
Mission of Burma, an early post-punk band, pays homage to the German artist Max Ernst. Conceptual in nature, the song captures essence of Ernst's "The Blessed Virgin Chastises the Infant Jesus Before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Artist" and ends with that weird but chilling "Dada, Dada" chant.
Here the Manic Street Preachers use the alt-rock vehicle to delve into Willem de Kooning's work, using words and notes to explore abstract expressionism and its emphasis on spontaneous or subconscious creation.
The natural marriage of art and love find some expression in Rufus Wainwright’s love song that moves us through the Metropolitan from Rubens to Turner and even makes us laugh along the way.
Let me end with a story about innocence and ignorance. It was some years ago and I was visiting a friend in the Castelli Gallery, ostensibly to help him mount a recent piece by Sol LeWitt: three, four-sided pyramids of different sizes made of wood with white formica laminate. As he worked I mostly prattled on in that know-it-all way that young men often do and couldn't help but ponder aloud, "What sort of person would pay $30,000 for three plywood and formica pyramids? It makes no sense to me."
My friend's look of shock was explained only moments later when Leo Castelli, whom I had not realized had come over, leaned over and, in that imperious way he sometimes had about him, whispered, "That's $30,000 a piece." To this day I laugh at myself for such pure, unadulterated ignorance. But like the snows of yesteryear, even that (I hope) won't last forever.
Grab your coffee and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?