Maude Farris was a very sensitive girl ever since she was a baby. So
sensitive in fact that the tiniest discomfort – a cool draft, a bubble of gas, a
rumbling in her stomach – made her howl. There was no end to her crying and no
help from either grandmothers or doctors. “Colic”, they said, a catch-all phrase
for babies that simply couldn’t stand being alive and out of the quiet comfort
of their mother’s womb.
It was only after the fact that Maude’s parents concluded that it was her
extraordinary sensitivity that was at the root of the problem. The Princess and
the Pea Syndrome they called it, a girl who was born with special receptors in
her eyes, ears, body and brain; and that nothing – no light, sound, movement,
casual look, or strange walk – escaped her. She was an artist, an eye-painter,
a brilliant assayer of color, line, and texture; a natural psychiatrist and film
director.
Such sensitive brilliance, her parents decided, had to be behind her early
discomfort. What might be insignificant to other babies could not be dismissed
or ignored by Maude. As a girl and later young adult, her sensitivity only
sharpened. She missed nothing, was blind to nothing, and could ignore nothing.
This natural ability – or talent – had its good and bad sides. On the
positive side, she had a remarkable career in fashion design. She understood
what looked good on women, how fashion could both reflect popular culture and
influence it, and most importantly how fashion could and should be considered
great art in and of itself.
On the negative side, Maude never was able to ignore the noise and
interference that came from her environment. Things bothered her as much as
they did as a child. Not the simple disruptions of routine or intrusions of
unwanted sound and light into her quiet world; but more adult concerns.
She had a dramatic, theatrical response to poverty, inhumanity, environmental
abuse, and corruption. There was no way to overlook them, no possibility
of shelving them for later consideration, no way but to face them for all the
misery and pain they represented.
Of course her positive side acted as a counterfoil or even antidote for the
reactions of her negative side. There was nothing more elegiac than a
Caravaggio painting, more spiritually moving than a Durer print, or more
existential than a Kiefer tableau. Works of art were more than representations
of an artist’s vision or a reflection of the times in which he painted. They
were living, powerful, and still dynamic expressions of the best that life had
to offer.
Perhaps it was because of the times in which she lived – the hysterical,
divisive, impossibly noisy, chaotic years of the 2010’s – or perhaps because of
simple sensory overload on a system built for subtlety and refined sensibility
but short-circuited by high-tension and random energy bursts; but she was
tormented.
Not only was she upset and angered by what she saw and heard, she felt it
necessary to speak out, to protest, to do something.
In fact her own beautiful, sensitive appreciation of the plight of the world,
and her eloquent, heartfelt, and passionate outcries for pity, change, and
reform were exactly what the progressive movement needed.
Maude, however, was far more intelligent, perceptive, and logical than the
crowd which took her in as one of their own. Her reactions to injustice were
emotional and artistic – she could not help seeing lowlife as a series of works
by Goya, Hals, and Bruegel; the desperate need for religion and spirituality
from the paintings of Giotto and the Medieval masters; and the search for
individual reinvention in the triptychs of Bacon.
The reactions of her colleagues had no intellectual, spiritual, or
philosophical foundation. They were cries of personal need. Protesting
racism, climate change, income inequality, and social justice was less of a
reasoned, structured, and strategic move to real reform than a mantle of
acceptance and belonging.
Hysteria, exaggeration, melodrama, and intemperance were far easier methods
of expression than more considered approaches to issues and more
rational proposals for reform.
‘Racism’ became a catch-all for every progressive grievance. Black writers
and journalists who saw everything through the lens of white male
supremacy could not possibly reflect reasonably on history, the legacy of the
Civil War, the crises between the Upper South and Lower South over manumission
and the inevitable corrosive impact of freed slaves within white American
society. Out of such historical myopia could only come hyperbole. These
writers knew, of course, exactly what they were doing. Temperance, thought, and
rationally-derived insights did not sell books, gain television audiences, or
lecture engagements.
Only tears and flapdoodle would do for climate change activists who settled
science long before it was ever settled because it felt good to wail and be
heard.
There was nothing more thrilling and life-altering than to be among thousands
on the Mall, protesting the glass ceiling, the destruction of the natural
environment by rapacious capitalists and their Wall Street enablers; the
persistent, insidious, and growing Nazi-like racism in America; and the
retrograde influences of religious extremism.
It felt good to be there, to belong, to shout, and to have one’s voice become
one of loving multitude. It had nothing to do with the ends, nor even with the
means, but only the performance.
It soon became clear to Maude that she had no place in this crowd. Yet her
feelings had not changed nor her sympathies.
There is a pre-revolutionary Russian tale about an idealistic young man who
defies his father, rejects his wealth, social milieu, and professional support,
and chooses to work with the peasants. He marries and convinces his wife, an
educated, talented artist, to live with and among them. The peasants soon take
advantage of the young man, stealing from him, defying his orders and rules, and
impoverishing the land.
The young man is not deterred. He tries to understand the peasants, their
milieu, and their meager aspirations, and overlooks their dishonesty as an
expression of their unfortunate fate. His wife in increasingly frustrated by
her husband’s attempts to good and the right thing in the face of such callous
indifference on the part of the peasants.
The young man and his wife quarrel about human nature, its imperfectability,
and the moral choices that the privileged and well-educated have. He chooses to
honor his commitment to the peasants and stays. He is eventually ruined and
goes home, ashamed and beaten.
His wife goes to Moscow, for she feels that there is no purpose in social
reform, and nothing but thanklessness and failure. If one can express the
better aspects of human nature rather than the base, insensible, plodding
ignorance of the peasants, she would be serving both them, her class, and
Russian society in general.
She leads a happy, fulfilled, and well-recognized life.
Years after Maude had moved from the world of Seventh Avenue, rented a loft
in Brooklyn, and began to paint, she often retold this story – her story, in
fact.
The world of protest, activism, and progressive compassion was no better than
the world it was trying to reform. There was enough egotism, arrogance, and
supposition to go around on both sides. Change was inevitable but neither
qualitatively good or bad. Social reformers may push the wheel in one
direction, but time and historical forces will always push it back.
There were those who ignored the issue entirely – nihilists and spiritual
renegades who chose only to withdraw and neglect – but Maude was different.
She, like the wife in the Russian story, never abandoned her sensibilities,
concerns, or convictions; but saw that artistic creation was a far more potent,
lasting, and insightful means of expression than any ordinary, necessarily
insular, protest could ever possibly be.
Her Brooklyn loft was not a retreat but a place for reflection,
interpretation, and creativity. Whether or not her paintings every became as
famous as those of Caravaggio was not the point. It was withdrawing from a
chaotic, divisive, and parochial world to one which at least had some hope of
endurance if not meaning.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Tears, Flapdoodle, And Artistic Sensibility–The Enduring Nature Of Genius
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