Customer Reviews

Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

What is our typical reaction upon completing an experience of a work of art -- be it reading a novel, listening to music, viewing a painting, or any other interaction. "Do I like it?" "What does it mean to me?" Am I entertained? Touched? Thrilled? Changed forever?

Wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong, says the lonely voice of one Jeanette Winterson, author of a beautifully piercing set of essays collectively entitled `Art Objects' (the second word is read as a verb). Winterson makes many excellent points in this work, but for my money the best is her call to objectify art, especially the appreciation of art. A work of art is its own thing, and deserves to be taken on its own merits. If it fails at this, ok, but we need to stop seeing everything in art reflected through our own subjective prism; otherwise we risk lowering it to entertainment and diversion. We already have plenty of that; besides, art deserves better.

This seems a fresh idea, but Winterson points out that it's actually quite old -- we've merely forgotten as we've been soaked with a century and a half of Victorian frumpiness. Most of history has taken art for what it is or could be; only in our self-possessed 20th century have we demanded that art come to us personally, not actually ventured ourselves out into the artistic universe, a strange and difficult land. Winterson's historical perspectives need more flesh, but she's chosen a good villain. At her toughest, Dickens and Trollope come in for some hard knocks. At her most generous, she extols us to keep reading Victorian literature; if only we would stop writing it as well.

This would be some of the best art criticism I've read in years if it stopped there; fortunately, she presses on. If we can't subjectify art, how do we know it's worthy, good, revolutionary? We know already -- the answer is in us. Winterson points the way: look to the tools, the precision, the craft. Language is the writer's tool; how is it used? Examples are drawn from the aloof moderns -- Woolf, Stein, Eliot -- to great effect. New subject matter is not what they're after -- didn't Shakespeare pretty much exhaust every plot anyway? No, art aims higher: at new ways of thinking, new ways of seeing.

I don't think Jeanette Winterson an optimist, though she ends on an up note. She rants aplenty. Art -- especially new work -- is hard, and society likes soft. Art is currently being shunted off to the wasteland of entertainment (been to a museum lately?), off to do battle with cinema, popular music, and the great Satan itself, television. And it is sure to lose. We are simply too much in love with nostalgia, with art that "works for us." So what are we -- those of us who claim to care -- to do?

Ms. Winterson doesn't draw up a list of commandments, but I could venture a bold guess. Buy (yes, purchase) new art; voting with your wallet is one of the best ways to push work forward (see the Renaissance church for an example). Stay with a work of art for awhile; let it work on you. Don't dismiss everything within the time it takes to say "I don't like it." Appreciate the artist's craft; look for exactness. Most of all, when you're moved by something, ask yourself why, on a profound level. Is it because you made an emotional connection with the work, or the work made a larger one, say, with the world?

`Art Objects' is stuffed with stunning insights; I've not highlighted this many passages in a book since college. I suspect, however, that the author might cackle at my review. She writes in her last essay that she is perplexed by the question "what is your book about?" She appropriately finds that words to answer this question are unnecessary. The book is about itself; read it and find out.

Jeanette Winterson, writes in a very lucid manner on a topic that can quickly become an extremely nebulous and splintered subject. She begins with a story of her travels to Amsterdam, where she is haunted by a painting in a window. This never happened to her before, as Winterson was always a wordsmith. The unexpected discovery-the idea that a painting has the power to touch her so deeply and so powerfully-troubles her deeply and she cowers initially, as if she saw a ghost.

This anecdote serves to create the tone of the book, an intense and honest meditation into art and art making. Winterson, weaves us through her meditation through a very readable style and by using very general terms. She simultaneously addresses the novice, to those well versed in the concepts of art history and theory of art criticism. I say this because the questions, what is art?, what is the fuction of art?, why practice art?, are basic questions that can be addressed by all levels of understanding-and it is those questions Winterson addresses. Though she begins with visual art she reverts to her expertise in the form of literature. But, the concepts are easily translated into the other art forms.

However, in her opinions of what is beauty and what is art, Winterson can seem a bit idealistic in her views of art and art making. She professes to be a little out of sync with current society(her confession)-which could be taken as a person who revers the past and therefore is a bit 'old school' in her approach to the topic, however, she does not pretend to be a final authority on the topic either.

But,the 'beauty' of this book is it can be a starting point and a gentle guide for the novice into the ongoing conversation of art and art history as well as an eloquent reminder of fundemental concepts in a splintered conversation of art theory and criticsm.

Jeanette Winterson does it again! Painters, writers, thinkers, feminists, dreamers, surrealists, realists, philosophers, unite! This is a hardcore beautiful get-down-and-dirty analysis of art and writing and life. Come one and all. Intellectuals and slackers (as if the two don't intersect) come running! This is a rare gem.

