If I were to look at a painting and simply praise it for its genius, beauty, and form, I would be obscuring the past because not only am I assuming the perfect quality of a product of the past, I am not putting into consideration the story of the painting and the story of the artist. In other words, when I mystify the painting, I am seeing the style—the surface—of the painting and not the substance—what is beneath the surface. If I put effort into looking at the painting, in terms of a story, while asking questions and trying to answer them, I can perhaps demystify the painting, unlearn and relearn about the painting. This takes effort, time and energy. And a lot of thinking.
My personal desire is to look at a painting, like Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory and see it as both an image and Dali’s artwork, although it would be easier to just read what the art critics think of it and believe it, or simply not think anything of it other than the fact that it pleases my eye. I can research historical background of the work—I read that Dali painted in the melting watches onto the already painted background after noticing the state of his Camembert cheese on a hot summer day—while being aware of historical art and philosophical movements and still examine and create my own meaning of the image. I can even disregard the title of the painting which is also known as The Persistence of Time, Melting Clocks, Soft Watches, and Droopy Watches. The titles of the painting act as labels, which give contextual meaning to the painting. It would be hard for me to not notice the watches and not think of “time” and “memory” as a relevant keyword in my interpretation. More on the positive side, it can guide the viewer in their interpretation. Nonetheless, the title in itself retains some kind of agency.
I stare at the painting—the digital reproduction of the painting. The silence is more than frustrating. If Berger’s right about original paintings being even more silent and still, which I believe to be the case most of the time, it must feel far more intimidating and uncomfortable to look at an original painting. Too puzzling perhaps. The silence broke after a long while—longer than I’ve expected. I suspect the silence and stillness to be a natural reaction. Our brains are divided into two sides—right and left. In order to feel anything fairly concrete about the painting we still have to somehow make sense of the painting. But there is a long moment where I can’t seem to think of anything. The feeling of ambiguity. I simply have no words for how I feel about the painting or any idea of what to think of it. Nothingness. Or massive overwhelming confusion. After a while my brain pieces bits of information together to come up with something. Sometimes that something is not worth saying though. Or it sounds like someone else’s words, something any body else can say and would say, like “Wow, that’s beautiful.” Well, how beautiful? Like what? Do we even have to go there? Why? Berger says yes, we must go further. Dig deeper, he tells us.
I’m not sure if Berger took into the account that reproductions of art found online (Google images or digital art archives) have high enough quality for the viewer to actually notice the brush strokes and provide a different kind of virtual experience. However, his claim that reproductions are not as silent and still as original paintings can be a valid observation in that originals provide a unique context. The presence of something created in the past, puts us in the past, as if we were going back in time, like time-travel. Most of us do not live our daily lives thinking of the past before we were born. It is hard to conceptualize that the world exists outside of you and did exist before you ever existed. It is also a different experience in that like watching a live play of Shakespeare and watching a filmed version of the same play gives a different impression. Different kinds of mediation are involved. There is a difference between looking at your lover right in front of you and looking at a picture of your lover. The sight of your lover might illicit similar feeling inside of you, whether it is the real person you are looking at or a picture, yet there is a difference.
Before I do more research on the painting and artist, I try to converse with the painting. So this is my first attempt. Hello? Of course, no answer. I like the color of the sky, the rocks and cliffs in you. I try to complement. I like how the tree looks alive and real. Then, I question. Why are the pocket watches melting? Is it too hot? Why do you look like a photograph instead of a painting? Why are you so dreamy and beautiful? Are you real? Are you fake? Are you both? What are you trying to tell me? Are you trying to tell me anything? The conversation seems one-way. Lopsided. My questions echo into the painting but I hear nothing coming back. I at least wanted to know what the melting watches signify. I fail miserably. I am more puzzled than before.
In order to talk to the painting I decided to do some background research. Maybe if I learn a little bit about the painting I can ask different questions and perhaps get some answers. I am amazed how accessible information on the painting and artist is online. Quick and easy. In a sense, the Internet gives agency to individuals who can and know how to use the technology and who choose to use it.
I Googled information on Dali and his painting, as well as surrealism, cubism, and Dadaism. As a result, I learned of Dali’s eccentric character, the melting watches being an iconic image of surrealism, and the history of cubism and Dadaism relating to the surrealist movement. Dali’s talent as a painter capable of imitating classical artists and his eccentric personality made it possible to create a painting bizarre in its content but realistic in its representation. While the cubists deconstructed objects depicting the subject from multi-angles to represent an image in a greater context, and while the Dadaists rejected labels and categories embracing chaos and irrationality presenting “anti-art” rather than “art,” the later surrealists considered ordinary expressions as vital, and arranged images with full range of imagination. The surrealism movement attempted to free people from false rationality and restrictive customs and structures. Interesting… Now what?
Ok. So do the rubbery floppy pocket watches suggest the duality of human condition? Maybe. Well, everything in the painting looks solid and soft at the same time. Watches are supposed to be hard objects, right? We think time and reality as firm and fixed even though time is relative and reality…well not so fixed or firm, right? Maybe. So perhaps time or memory of time, whichever, is melting away with the procession of time while nature remains? The rocks and cliffs and the tree do not look like they are fading or melting away. No? Yes?
