This week I have been slowly adding and checking things off my list of to-dos. It feels as though no matter how hard I try to prepare everything for this trip, there will be something very important I will forget to do…. But I’m starting to realize that It probably won’t matter. If I can get into and out of the country and am able to access money while abroad, I will probably be just fine.
In this weeks reading of Alain De Botton’s The art of Travel, I was interested in the bit that focused on beauty, as that is something that has come up frequently over the course of my studies in Musical Cities. De Botton writes about John Ruskin in chapter 8 and his views on beauty.
“Ruskin’s interest in beauty and in its possession led him to five central conclusions. First, beauty is the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually” (217).
As travelers who will be writing about our time in a city that is new to us, or is a place we have yet to look at as critically as we are about to, we must not pull only from the visual side of beauty but also the psychological side. This is crucial to what Ruskin calls word painting, which he thinks we are all capable of. From what I understand, word painting is just a written form of the beauty one sees in something. Our failure to word paint a result of our not asking ourselves enough questions and not being precise enough in analysing what we have seen and felt.
“Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there are many lower expressions of this desire for possession (including, as we have seen, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one’s name on a pillar and taking photographs). Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so” (217).
I think Ruskin’s last point is the most important to me as an artist who often struggles with the thought that my work isn’t good enough to share with others. Or that I’m not painting with my words clearly enough for others to see the beauty I see in a landscape or an object. But thinking like that misses the point entirely. What Ruskin desires for us all is that through drawing and writing (and making music), whether we are traveling or not, we gain a better understanding of beauty and are better able to see critically.
“A Dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to hold onto it, to possess it and give it weight in ones life. There is an urge to say, “I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.” (214) So in most cases when traveling we take photos to preserve the beauty we see. But Ruskin thinks that if we are not looking critically at whatever it is and are just taking snapshots and moving on, that really isn’t a good to way to preserve the beauty in things. It allows us to become lazy in our seeing. So instead of the camera taking the place of our critical seeing when traveling, use it as a tool to enhance our ability to see and to capture even a small part of that beauty in the moment.
A wonderful Definition of beauty we came across in conversation this year in class:
-Beauty is to recognize your existence in something.
April 8, 2015 at 7:26 pm
I love the idea that understanding beauty, especially by artistic means, is a form of possessing it. The idea that art is a way of knowing or understanding something is not particularly new to me, but connecting that to the idea that by understanding something we may, in a way, begin to possess it is deeply meaningful to me. When we did the sketching workshop several months ago and were told that drawing distinguishes itself from photography by forcing you to really examine and acquaint yourself with your subject, I initially scoffed, especially given my deep love for all things photographic. As I have continued to practice my sketching, however, “irrespective of whether [I] happened to have any talent for doing so,” I have truly found myself noticing lines and texture and details of the world around me which were previously lost in obscurity. I also loved the section of this reading where de Botton describes van Gogh’s relationship with Provence, describing his process of painting the cypress and olive trees. I have very recently found myself experiencing much of what de Botton did after reading about and studying the artistic renderings by van Gogh of his various subjects, noticing the curve and line of the trees around me, wondering if any of them might be cypress trees. It is profoundly meaningful to me that we can understand and subsequently come that much closer to possessing the beauty of something simply by participating in someone else’s artistic relationship with that thing. Simply reading about de Botton reading about van Gogh, I feel closer to the beauty expressed by the whimsical movement of cypress trees as they grow. I found myself experiencing something similar after the African and Indian dance workshops from this and last week. While I am by no means a talented African or Indian dancer, I found that by spending several hours with those who are, and participating in the art form myself, my appreciation for those art forms and the profound beauty expressed therein has deepened. Thank you for highlighting this part of the reading and sharing honestly about your own experiences with your artistic output. I often feel the same ways, and love how you connected that to the reading. I also love the connections you made to your own field study and the expectations you have going into it, and I look forward to hearing much more about your journeys! If beauty is to recognize your existence in something, I look forward to hearing what you find in Paris.
April 13, 2015 at 2:41 am
Thank you for writing that definition of beauty. Paris is full of beauty possessors. It would be funny to catalogue all the ways Parisians possess beauty on your blog (please add pics (ironically)). Anyway- if you want to experience someone else’s experience of attempting to really possess beauty- visit Monet’s old house and then visit Musee de L’Orangerie (not too long afterwards!) and then, maybe, visit his house again. Enjoy!!!
April 13, 2015 at 10:32 am
That’s a great idea. Thanks Hannah! I will definitely do that. I would love to get a list from you of all the things that you think I MUST do in Paris. And remind me of that flee market that you Loved.
Thanks again!