Tolstoy on Art

     That great thinker and artist, Count Tolstoy, in the course of his life turned his formidable mind to many varied topics. Among these is the question of the onology of art and its proper role in society. He addresses these issues and investigates many examples of art from different periods and media to determine whether or not they are real and if they are good. His ideas about art are most comprehensively formed in his essay "What is Art?"

     He begins by defining art as a form of communication. However, in contrast to words and speech which convey ideas, artworks convey feelings. In particular, by the use of devices that will invoke whatever feeling the artist wants to share in the viewer/listener. In contrast to his views on the ontology of artwork, he proceeds upon an impressively erudite diatribe against aesthetic theory from Baumgarten to his contemporaries. He has two main problems with these thinkers. The primary flaw that he sees in aesthetics is that it transfers the question of what art is to the "realm of metaphysics." In other words, for Tolstoy, all these thinkers simply claim that art is about beauty or pleasure and proceed to build their theories on how one judges these properties. This leads to other problem that he sees, and that is that these theories are shifty and are malleable enough to simply absorb any kind of artwork thereby defeating the purpose of claiming to have truth about what art is and more specifically what good art is. I can see the truth in this by the way anti-art like Duchamp's The Founatin is absorbed into the canon of art.

After he makes the distinction between art and Beauty, he explains the way he sees art coming into existence and how its value is determined. Quite simply, the value of an artwork is dependent on the respective culture's ideas about the meaning of life. The meaning if life is determined by what is morally good and evil. And morality is determined by the religion of the culture. An important break in this narrative is the Renaissance. He says that the upper class lost faith in the church and therefore continued to make art in the vein of the church but whilst actually worshiping not God but Beauty itself. Perhaps this is the first real divide in upper and lower art.

     After explicating what art is and how it comes to be valued and judged and where the story took a new turn with the seeking of Beauty for its own sake, he explains more specifically what good art is. There are three things that he specifically does not have patience for in art. First, imitation. If art is the pure feeling that is communicated to the viewer than imitation art is that artwork that instead of trying to capture that feeling from the experience itself but instead from another work of art. He gives the example of Faust by Goethe as false art because of this. Secondly, if the artwork has the wrong moral message. This occurs when the artist has an incorrect view of morality. Therefore, this has two parts. Obvious examples for him are artworks that try to glorify art itself or worse, sexual lust. He gives examples of paintings that contain the nude human form and also lots (lots!) of French verse describing scenes and acts of debauchery. Third, art that does not connect with its viewer. If the viewer cannot receive a feeling or invocation from the art than the art has failed. He uses the example of how a peasant cannot understand the Ninth Symphony and therefore is not good art in contrast with the joyful song of a peasant.

     To his first problem with art that imitation of other art is false art or bad art. How can it be any other way? Should Goethe's Faust really be dismissed as good art because it is based on an older tale?  Tolstoy explicitly mentions this as an example of imitation art. In his biography about Dickens, Chesterton mentions that when Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers there was some controversy about whether or not the story was original to Dickens or if in fact someone else had suggested the concept to him. Chesterton says that it doesn't matter either way. What matters is the genius of Dickens. Dickens was such a powerful talent at writing comedy that the actual idea for the character meant next to nothing compared to what he did with them. The same thing can perhaps be said about Faust, in that the great value of Faust is not the originality of the story but the handling of it by that powerful genius Goethe. It also seems that there is nothing truly original in a pure sense of the word. Instead, there is a tradition that is drawn on and reacted against. Why would this mean that the artist could not convey that feeling that Tolstoy wants using well-known motifs and traditions?

     Secondly, the fact that the artist may have had an incorrect view of morality means that artwork is poor or non-art. The problem with this is that one cannot withhold a reaction from an artwork until she has understood the intent of the artist. For example, a deeply pious artist may paint a version of St Anthony's Temptation that shows him being tempted by beautiful  lady. Two people could look at the painting and have completely opposite moral reactions. One fights harder against temptation and the other falls further into it. We know that Fra Filippo Lippi was a man whose moral views would not necessarily be considered "correct" and yet he paints some of the most beautiful and moving Christian pictures. Sometimes the morality of a painting is intentionally ambiguous, like those domestic scenes by the Dutch painters that feature a man and his wife counting their money while ignoring the scripture. Is this a move to secularism or a warning against moral bankruptcy? I think Tolstoy is right to call for artwork that has a positive and correct view of morality, I do not think that this is as completely dependent upon the artist herself as he claims.

