The Wilderness of Modern Response

I’m not enjoying the art I expected. What’s even worse, I seem to be responding to modern art. How embarrassing is that?! Even moreso, for a theologian immersed in necessary narratives?! This journey seems to have begun at the Guggenheim in NYC, but the symptoms have reappeared here in D.C.

Meet Lee Ufan, a Japanese-Korean-Parisian artist whose retrospective at the Guggenheim closes in September of this year. The exhibit is entitled Marking Infinity and delivers its viewers upward around the spiral into a Buddhist koan, of sorts. A final series of paintings, unframed, on walls constructed specifically for this viewing so to be destroyed upon exhibition conclusion. Dialogue and the Art of Emptiness. Encounter, invitation, delivery into nothingness of presence. “Works of art can speak, but they are not language as such,” Lee writes. “I sometimes start from the self/language, but I always want to maintain a relationship with the uncertain, unknown world beyond it. I do not want to put the world into words or possess it with my ego but to enter into a relationship with the world that allows me to perceive it.” (“On Infinity,” The Art of Encounter, p. 12). I felt on the edge of tears upon conclusion of my first visit to the museum. I went back with a colleague, glad for the excuse “that she needed to see it.” I have now entered into the world differently, being amidst this man’s work.

Move the frame to D.C. with the expectation that historical monuments and classical narratives will return you to the anticipated? The Flemish and Dutch paintings drew our attentions first, but eventually the Titians were discovered. The ostensible reason for coming to the National Gallery, as it’s nice to be returned to another era’s notions of beauty, re-affirming if so disregarded today. A nice café lunch and “let’s just go see the other wing, since we’re so close.” Three different levels of modern art, with a Rothko that my beloved wanted to see. Fine. A camera at the ready the entire day—flash ‘off’ as museums required—and the memory card fills up at the modern exhibits? Colors, lines, combinations, non-linear or solely linear, non-narrative everything. The artwork cavalierly disdained throughout the rest of my life and that’s the artistry I seem to respond to?

A couple aspects of this seem significant to me, with a moment’s peace and quiet reflection. I don’t know my own tastes in art as well as I thought I did. Vermeer, John Singer Sargent, Caspar David Friedrich, and more—most, if not all, with a high sense of narrative, play of light, classical-esque (if not categorically classical). These are my standby’s of artistic preference. So how is it that I find myself responding to works with little to no narrative, little play of light upon landscapes, little comprehensible facets to me at all? I would not have found entrance in, in the same way, if there’d not been the audio-tour, explaining it all to me. So…I guess there are some articulate dimensions, not overtly with the art itself? In the offered commentary? Yes and no, though mostly no. There was something about being on the rampart, up the ramp, breathing into large spaces with indeterminate storylines. The commentary is helping my mind, but the bodily response was sure, almost regardless.

A second aspect that strikes me is the nature of response. I’m bemused because it makes no sense to me at all yet I cannot seem to deny the significance. That’s new. Something in me pushed into a second viewing of the Guggenheim. Something in me today soaked images into camera memory, for evidence and reminder later. So what in me is responding? B’s emotion was palpable at the Rothko, for instance. “My dreams sound like that,” he said, pointing to a large canvas of blues, greens, blacks. My heart and spirit respond to him easily enough. But that response is easy to articulate within terms of our narrative, my sense of him. To what am I responding with artwork I do not understand, with pieces I have had no story with at all?

Lee Ufan’s writings are helping me with a little bit of language, even though the irony is strong in trying to speak of it here. “I do not want to put the world into words or possess it with my ego but to enter into a relationship with the world that allows me to perceive it,” he says. He describes his work as an expression of curiosity and an exploration of infinity. “Infinity begins with the self but is only manifested fully when connected with something beyond the self.” Perhaps there’s something deeply conceptual within me that responds to the ‘unfinished’ or ‘non-narrative’ energies of these artists who need me to perceive, finish the work within my own awareness? His pairing of infinite concern and released ego resonates deeply. Attracts, even, with a Buddhist smile. Maybe the work is helping me practice “beginning with myself” but living a life manifested fully when connected with something beyond the self. A world or companions who allow me to perceive them?

So we only know infinity when we are welcomed in, when we see the graced energies of others…in connection with the world beyond us…? I am in love with infinity, somehow. Who knows?!

I must simply enjoy the smile, I guess: a professional theologian, steeped in the necessary narratives of faith community and institutional life, now breathes best in modern art she cannot explain.