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The art of seeing

November 5, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Anthony Carnovale

I couldn’t move. I mean, I could barely even breathe. It only lasted for a few seconds; it felt like ages. I’ve never been able to forget it, to shake it —I’m not sure I want to. 

It happened at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I was there to see the work of one of my favorite artists, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat’s work was inspired by jazz, comics, and graffiti. For someone who grew up listening to hip-hop, I was drawn to Basquiat and his excessive scribbling, elusive symbols and diagrams. One of my favorite pieces of his is titled, The Boxer. But as much as I was shaken and stirred by his work, it was a piece by artist Rita Letendre that just about knocked me out. 

The title of the painting is Aforim. Truthfully, I’m not quite sure how to describe it: it’s an abstract piece that looks like a sky with two horizon lines, or is it four? The horizons come together like hard-edged arrows of thinly painted colour that converge sharply at the edge of the canvas. I don’t know what else to say about it. You see, I’ve never been able to write critically about art. In fact, I’m not sure how to think critically about art. I know next to nothing about styles, genres, color schemes and composition. For me, engaging with a piece of art means feeling my way through it. I don’t know how to write about music, but I can groove to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I don’t know much about aperture and exposure, but I admire the photography of Fred Herzog. I even have difficulty writing about my preferred mode of artistic expression: writing. 

For me, a piece of writing works if it stops me in my tracks, stuns me; a sentence works if it sings to me, if I can bounce my head to it as I’m reading. The writers I have rocked out to over the years are William Gass, Samuel Beckett, George Saunders, Ali Smith. For me, Smith is equal parts magician and writer. One of my favorite lines she’s come up with is: “To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.” After reading this sentence for the first, second and seventh time, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. 

Letendre’s ‘Aforim’ made me feel something strange and unsettling. It was as if I could feel a vibration emanating from the image. The sharp point of the lines is like a wedge —but not the type of wedge that keeps a door from closing. This is a wedge that found its way into something much deeper, something beyond measure, beyond words. I knew I had to respond to it in some way; I knew it was going to be difficult. All I could hope for were a few words, perhaps a couple of inadequate sentences in a column such as this. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about hope, as of late. I’m thinking about hope because of all the things that I’m hearing and feeling during these tumultuous, tempestuous and trying times. I can sense people’s anxieties and see that they’re longing, and hoping, for better days ahead. I can sense, that for some, their hope is waning. It’s easy to see why.

We’re living in a time where it feels as if so much has been taken away from us, so many things testing us, trying us. Our public spaces, shared spaces, have become smaller; our social circles have been reduced to dots. We used to open our doors; now we’re logging in. Most of what we’re experiencing is being experienced through screens, plexiglass and masks. We need to touch; we need to feel; we need to see. 

In some way, I think that our desire for connection can be fostered by creativity. Art can provide that jolt that makes us feel less numb, and remind us of who we are, and more importantly, who we can be. I think we need to get more creative in how we see the world, and where we can find the beautiful things that make us feel alive, inspired and hopeful. If there is hope in art, we need to find examples of it outside of traditional spaces. 

In his ‘An Attempt at Exhausting a Place’ writer Georges Perec sat in a café and meticulously recorded the mundane things that he saw. He sat in cafes and bars, noting the perambulations of his fellow Parisians, and catalogued their cars, buses, dogs, kids, bags, newspapers, mail. He wanted to grasp “that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.” 

See: The first day of school, 2020. I’m standing, in the schoolyard, with my eight-year-old son, and six-year-old daughter. We’re waiting for the kids to be allowed into the school. My daughter is holding my hand; my son is pretending that he doesn’t want to. We’re all wearing masks. I’m imagining what their new school days are going to look like when I hear a voice from behind us. “Hi Ruby!” It was a soft, gentle voice, but there was something in it that struck me — like the wedge in Letendre’s ‘Aforim’ — something beyond measure, beyond words. My daughter turned around and recognized her friend. “Hi, Josephine!” Even though they were both wearing masks, they saw one another and recognized one another. There was something so moving, so magical, so hopeful about that simple exchange that I was just about moved to tears. 

Look, I don’t want to tell people what to think or see. I’m only suggesting that in these challenging times, that we teach ourselves to see beauty in places where we wouldn’t normally look. We need to open our eyes and ears; we need to look in different directions; we need to change the channel, turn the page, open our doors and hearts and see what happens when we do. The art critic John Berger wrote: “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it speaks”. The day that Josephine recognized my daughter Ruby, and spoke her name, was a day that left me feeling hopeful. 

We’re going to be okay. 

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