Art Teaches Us How To Love

(and reminds us what assholes we are)

I knew very little about art when I started writing about it in 2012. I dropped out of the only art history class I tried to take in college¹ and have never been to art school. So, I never learned the difference between the Fluxus and the Dada movements, the meaning of contrapposto, or why I should care about Vermeer (I still don’t know, so if anyone wants to school me in the comments…).

By Joseph Lee

The downside of this, in 2012, was that I didn’t really know what I was doing. The upside, which ended up being much more significant to the process, was that I walked into every show bursting with curiosity and a desire to learn. I didn’t have a preconceived idea of how an artist’s work fit into a specific movement, how it compared to the work of their contemporaries, or what the scholarly writings had to say about the processes, mediums, or themes the artist was exploring. All I had was my curiosity and desire.

I pored over every line of wall text, read and re-read every artist statement and curatorial statement that I could get my eager hands on. I asked so many questions that it would’ve made a prouder person blush.

Sometimes, I fell in love pretty quick. I was able to understand what the artist was trying to communicate, and it brought a part of the world into focus for me. The work stirred up something—even if I couldn’t explain what or why—that made me feel like a piece of the artist’s soul was exactly the same size and shape as a piece of mine and, for a moment, everything was right with the world.

Other shows were impenetrable. Attempting to make sense of what I was seeing or why I should care about it felt like trying to cut into a diamond with my fingernail. Understandably, this is where most people give up. But I didn’t have that option because it was my job to write about those shows. So, I asked more questions.

By Heidi Schwegler, an artist whose shows I sometimes fall immediately in love with and sometimes struggle with

Please allow me a slight but meaningful detour to tell you about a person named Heather Lee Birdsong. Heather was the gallery manager at Upfor², which was one of Portland’s most well-respected blue chip galleries. (I tell you this only for context because the fancier and blue chippier the gallery, the more their collector base is established and the less incentive they have to be nice to random people like me who come in off the street peppering them with questions.³) Heather went to art school and knows a lot more about art than I do. Actually, Heather knows a lot more about art than most art nerds do.

Whenever there was an exhibition at Upfor that was hard for me to crack, it was not uncommon for Heather to spend an hour with me, walking me through every piece in the show, explaining the artist’s process, practice, and intentions. She never once made me feel silly or stupid or rushed. She met every one of my questions with her own curiosity and enthusiasm. When I asked a question so minuscule as to be ridiculous, a typical Heather response would be, “I had the exact same question, but I wasn’t able to get in touch with the artist to ask her so I spent five hours researching it and here’s what I found!”

Some days, she would gush about the artist’s use of materials and craftsmanship, pointing to a single near-imperceptible detail in one of the pieces to explain how unbelievable it was that the artist was able to achieve that effect. Other days, she offered a formal explanation of the work, teaching me—in a way that was joyful and not stripped of heart—how to approach art from a more critical and intellectual perspective, which is not my natural inclination. There were other shows when she would stand back from the work, take it all in at once, and say, “Isn’t it just so beautiful?”

This opened so many doorways of appreciation for me to walk through, each one a different way to approach something that felt unapproachable, a different way to understand something that seemed inscrutable. And the more art I saw, the more doorways opened up, the more pathways I found to understanding. If I couldn’t connect to a show intuitively or viscerally, I could come at it intellectually. If it didn’t make sense to me conceptually, I could approach it aesthetically or technically. There were so many ways in. By learning to appreciate art, we build up muscles that our culture actively seeks to atrophy.

The attention economy encourages us to engage superficially and quickly with the information we receive (as well as to each other). We’re a society of headline readers and snap decision-makers. Thumbs up or thumbs down. In or out. Red light, green light. The algorithm works to show us more of what we want and less of what we don’t, amplifying our basest impulse to reject anything we don’t immediately understand or like.

Art at least puts up a fight. Years ago, I walked into one of my favorite galleries to see a group show that I was really looking forward to. Spying three paintings on a far wall, I had what I can only describe as an allergic reaction to them (and I can only describe it that way because “visceral hatred” seems hyperbolic, though I’m not sure it is). I disliked these works so much that their presence felt like a personal affront; I was angry at them for existing—even though there was nothing inherently offensive or challenging about them—and I couldn’t understand why on earth they’d been included in an otherwise spectacular show.

