Friend's Art

Last night over a glass of wine, a friend announced that she was not sure whether she actually knew what friendship was. A philosopher by training, she was inclined to determine what it was that others professed as friendship. A philosopher by inclination, I willingly embarked on my own attempt to describe what I think friendship is and discovered that her Socratic move left me perplexed as well.

One glass of wine became two and I decided that friends for me are people I trust, who challenge me and my views but on whom I can depend in an emergency. This, however, gets tricky when I think of the numerous friends I have had whose creative work I would reluctantly discuss. Virginia Woolf, for example, hesitated to review Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians and was relieved from the obligation by an editor who thought she might be perceived as showing bias. On one hand, bias seems inevitable. But anyone who has creative friends, actors, directors, painters, musicians, writers, composers and so on, also knows that one's feeling of intimacy with them does not necessarily blind you to the faults of their work. It just makes it harder to express them. On the other hand, a relationship with the artist can allow a friend to better understand the impetus and direction of the work. If a review partly exists to explain the effort to a wider audience than perhaps few besides friends could do so well.

Friendships are sometimes used as a trope for an exhibit but it is done successfully in the case of the Calder and Tanguy show I recently saw. Peggy Guggenheim famously wore one earring by Calder and one by Tanguy to show her bi-partisan appreciation of surrealism and abstract art. Tanguy and Calder were friendly, and she was a friendly collector of both. In this instance and perhaps in all instances, there is no Platonic ideal of friendship but truly something that is created between people each and every time, being redefined with the nature of the people involved. The art of some of my friends I have never liked but am thrilled that others do, on their behalf. Other friend's work is truly wonderful but I can never express it or convince them of my sincerity since I am merely a friend.