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The One Thing about Art
Dialogues with Silence:
Prayers & Drawings
by Thomas Merton
edited by Jonathan Montaldo
HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. 189 pages.
My overfilled shelves of books by Thomas Merton include a publication that I expect is somewhat of a rarity: the 1979 Thomas Merton appointment calendar, illustrated by Merton’s brush drawings accompanied by snippets from his writings. I have kept it all these years not for its collectible potential but for the drawings it contains (and the stunning portrait of Merton, painted by Victor Hammer, that graces the cover). And I have continued to hope that someday Merton’s visual art would be recognized, in its own right, through museum-quality publication. Dialogues with Silence takes a partial step in that direction, offering a generous helping of drawings paired with prayer, poems, and devotionally-flavored excerpts from Merton’s journals, letters, and other writings.
Viewers of Merton’s drawings will be treated to images created with Zen-like, prayerful spontaneity. Merton’s parents were artists, and long before gaining fame for his autobiography he was known for his humorous drawings in the Columbia University humor magazine. That he continued to take up the pen and brush after becoming a Trappist monk should come as no surprise -- Merton’s creative juices were of course unstoppable, as evidenced not only by the volume of words published in his lifetime but by the continuous flow of new material from the Merton archives in the years since his death in 1968. A comprehensive view of who Merton was -- as a man, artist, monk, Christian -- requires that we pay attention beyond the writings and take in, as well, his drawings, photographs, and the many extant recordings of lectures he gave as novice-master at the Abbey of Gethsemani.
The writings that accompany the drawings offer a healthy range of Merton’s work. Sometimes formal, sometimes poetic, sometimes lightly humorous, they offer us something of a picture of Merton “at prayer” in many moods and contexts. Even so, I find myself paging through Dialogues with Silence wishing for a wordless book in which the presentation of Merton’s drawings is not made somehow contingent upon being co-presented with his writings. It is as if HarperSanFrancisco, one of several publishers that has made much hay from the posthumous Merton publishing industry, cannot imagine that this significant aspect of Merton’s work could possibly sell without being placed in a “devotional” context. Merton’s friend Ad Reinhardt, the abstract painter, wrote, “The one thing about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art-as-art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.” A tough statement to follow, perhaps, but Merton’s drawings would have been better presented in and of themselves, leaving the prayer-connections to be made (or not) in the hearts and minds of individual viewers. Jonathan Montaldo, former director of the Thomas Merton Center and the editor of this volume, recognizes that “Thomas Merton’s literary voice has a different inflection for each of his readers. Each auditor hears a different Merton.” Each viewer, too, should have the opportunity to engage the visual Merton in her or his own light rather than seeing each piece paired with one viewer’s singular response.
Montaldo points out that the drawings in Dialogues with Silence were selected from a collection of eight hundred archived at Bellarmine University, that they are mostly representational in style, and that most were done in the 1950s. “During the 1960s,” Montaldo explains, “Merton’s art would become more calligraphic and abstract and resonate with his interest in Zen and studies of Eastern cultures.” This would be a better collection if it had included a strong selection of these great abstracts -- like Merton’s Collected Poems, which shows him in the most formal and the most experimental lights, Dialogues with Silence could have presented an evolutionary picture of this aspect of Merton. Instead, I smell a sequel.
Despite its drawbacks, Dialogues with Silence is a book worth having, as it offers a glimpse of a Merton who has been out of our sight for too long. For visual presentation, my 1979 Merton appointment calendar will always be my preference, but perhaps Dialogues will make it plain that a major exhibition and publication of Merton’s art-as-art -- without the imposition of prayer -- is long overdue.
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