I composed myself, walked over to the curator/owner,⁴ and asked her, “Can you tell me why you love these?” She extolled all of the things that she found amazing about the artist’s practice, influences and cultural references, and described the skill in her painting technique. And, in real time, I started to see the paintings through the lens of someone else’s delight, which completely changed how I felt about them. I didn’t suddenly become enraptured, mind you, but I understood why someone else might, which is quite a long way to travel from wanting to rip them off the walls in a boundless rage. More importantly, this exchange helped me see with pristine clarity what a narrow-minded asshole I was.

This is one of art’s greatest gifts: to show us how truly tiny our sliver of experience and taste and understanding is. We are all just narrow-minded assholes floating through space thinking we know stuff.

This is an actual real person’s closet

When I hear someone talking about art appreciation as though it’s a frivolity akin to collecting Birkin bags, I want to sit them down (after shaking them slightly), hold their hand, and explain that nothing could be further from the truth. Art appreciation is the practice of looking with new eyes at things we don’t understand. It is the practice of drawing toward us that which we reflexively want to reject, of meeting obstacles with curiosity and desire. And in helping us practice those things, art teaches us how to love well.

One of my favorite quotes from my hero, Fred Rogers, is “Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle.” Sure, sometimes we go to an art show and fall immediately, madly, head-over-heels in love, and it’s intoxicating.⁵ But I also like the version in which we have to struggle a bit—let’s see if we can love it from this direction, nope, okay, let’s try another angle, nope, okay, how about this one, holy shit, here’s where the light comes in!—because it reminds us how to do that with people and ideas that challenge us in the rest of our lives. The more pathways to appreciation and understanding that we can find in the gallery, the better we’re able to love out in the world.

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Of course, this type of appreciation goes for music, theater, dance, film, writing, and on and on and on. I’m always looking for new ways to love things, and it’s especially thrilling when it’s something I think I already have a handle on (but don’t actually). Below are two of my most recent eye and ear openers. If you have any you’d like to share with the rest of us, please drop links in the comments. Yay.

I’ve been watching Succession lately, and really enjoying it. This video blew my mind in terms of explaining what the cinematography—the part of the filmmaking process that I know the least about—is able to accomplish. Specifically, how this particular series uses camera techniques as part of its vernacular that would be considered visual mistakes or flaws by other filmmakers. Even if you don’t watch the show, but you’re interested in film or storytelling, I guarantee that this will increase your level of appreciation for the shows/films you are watching.

The second recommendation is, dum dee dum, no big whoop, just Yo-Yo Ma explaining how he can figure out a cellist’s values by listening to them play. (I’m not able to embed the audio, so please click the link if you want to hear.)

1. One day, the teacher called on a fellow student (who was, I’m sorry to say, a walking caricature of a privileged white sorority girl) to describe the painting that he had just projected onto the screen at the front of the room. It was early in our art history education, so he was simply asking her to make as many observations about the composition as she could—perhaps about the colors, the symmetry, that sort of thing—without expecting anything formal. She thought about it for a good long while and then, comparing the gilded, haloed Madonna and child in the background to the peasants kneeling before them, said, “Those people have, like, so much more money than the other people in the painting.”

2. Upfor recently closed, which makes those of us in Portland very, very sad.

3. I once brought a friend into one of the other blue chips in Portland on a day when the director of the gallery was circulating around the space. He came over to us and when my friend asked him a series of what I considered to be fairly straightforward and thoughtful questions, he looked at us as though my friend had just taken a dump on the floor. He offered a snide response intended to let us know how put out he felt by our presence and then walked away. (If you are reading this and anyone ever makes you feel that way in an art space, please know that it is them and not you. Also: don’t ever go back there.)

4. The inimitable Stephanie Chefas. If you live in Portland and haven’t been to her gallery, I highly recommend a visit. Also, say hi to her while you’re there; she’s a wonderful human.

5. Truly, better than drugs.