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.

Art and Friends

Looking at art with friends can be a revealing and difficult test of the relationship. Making a museum date with a friend can be a great way to catch up with him/her or see an exhibit, but rarely can you accomplish both. A first visit to a show with a friend can reveal that you have very different taste or worse, that you interact with the art in different rhythms. Meeting at an art gallery opening is a guarantee that you will neither see the art nor each other for the crowds standing in front of you no matter where you stand.

Friends go well for a casual art visit. If I kind of want to see the art, or maybe want to know if I am interested in it, then I have a few friends who are good company for a chatty visit.I can see the art briefly and share various relationship and work failures. Successes are always good news and as such they require celebration, which means toasting with a glass of bubbly and listening to all the details- not walking through a room of pictures that are good or bad and demanding my attention. Friends can be great for simple viewing. I once watched two eight year old boys walking through a room of Renaissance oil painting without ever slowing. They sauntered past a very somber painting by an unknown artist of Christ being taken in the night with the statement, "Whoa, that's deep." Two paintings along, still cruising by, they see the Velazquez Infanta Marie Theresa and the other one says, "Her dress is too poofy."

I find that I need to be alone if I want to look at the art, think about it, create a memory that I can retrieve and discuss. One of the best days I had this Spring was a trip up to Boston where I spent a day at the MFA. I got there in the morning and spent the day looking at whatever I wanted to see for as long as I wanted to see it. Some pictures led me to pull out my notebook. Others I walked past. Some made me go back and look at them again several rooms later. I went in no particular order through the museum, entering new rooms where hallways or interest led. At the end of the day, my head was full of ideas and thoughts and I walked back to the hotel seeing everything in a new light.

A more stressful moment was a recent visit to a museum with my new and wonderful beau. We had many long conversations about art, literature, life, love and all the rest of it in the many months preceding this excursion. But how would we do walking through a museum together? In fact, would we have to walk together the whole time? How pressured! As it turned out, we were both inclined to wander and return to the other one, freeing us to linger over one thing, and skip another. Neither of us really studied the exhibit but then neither of us felt that the exhibit called for it. We liked some of the same pieces and discovered that we both enjoy being cruel and cynical critics in confidence. If I were to say much about the pieces, I would have needed to return but overall I think we both determined that we could attend a show together again. At any rate, neither of us revealed such despicable judgment that we ran screaming from each other.

Art and friends, in my opinion, are a delicate balance. Largely, one loses my attention. That being said, I am off to meet a new friend to see a small gallery show that I want to see. Pity that I don't listen to my own advice.