     Thirdly, Tolstoy gives up on almost everyone that I might mention if asked to name a great artist from the past: Dante, Boccaccio, Bach, Raphael, etc. Instead, he praises the simple authenticity of the peasant's song and the peasant's dance. For him the greatest art is one that promotes the true simple Christian faith and the universal brotherhood of all humankind. It is a bold thing to say that these artists were thought of as inaccessible elitists when they were creating as they perhaps are now. I think he slips into a some sentimentalism for his peasant folk. I think there certainly can be authenticity and beauty in the folk culture, but I'm pretty sure that peasants were just as capable of debauchery as the French poets. Bawdy songs and the like are not a rarity amongst folk culture. I think that Tolstoy becomes too interested in simplicity as the ideal of artwork.

    Though I disagree with some of the implications of Tolstoy's views on what art is and what it is for and how it can be good, I think his critiques of the art world are not altogether unfounded. I think that morality is related to artwork and that artworks can make moral claims and that there can certainly be poor, immoral, or non-art. I am not prepared to go to the lengths that Tolstoy is to decry nearly every artist and their art from the Renaissance to his own day. This is not out of elitism but instead it is because I think that that communication of human emotion and morality is not always a simple thing but can be exceedingly complex. I want to have the humility to hear the beauty in the peasant's song and the discipline to hear it in the symphony.

What Is Community Art?

       The term 'community art' is one that has been hard for me to define. The name implies that it is a form or method of art-making that prioritizes the community, which I suppose is a good enough definition. Part of the reason that it is a little hard to pin down exactly is simply because it can come in so many forms: a community or social group coming together to paint a mural, professional artists making art for a public place for the community, etc. However, it may certainly come in a gallery space as well as proven by artists Joy Lewis and Anna Alig.

    In their exhibit: All Dressed Up: A study in Self Portraiture they worked with volunteers to create a series of photographs that would feature the volunteers as they normally juxtaposed with the same person dressed up in any outfit they chose. The results are sometimes amusing, but the vulnerability that is present adds a serious dimension to the work. The vulnerability comes from two things. 


   First, each volunteer chose to dress up as a character or in whatever unusual ensemble they chose in order to represent themselves. By showing someone as they are most often seen i.e. in street clothes and pairing that with the same person in a creative costume of their own choosing creates a contrast in which the difference is something like the 'inner self' of the volunteer. Even if they were just trying to be funny, it reveals their sense of humor not only in general - but specifically about themselves. 
  Secondly, each of the volunteers snapped their own portrait. The camera had a remote and each of the participants whenever they were ready snapped away. Consequently, the finished products are the result of the volunteers. Both artist and model are vulnerable here. The volunteers are not trained photographers which mean that they have to trust themselves, but more significantly, the artist whose name will be on the exhibit must trust them as well. 
  This arrangement fosters some vulnerability, but it doesn't stop there. This vulnerability is used by the artists to create trust. Trust between the artists and models, between the models and themselves, and all of them must trust the exhibit visitors. This sense of trust permeates the entire exhibit. Community was fostered in the creating of it and fostered in the displaying of it. 

Review: After This Our Exile

The Show

     To walk into the little gallery on the third floor of Adams Hall is to have a multi-sensory experience. Aroma, noise, music, movement, and varied textures are instantly experienced. It is a lot of sensory information, but it is not intended to shock or stun. The environment at once feels familiar and foreign. It is familiar for the materials and sounds are somewhat domestic, but there is also a deep sense of mystery. This is "After This Our Exile," a mixed media art exhibit by Wheaton College senior Jessina Leonard.

The exhibit has four primary components. Two videos play continuously and simultaneously on both ends of the gallery. Hanging between them in the middle of the room are three window screens, wooden and worn. On back wall are two large circles in the form of a Venn diagram. One circle is of cloves, the other of roofing nails pounded directly into the wall. Each of these elements are in direct communication with each other and this seamless and engaging communication is the reason the show is such a success. The show continues in a long tradition by interpreting the annunciation to Mary. In the artist's words it is about, "a reckoning of opposites - of power and vulnerability, absence and presence, joy and suffering, body and spirit - and evidence of the mysterious liminal space between these dichotomies." These tensions are portrayed in a way that critiques the platonic ideal of the spirit over the body specifically in some traditional Marian imagery. Instead, this work shows the redemption of the human body - specifically the female body. This work is feminist. It brings an "idealized and sexless" Mary back to earth and in doing so makes a critique of our society's view of the female form. Emphasizing the flesh of the female body while at once critiquing the the overemphasis of the flesh of the female body in our society is a delicate line to walk. The artist has done this by viewing the female form through the lens of the redeeming work of Christ.

