What are your initial thoughts about an “accidental masterpiece”? Incorporate this week’s readings by Kimmelmann, Solnit, and Linton into your response. Include your own perceptions, ideas, and questions about the concept.

Download Kimmelman.pdf      

Download Solnit_open_door.pdf

Download rufus.pdf

I am very impressed with The Accidental Masterpiece- so much so that I felt compelled to read it all the way through. Kimmelmann provides some great insights and draws from an eclectic mix of art, artists, writers, and philosophers in doing so.

Although I had never before heard of Pierre Bonnard, I was reminded immediately of Salvador Dali, who like Bonnard's Marthe had a lifelong muse in his wife Gala. Dali is one of my favorite painters, and he painted Gala scores of times in his works. Although his and Gala's lives were far less reclusive or claustrophobic as the Bonnards' (they in fact were quite flamboyant people who made even their public appearances works of "art")- there was a similar dynamic going on in their artist/muse relationship. Most biographers of Dali have made it clear that Gala "wore the pants" when it came to business decisions. She was shrewd and uncompromising and protected her husband fiercely- this allowed Dali to be free to follow his whims and creative impulses, much like a child. And just like the Bonnards, who were misunderstood by those on the outside, Dali and Gala's marriage was viewed in contempt by many. (John and Yoko Lennon, also referenced by Kimmelmann, come to mind as well in this regard). What is very obvious in all three cases is that the arrangements worked for them- and that was all that mattered.

The "accidental masterpiece" is a concept I feel lucky to have a fairly strong grasp of. I experienced a personal one just a few nights ago: I was sitting outside of a bar in downtown Wilmington NC, in my Jeep, having just set up music equipment for a duo show I was playing. There was some time to kill before we got started, so I was listening to some jazz on a local radio station. About a block away, I started hearing a "live" street musician playing saxophone, and so I adjusted my radio's volume to get a balance between it and the sax player. And amazingly, for over a minute, the two unrelated musical performances were in perfect sync- they "worked" as a single composition. Just as suddenly, the sax player went off on another tangent and the synchronicity was over. But that was a definite accidental masterpiece that quite likely I was the only witness to. John Cage, cited in the text, took such experimental approaches to music composition. Another one of note was the late Frank Zappa, who would often "cut and paste" guitar solos from one song into a totally unrelated song, with interesting results.

Solnit's "Open Door" is a good introductory chapter for her book, and it will be interesting to see to what depths she can go with her central metaphor of "getting lost" as it applies to art appreciation and creativity. She's basically saying that we must have an open mind for new experiences- that's why we leave the "door" open. Again I can give a personal example from music (I'll try not to overuse these, but with 35+ years as a musician it is my largest frame of reference)- I had the opportunity to play bass guitar for a reggae band a couple of years ago. While slightly familiar with the genre (I'd heard Bob Marley for decades) it was definitely not in my comfort zone. The bass is extremely important in reggae, but it doesn't follow the blues/rock patterns I'm well-versed in. It took me many months of rehearsals and performances to finally grasp the "language". I had to get "lost" in this new territory to assimilate how to properly navigate it.

Although I enjoyed "Rufus" quite a bit, I thought Ms. Linton's essay had less to do with art than the other readings. I understand how the powered wheelchair gave her more freedom and a new perspective, and there's a definite art connotation in those terms. Maybe her point is that life itself is a work of art, and that accidents and disabilities re-direct it. I found it an informative piece about how society still falls short sometimes in providing for the disabled, and was touched by the way she anthropomorphizes the wheelchair into a "friend". And certainly the subject of art was addressed in her accounts of visiting museums, but that's obvious. I'll be interested in reading classmates' interpretations of this story and how they perceived any other more subtle connections to art.

Professor Ann Millett: You write very thoroughly and passionately about the course readings.  What common themes do you see across these examples?  What questions do they raise for you?

In all three readings, as well as the video excerpts from Sister Wendy and Robert Hughes, there is a broad common theme that one would expect from such people: a receptiveness to new stimuli; a sense of adventure. It might be a painting, a poem, or a piece of music; all fairly traditional art-forms. But it could equally be some landscape or building, or some found object, or even just the acts of living itself. Viewed from an open-minded perspective, almost anything can be "art". Just like beauty, it's in the eyes of the beholder.

This mindset raises a question. Is it art just because one person declares it so? Perhaps to that individual, yes, but I think it requires a little more than that for something to become more "officially" a work of art. People such as the authors of these readings, who have some credentials as art historians/critics- I think they're an integral part of the process. Although my sensibilities might be as developed as theirs, the New York Times is not going to publish some unsolicited art essay I send to them. Accidental masterpieces or not, there is still some protocol in the art world as to who designates them so.

But I totally get the other side of it. You can create, collect, or find art, by your own definition of it- critics be damned. This is another undercurrent to the three readings: Follow your own instincts. For Solnit, it's leaving the door open, or being willing to get lost. Kimmelman, among many other things, points out that some people's lives themselves are works of art. And Linton shows that even accidents and hardships can lead to new experiences and epiphanies. But you have to be open to these ideas. Can that openness be taught? Or is it something that select humans are born with?

I would almost venture that most true artists are at least slightly neurotic, by conventional standards. There's usually some obsession/compulsion that drives them. I would never label myself as an artist, but there was something within me decades ago as a teenager that drove me to spend as much as 6-8 hours a day practicing guitar- whereas the majority of kids get guitars as a present, take lessons for a while, then put it down. I was a major introvert; painfully shy... and I believe that was the difference. The guitar let me escape that very lonely and self-conscious adolescence.