A little bit of heart

Do you remember the scene in Wayne Wang's Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart where Geraldine watches a paper decoration rotate in the breeze, alternately flashing a picture of a dragon lady and a geisha girl? At the time, I thought that the imagery was clumsy and terribly unsubtle. I am reevaluating my position.

I had my own Wayne Wang moment at dinner, between meetings at AGU (American Geophysical Union). I sat across from a female academic who had recently won tenure and next to senior scientist at another FFRDC and his wife. During dinner conversation, the academic asked when I graduated. She quipped that she graduated a year after me and already had tenure. The wife of the senior scientist asked me how many children I had. When I replied one, she said that I needed to provide Iris with a sibling.

Never mind that the wife had worked part-time and only for a few years after her children were grown. Or that the academic had no spouse or children and her parents enjoyed good health.

The academic is famous in her field for her willingness to literally travel to the ends of the earth for long field campaigns, and her ability to coax experiments to work under harsh physical conditions (while enduring them herself). Over-wintering in Antarctica is not for the faint of heart, and it is overwhelmingly done by men and unencumbered women. Come to think of it, that's the population that does Science.

Progress

Sickbed reading

Was the whole economy a Ponzi scheme? Probably.

But I retreated from news of the global economic collapse, signs that global warming is occurring more rapidly than previously thought, and endless war and hatred in the middle east, to read two books on the nature and meaning of art.

Why not? Even if I read the news, I don't think it would change my retirement portfolio much. Staying home to read a book is a low carbon activity. If I could broker middle east peace, why isn't my home more peaceful? I know at the end of a book, my portfolio of experiences and ideas will very likely increase.

I loved The Accidental Masterpiece : On the Art of Life and Vice Versa by Michael Kimmelman. Every elliptical essay is a delight, but difficult to summarize. Amongst other things, "The art of being artless" deals with the distinction between deliberately making art versus creating a keepsake or preserving a memory. It is not a sharp distinction, because the artless snapshot can be elevated to the status of Art, by chance and by the blessing of cultural institutions. There are also implications for today's culture of ubiquitous cameras.

Before cameras, educated, well-to-do travelers had learned to sketch so that they could draw what they saw on their trips, in the same way that, before phonograph recordings, bourgeois families listened to music by making it themselves at home, playing the piano and singing in the parlor. Cameras made the task of keeping a record of people and things simpler and more widely available, and in the process reduced the care and intensity with which people needed to look at the things they wanted to remember well, because pressing a button required less concentration and effort than composing a precise and comely drawing.

"The art of collecting lightbulbs" celebrates the idiosynchratic collections of individual collectors. While I don't have any interest in a museum of light bulbs, I do mourn that Mark and I never made the pilgrimage to the Barnes collection at its original site. The building is being demolished this winter, years before the new building will be ready. Why?

"The art of the pilgrimage" reminds us of a time before Art was removed from context and placed in museums. When one had to deliberately seek out individual works and travel to far-flung locations, the journey becomes part of the experience of the artwork. It is so different than the people who pour through the Louvre, marching past hundreds of pieces, asking, "Which way to the Mona Lisa?"

"The art of gum-ball machines" explains the depth behind pretty pictures of everyday life.

Children dawdle to look at what adults hurry past. They take time because they have time. They see the world through fresh eyes. Maybe this is why artists who push us to look more carefully at simple things may also strike a slightly melancholic note. They remind us of a childlike conditions of wonderment that we abandoned once we became adults and that we need art to highlight occasionally if only to recall for us what we have given up.

Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art by Mary Anne Staniszewski makes an excellent companion read. It is unlike any other book about art, but I have a clearer understanding of "What is Art?" after reading it. Kimmelman's "The art of the artless" will make more sense if you have read Believing is Seeing.

I bought both books at Browser Books. My receipt says "You'll not only find the book you want, you'll enjoy looking for it." They are not kidding. This little bookstore in Pacific Heights (San Francisco) has more books that I want to read than most bookstores many times larger. I was so happy to find that they always stock Believing is Seeing, I bought a second copy.

I also highly recommend How to Look at a Painting by Justin Paton.

Asides:

• Do you ever buy additional copies of books you already own, just to prove to the publishers and booksellers that there is a market for that book? Am I weird that way?
• I used to love Richard Hilkert Books in the Hayes Valley (another San Francisco neighborhood). I was sad to see it disappeared, and so surprised to overhear his name at Browser Books. I turned and asked the two men, "Do you know him?"
  
  "He comes in here all the time. " It turns out that Richard Hilkert retired to catch up on his own reading. A few years later, he was deliberately run over by a deranged driver on a rampage. After physical therapy, he's walking again and "as feisty as ever", according to one of the employees at Browser Books.