The Circles

     The two circles are simple in form but rich in symbolism. The title of the piece is "Theotokos, or 280 Cloves/Nails for Every Day of Pregnancy." It is a reference to the 13th century legend of Gertrude of Helfta in which the Christ on her crucifix spoke to her in dream. Afterwards, she clutched the crucifix to her breast reminiscent of Song of Songs 1:13 "A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts." She then replaced the nails of the crucifix with cloves.

     In keeping with the feminist theme of the show, these circles are symbolic of the female form. A reference to the beauty of the female body but also a subtle critique of our society's accepted symbols of gender. One circle of cloves and one of nails. The cloves speak of the motherly love that Mary would have for Christ, but the nails are a constant reminder of what his future holds. As the title indicates, the 280 represents the 280 days in a typical human gestation period. Though minimal in nature, Jessina says much with this piece. The circle is a common symbol for the heavens, and they are in conversation with the three square shaped screens nearby which symbolize the earth. Between the two are the tension of body and spirit. At once the overlapping circles refer to Eve and Mary. Eve, while oft represented as the physical and corrupt fall of humankind, is here rejoined to Mary. While Mary, oft represented as a "sexless, idealized" queen of heaven, is rejoined with the physicality of Eve. They both sinned, and yet they both gave birth to all the world. Furthermore, this redemption is possible because of the conflation of Christ himself who also became flesh. The hypostatic union of Christ is also represented in this simple form. Mary and Eve. Mary and Christ. Eve and Christ. Christ and the church. Christ with each of us.

The Screens

The three screens are battered and worn. They stand between the two videos which play simultaneously. The screens are the mystery of the virgin birth. While the video on one wall shows the moments leading up to the annunciation, the video on the other show the moments afterwards. The videos play at once, for Mary was a virgin before the annunciation and after. However, she was of flesh. And her body, while the host for this gift to humankind, and though untouched by man's hands, she still bore the weight and pain of a normal human pregnancy. She was still a virgin, but she was not the same. Though "full of grace and mercy" she was laden down with burdens as well. There are three for they are also in conversation with the circles. Because they represent the physicality of each figure represented in the circles. The individual, physical identity if Eve, Mary, and Christ. The aged and worn side of everything represented in the circles. There is space between the screens, for they are of this world, finite.

The Videos

     The powerhouse of the exhibit are the two video clips playing on a continuous loop. Featuring two different female actors interpreting the moments leading up to and after the annunciation. Before the annunciation, the actor stands in a loft with a low vaulted ceiling. She is shown standing, sitting, and walking. Her hands touch her dress, clutching it and wrinkling it. She walks in a circle, her bare feet audible on the wooden floor. She looks up into the ceiling, the single window sheds a brilliant white light on her as if God's grace had taken the form of the sunlight. Bathed in brilliance the camera spins in circles. The moment is not comfortable. The gift of God to her above all other women and which yet includes every woman. A narrator in almost a murmur recites passages of scripture. 

    The feet get a lot of screen time in the first video, this is in keeping with the artistic tradition of Christ's feet emphasizing his humanity. The sock lines are even visible as she walks in circles, this is a physical body that is affected by and affects the world around her. The tenderness of the scene does not give way to sentimentality. There is tension. Mary is being asked to sacrifice her body, so that Christ may sacrifice his. The scriptures that we hear are going through her mind, this again keeps with the artistic tradition of Mary reading scripture at the time of the annunciation. She contemplates and feels the weight of all the covenants from the Lord to Israel. She still says yes. 

     Through the screens the other video plays post-annunciation scenes. Mary is exposed. She sits on the floor and wraps herself in her own arms grasping at her own back. The force that she uses on herself leaves red marks. Her hair covers her face as she experiences pain. Then you hear it, a baby - the baby - cries. Up to now, Mary has been alone. Now she holds the Christ child in her arms. The relief is mingled with sorrow, she knows that he will be a sacrifice. The pain continues. Over the speaker, a hammer pounds a nail methodically. Mercilessly. She wraps the child in a cloth. The bright red stripe on the cloth is a piercingly obvious prescient. Seated on a chair, she holds the babe on her lap. A sharply beautiful Pietà. Moments later, Mary sits on the floor as the camera refocuses to show us a white lily on the floor, a symbol of her purity.