Ok. Look. Our memories are fading away, we are fading away, yet our memories and ourselves still continue to exist at this moment. We change with time, yet time is relative, and so our past experiences echo throughout our lives in the present moment. Am I even close? What we consider reality is no longer concrete or certain, but malleable and in flux as we dream, imagine, and simply think and feel. So the gaps between dream and reality, the imagined and the real, fact and fiction close as I step into the world of rubbery floppy pocket watches. Am I saying what you are trying to say? Well, I’m satisfied. I like it. I can live with it.
The historical meanings and conceptions of art, whether I am aware of it or not, seem to affect how I view art. When I look at Persistence of Memory, I look at it because of my expectations for what I consider art. The culture that surrounds me, and the history of how we arrived here in the present, affects what I consider art. I value beauty, imaginative images, and provocative ideas yet what I consider beautiful, imaginative, and provocative also depends on what I know and believe in the present culture. Furthermore, because I am looking at the reproduction of Dali’s art and because it is possible to see reproductions everywhere, perhaps it is easier to disregard the original meaning of the painting and its unique superiority. As Berger puts it, “What we make of that painted moment when it is before our eyes depends upon what we expect of art, and that in turn depends today upon how we have already experienced the meaning of paintings through reproductions” (116). I agree.
From learning about the past and present in relation to this painting, I have discovered that knowing how we—as a culture—came to this point in art history enhances the meaning of Dali’s painting. Some people found and still find Dali annoying because of his attitude towards promoting his artworks as a commodity and his love for accumulating wealth. Aren’t artists supposed to be poor? Isn’t it suffering from poverty that creates great art? So, Dali’s stance and his artwork, in a sense, represent the shift in our societal values as we expand our application of consumer capitalistic values.
We can also see how the two World Wars influenced the minds of the artists and philosophers. As many Dadaists believed “reason” and “logic” of bourgeois capitalist society the cause that led many of us to war, their artistic expression appeared to reject that ideology. And then the surrealists added meaning to that rejection. If you eliminate labels and categories what are we left with? Idiosyncrasy. Different groups of people see (interpret) different words and images in variety of ways. There is no set meaning in something, nothing innate. The meaning of something depends on what you make of it. So the surrealists embraced idiosyncrasy wanting to free people from set, confined ways of seeing and looking.
I see myself in the painting. I identify with its ideology. I dream of minimum labeling and categorizing and of a time and place where people recognize, respect and consider the other’s perspectives rather than ignoring the other’s voices. Part of my identity is formed, shaped and created through the reading of this painting, through my recognition of our history and my own personal history. I recognize we live in a postmodern world. I cannot understand what that means unless I understand what the “modern” world was like, and the world before that. We have always, throughout history, struggled to make sense of our experiences and our lives. When I try to “situate” myself in history, as Berger suggests us to do, I belong to the culture, and this gives a sense of where I am in relation to the larger historical context. Without this learning of our history and self-knowledge we can feel alienated, and uprooted like a tree floating around living above the ground.
The process of creating meaning of my own gives the impression of personally knowing the painting. It gives a sense of ownership. I own my interpretation of the painting and I am responsible for my perspective. This act of agency is vital to our rights and responsibility as citizens and individuals, as Berger writes, “If the new language of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power. Within it we could begin to define our experiences more precisely in areas where words are inadequate. Not only personal experience, but also the essential historical experience of our relation to the past: that is to say the experience of seeking to give meaning to our lives, of trying to understand the history of which we can become the active agents” (118). If we were to truly practice equality, rather than trying to physically, politically, or legally take away power from authorities, we need to educate individuals of “the history of which we can become active agents” which is the fundamental place for an individual’s act of agency to begin. And we can start this practice through actively interpreting and creating our own meanings of paintings and images around us.
I took an upper division art history course my junior year in college. The class title was Art, Culture, and Technology. The course objective was to examine how twentieth-century technological, social, and historical change influences our conceptions of art and culture. Shortly before I started taking the course, my friend, at an art gallery, saw chopped logs piled up displayed as an art piece and came to me and asked whether or not I consider it art. I did not know how to answer. I said, “I don’t know. It depends on what you consider art. I mean, what I consider art.” Then I thought to myself: What do I consider art? And why would someone chop logs and display them as art? What does it mean? What is it supposed to mean?
As I learned about the relationship between art and culture, and the social and technological development throughout western history, I came to realize that none of the questions I was asking myself were easy to answer. However, the course clarified my conception of the relationship between art and culture as dialectic; the work of art is both product and producer of culture. If the culture of the past is part of history, yet we see the past through the lens of the present, then as Berger suggests, “the art of the past no longer exists as it once did” (118). However, if we refuse to see where we stand in the present (because we fear to know the present, as Berger claims), we cannot understand the past. As Berger writes, “Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way” (103). Different ideologies of different cultures of different times affect our interpretation of art.
Art works produce and reproduce ideologies of the culture, which gives power to some and takeaway power from some members of our society. Looking at art thus, becomes a political act. Artworks (or images in general) created within a culture, whether in the past or present, are products and producers of culture. Thus, the ability to read these paintings and images gives the viewer the power to know the history, the culture and themselves as well as the power to choose what to believe. As Berger emphasizes, “This why—and this is the only reason why—the entire art of the past has now become a political issue” (118).
Berger, John. "Ways of Seeing." Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers. Eds. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008.
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