As an artist, I have never read a more wonderous piece on looking at art than Ms. Winterson's in this book. If you think you don't know anything about art, there is no better place to start than here. If you are an artist in any field, it will bring tears to your eyes. Read it outloud to someone, anyone. I dare you to be able to complete reading it without being interupted by tears of joy. The entire book is illuminating. A must have in hard cover, it is a treasure. Then, happily, we have "Gut Symetries" to move on to afterwards. This woman is priceless.

Exceptionally insightful and well-written essays on the place of art and the power of the visual in our society. Unfortunately the last section turns into a rather overly defensive diatribe about her own works, probably a reaction to the negative press she received about _Art & Lies_. Still well worth reading if one has any interest in representations of art, particularly painting

In "Art Objects," Jeanette Winterson dishes up a feast of delectable essays on the nature of art and the artist. Such essays emphasize the importance of creation and innovation in today's society. With reference to some of the world's greatest writers and poets such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, she paints a beautiful picture of the role of art in every person's life, and how the appreciation of such art is often unacknowleged. With writing prowress paired with a passionate theme, Winterson ensures that her points are made well and absorbed by every reader

I should explain the title. As Jeanette will explain within the pages, art not only /objects/ with our safe notions of what we consider to be good or normal to our perceptions, but also art is also an /object/ to be handled, manipulated, and explored by our souls, with all the effort we would put into whatever coporeal object our hands might hold and seek to understand.

Having told you this, that the title encompasses so much of the book, does not mean that it does not need to be read now. Much the opposite. Though almost every essay comes back to these points, some essays deal with the subject in regards to a certain book, or just the act of creating art itself. As an artist, as any writer/painter/poet/? is, I found this to be a call to arms, in a way, inspiring me by assisting my mind in delineating exactly what I wish to create. If you are creative, read this collection.

In this collection, Winterson declares herself a neo-modernist, with a commitment to experiment, a disdain for realism and a set of ringing certainties about art and the role of the artist. She can find little to cheer her in English lit between the publication of TS Eliot's Four Quartets (1944) and Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop (1967).

And postmodern concerns - about the assumed integrity of language, for example, or the roles of reader and author in the production of meaning - are haughtily dismissed as an affront.

Rightly scathing about the excesses of literary biography, the tendency, for example, to consider Virginia Woolf as a 'would-be mother or a would-be lesbian or a would-be well adjusted nobody if only she had not been sexually abused', Winterson insists that 'the intersection between a writer's life and a writer's work is [always] irrelevant' and rejects any questioning of the impersonal, objective artist.

This is curiously undercut by the many glimpses she offers of her own life. Her parents owned 'six books between them', and she had to smuggle books into the house and do her reading in the toilet where they 'kept a rubber torch hung on the cistern'. She had to divide her pocket money between buying books and buying batteries because her mother 'knew exactly how long her Ever Readys would last'. Does this not shed light (sorry!) on her belief in art as a 'source of strength and a place of worship'. Does the fact that she was made to memorise very long Bible passages not illuminate (really sorry!) her language choices and uses?

Is this question, in short, not more nuanced than she allows?

Many of these essays ring with declarative statements. Art is transcendence; it is play, pose and experiment; its job is Ezra Pound's dictum: to make it new; she has not 'discovered a more energetic space'. All these ideas she has explored more eloquently and convincingly in story.

This is the fundamental disappointment of this collection - that it displays so little of the innovation and linguistic brilliance that characterise her fiction. That and the haranguing tone with which she berates those who expect plot in a novel, those who read her as a lesbian writer, those who prefer 'media moronicness' to the effort of literature. It is not just art that objects in this volume but the author.

Who is she addressing, I wondered. Her readers well know that 'there is such a thing as art and that it is not interchangeable with the word "entertainment".' And surely anyone reading a collection like this does not need to be told that 'art is not a little bit of evolution that late 20th century city dwellers can safely do without'.

Art Objects left this reader longing for less objection and more of the artistry for which I value this great writer.

remember all those years ago when i first read sexing the cherry, and i couldn't beleive such loveliness could happen? and then the passion. i couldn't speak for days. i just couldn't. what was there left to say? remember? remember how i couldn't read anything for months? i do. and still i roll this one around in my mouth, too. still delicious. still amazing. still it bashes me upside the everything and causes my heart to shake.

To quote Emily Dickinson (1830-1886):
"If I read a book
and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me,
I know *that* is poetry.
If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,
I know *that* is poetry.
These are the only ways I know it.
Is there any other way?" [Emphasis added]

Ah ... Jeannette Winterson ... I know *that* is poetry.