The Bodies

      In addition to the rich interpretation of the story, the show also intends to comment on the female body through the depiction of the annunciation. There are two different figures that play the role of Mary, one before the annunciation and one after. One for each video. Pre-annunciation, the figure wears a loose darkly colored dress and has bare feet. The emphasis is on the feet of the figure, the hands, and the face. She looks like someone that you would meet on the street. Mary was a particular human when the angel Gabriel visited her. In the post-annunciation video the second figure is shown in various modes of dress. At first she is in undergarments, she is exposed and vulnerable. The character holds herself in an embrace feeling the skin on her own back. This a powerful foreshadowing of the stripes on Christ's back, but it is also powerful for the depiction of Mary's strength and frailty. Another of the opposites that Jessina has tried to show throughout the exhibit. She is shown again in the same dress as the other figure, to remind us that she is the same particular person that she was before the annunciation. This is emphasized by the videos playing at once. The artist has attempted to show the body with respect but also with an emphasis on Mary as a completely fleshly and fully female human. In her choice of exposure she has emphasized the physical reality of Mary and the annunciation but without divorcing the story completely from the spiritual. In fact the whole point of the story is that it is the spiritual worked out through the particular human form.

Conclusion

     After This Our Exile attempts to redeem the physical reality of the female figure through the depiction of the annunciation. This it does in a beautiful manner. It takes a gentle and sensitive touch to depict the female figure in its physicality, beauty, and shortcomings in a tasteful and wholesome way. Wholesome in that the female body is glorified whilst not worshiped and appreciated but not idealized. Mary is a wonderful way to display this, for it is a reminder that just as Mary was redeemed through Christ so can the female body be redeemed in our culture through the redeeming work of Christ. Not by ignoring the fleshy reality of the body, but by embracing it, confident in the significance of the incarnation. Am I taking the feminist emphasis away by pointing out the significance of Christ in this exhibit? No, for this work reminds us that though God became a man, his mother was a woman. A beautiful and flawed woman who bore the marks of her pregnancy just as the gallery will bear the marks of those nails in the wall.

To visit the artist's website and to see some high quality and beautiful stills from the videos, click here.

The Father of Smaug

       It might be harder for us as to escape the Smaug of advertising than Bilbo the real dragon. The second installment of The Hobbit trilogy is barely behind us and a multitude of reviews have been written, from incendiary disappointment to unapologetic paeans and most of what is in between. Therefore, I thought I would enter the blogosphere on the topic with something a bit different. The identity of Smaug's true father, Fafnir, and the stave churche portals where he lingers still.

     The celebrated creator of Middle Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, was a scholar of Northern or Norse mythology. As such, he was familiar with what he would call the two great dragons of North mythology: Beowulf's bane and Fafnir from the Volsung Saga. He is noted as having said in his essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" that there were only two important dragons in European literature, "Fafnir, and Beowulf's bane." Tolkien certainly used both of these as influences for his dragon episode in "The Hobbit."*

     Tolkien seems to have used the story of dragon in Beowulf as inspiration for his dragon episode in The Hobbit more than the dragon's personality. For example, in Beowulf, the dragon claims treasure that was originally owned by another group and guards it for three hundred years before being disturbed by a thief who steals one golden cup. The dragon is enraged and lashes out at the surrounding countryside until Beowulf decides to confront him. Beowulf arrives at the dragon's lair with eleven of his fine fighting Geats accompanied by the thief. In front of the lair Beowulf makes a speech (reminiscent of Peter Jackson's Thorin) and the battle ensues, however it is not the hero of the story or the thief that eventually slays the dragon but another character of the story called Wiglaf. These are just some of the striking parallels between Beowulf and The Hobbit narratives; the original scene is complicated and worth reading. You can find John Lesslie Hall's translation free online here.

