|
A Garden of Visual Delights
Invisible Art
Compiled by The Art Brothers.
Darling & Company, 1999. 144 pages.
Reviewed by Michael Wilt
The adjective "ordinary" usually -- or one might say, ordinarily -- refers to things that are routine, common, even run-of-the-mill. An ordinary person, an ordinary house, an ordinary landscape: dismissed by the brushstroke of ordinariness, such things are taken for granted and expected to fade into the background, above which only the extraordinary should dare to rise and be noticed. Eventually the scholars of ordinariness will delve into the invisible backgrounds of our lives, but their discourse on the topic will use few ordinary words and concepts and fall outside the reach of those of us who are, well, ordinary.
The Art Brothers -- whoever they are -- may or may not be an ordinary trio, but they do revel in the ordinary. They call their book, and the art it celebrates, Invisible Art. Their premise: The "prevailing notion that art is to be found only in museums and galleries keeps most of us from the full enjoyment of the visual pleasures which life offers."
As an antidote to this prevailing notion, the Art Brothers have assembled an impressive and entertaining collection of visual pleasures from ordinary life. Few of these are likely to be seen in an art museum, much less in a SoHo gallery. But while these works may not all be things of "beauty," they can and should be recognized for the interest and pleasure they inspire in the beholder -- and for engendering in viewers a propensity to more richly perceive the world.
The paintings, drawings, photos, and sculptures that comprise Invisible Art have a variety of origins -- coloring book covers, picture postcards, magazine illustrations, catalog covers, package labels. They are gathered thematically. A section entitled "Artful Concealment" includes a photo of a nude woman whose modesty is preserved by carefully placed pinochle cards; another artful concealer is a Whitmanesque peanut vendor dressed in a suit made of, yes, peanuts. Several pages of old postcards are divided into subcategories like "Geysers," "Moonlit Mainstreets," and "Balanced Rocks." Illustrations of "Men and Women in Boats" and the "History of the Hammock" suggest that such images, for whatever reason, have been at times pervasive in popular culture. Advertising images in which undersized people promote oversized products point to the priorities that underpin commerce.
Along with its oddities and curiosities, Invisible Art contains real moments of beauty. An 1883 painting of three pretty young women taking shelter in a summer storm may not be a museum piece, but it successfully evokes the feelings that might accompany one's viewing of classic muses and graces. Picture postcards of sacks and bales are downright abstract and avant garde in their impact. Collages of "Unexpected and Inevitable Juxtapositions" reveal new visual and conceptual surprises every time they are viewed. Invisible Art features some legitimate "museum art" as well. Matisse, Whistler, and Rodin are represented, as are several lesser known artists whose work can be found in museums. It is refreshing to note that neither the museum-dwellers nor the "ordinary" art in the book -- the magazine covers and ads and postcards -- seem at all uncomfortable in the shared space of these pages. The Art Brothers make their point loud and clear.
Invisible Art opens with an epigram from Goethe: "The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes." The value and joy of Invisible Art is its ability to provoke the viewer to open his or her eyes more fully. If we think that each day of our lives is an encounter with the "same old same old," Invisible Art challenges us to think again. On a short drive up the highway a little while after paging through this book, I saw as if for the first time a number of billboards and signs that I have passed dozens of times. Were they "visual delights"? Not all, not by a long shot -- but at least I saw them, which was an improvement on my perceptive powers of just few days before.
|