     The character of Smaug seems to be more heavily influenced by the dragon of the Volsung Saga, Fafnir. The most notable similarity that they share in contrast to Beowulf's dragon is their intellect. Beowulf's dragon is a fire breathing monster, a menace to be sure, but not something to be reasoned with much less a subject for confabulation. Whereas, for Smaug and Fafnir, some of the best moments of the story are when they are in dialogue with the protagonists. The first thing that Fafnir says in the story is, "Who art thou? And who is thy father?" One of the first things that Smaug says to Bilbo is, "Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask?” They are inquisitive and intellectual, an absence in Beowulf's bane. In fact, that he is known as "Beowulf's bane" with no name to himself is notable. Beowulf's unnamed dragon plays the role of an antagonist as a beast of brute strength. Though Smaug and Fafnir can both claim physical magnificence as well, they are both also intellectual opponents to their respective slayers. It can perhaps be said that characteristically Smaug is a descendant of Fafnir.

     Not only is he a literary descendant, but Fafnir is a predecessor to Beowulf's bane. In the Beowulf epic, Beowulf de-arms the Grendel to the delight of the Danes. In their celebration, the Danish people begin to recount earlier tales of glory. The tale they choose to recount is from the Volsung Saga:

Of Sigemund grew,

when he passed from life, no little praise;

for the doughty-in-combat a dragon killed

that herded the hoard: under hoary rock

the atheling dared the deed alone

fearful quest, nor was Fitela there.

Yet so it befell, his falchion pierced

that wondrous worm,—on the wall it struck,

best blade; the dragon died in its blood.

    Though the roles are reversed in the Danes' version of the story (in the Volsung Saga it is Sigurd who kills the dragon not his father Sigmund), it is the same dragon who is object of heroic violence, Fafnir. This story is thought to be told as a foreshadowing of Beowulf's solo encounter with the dragon and his consequential doom.

Borgund Stave Church ca. 1180 

     It can be safely stated, therefore, that Fafnir is an incredibly important figure in European literature. He is an influence not only to Tolkien's ubiquitous stories, but also to the stories that influenced them. However, Fafnir was not only an influence on the development of literary fantasy, he also was an important element in the transition of the Scandinavian's conversion to Christianity.

     Christianity flowed through Norway in the tenth and eleventh centuries beginning with missionaries and then courtesy of the controversial King Olaf Tryggvason whose motives and history are of an obfuscatory nature at times. Culminating in King Olaf II (who became St. Olaf) and his promulgation of mandatory Christianity at the Moster Council in 1024. Wooden churches were built as a result of the conversion. These churches are known as stave churches due to their unique construction technique. While there were thought to be as many as one to two thousand of these churches in Norway at one time, approximately only thirty remain. One thing that these remaining churches have in common with each other is their prominent dragon imagery. The dragon heads that once decorated Viking ships (such as the one found at Oseberg) became featured on the gables of the Christian church. Additionally, dragon imagery has an even more intimate place on these churches - the portals.

Detail from Hylestad Stave Church portal
ca. late 12th -early13th c.

    It is on the portals of these stave churches that we not only find depictions of dragons, but of Fafnir specially. In this detail from a portal that was originally in the Hylestad Stave Church there is a clear depiction of Sigurd slaying Fafnir. Every church goer in Medieval Norway would pass these carvings and be reminded of the old pre-Christian myths.

    Norway became officially converted in 1024, it is therefore important to note that these stave churches date much later. The earliest is dated to around 1130, over one hundred years later. The dragon imagery and myths remained essential to the Medieval Norwegians for hundreds of years after their Christian conversion. It is hard to say why these stories became and remained such an integral part of the Christian churches. It is possible that they began to merge with the Christian teachings and that the Christian neophytes found no contradiction between these two philosophies. It has also been suggested that they remained for political reasons since Sigurd (the dragon slayer) was believed to be a progenitor of the kings of Norway.

    These churches are important because they offer a visual record of stories that were vital to the earlier Scandinavians and also throughout Northern Europe as indicated by the presence of these myths in the Beowulf epic. Additionally, the relevancy of these Medieval stave church portals can also be seen today in movie theaters across the world right now in The Hobbit trilogy.

     Bonus: While Smaug the Magnificent is having his moment on the big screen he had better be careful whilst enkindling Laketown, for some of those dragon carvings on the gables of those Scandinavian Medieval-inspired buildings may very well be harking back to his own father.

Still of Lake Town from "The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug"

*There are other dragon figures in Middle Earth and some do bear more of a resemblance to Beowulf's bane - such as Scatha. However, we are focusing on the influences for Smaug in particular.
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