A year ago I had a weekly series of posts here at SuperForest named Monday Modern Art Chat. Every week I’d discuss a modern arts project. From the impressions that you readers gave me I condensed you liked it. Unfortunate enough I lost the spirit after a while and I stopped writing them. Art never stopped fascinating me though. In the mean time I became an applied physics student surrounded by smart, exact people who usually don’t feel much for more liberal fields like art. Most of my co-students consider sciences such as art history and English literature fake and inferior to physics. Why this happens has been bothering me ever since.
Most scientists that have been studying nature for a big part of their lives (physicists, chemists, biologists and even mathematicians) consider their science the True science. In fact, they consider the collection of related studies True as well (it would be strange for a physicist to consider mathematics not True but still use it everyday). So all the exact people think their fields describe reality and that the other fields (philosophy, art, sociology) don’t. This has all to do with their metaphysical orientation. Most physicists are materialists and therefore believe that reality is, and is nothing more but the things we register with our senses. Obviously artists think differently about this, they agree with the dualist theories. Digging further into this would make a kick-ass subject for another time but now I’d like to talk about the arts again. Excuse me for the little intermezzo.
My co-students act funny towards art and even my house-mate who studies at the University of Music looked a little awkward when she found me studying Phaidon’s The Art Book while cooking. This caused me to gauge even more interest towards art, and now I think the time is ripe to start talking. I’d like to talk to you lovely SuperForest readers on a regular basis about art and what it does to me, society or anyone else. I’m not so sure I’ll be sticking to modern art strictly this time but I guess we’ll see. If you guys want to share your opinions please, please do so by sending an email to the superforest email address to be found in the contact section or by placing a comment. Why not just get started? I’m a physics student talking about art so please bear with me.
Last weekend I went to London with my mother to see some art. On Saturday we wanted to visit Tate and this small tourist guide we had said that the gallery was split in two parts, Britain/Modern. The guide was from 1999 though and I wasn’t smart enough to check out Tate’s website so upon arrival I discovered the acclaimed Tate Modern was moved somewhere else. Tate Britain is pretty nice, though I was sometimes under the impression they had a lot of art and very few walls to stick it on to. It’s Modern counterpart is slightly different. It’s located in an old factory building and the main entrance must be the part where lorries used to drive down to dispatch their deliveries. They have two big floors showcasing their permanent collection which is absolutely mind boggling. Bacon, Mondriaan, Matisse, Dalí, Picasso, they probably have at least one work of every prominent 20th century artist.
The collection has been chopped up in bits and has been given beautiful names such as Poetry and Dream which showcases the art that relates to the new insights of the 20th century (Freud, mainly). I walked into this big room completely filled with surrealists like Miró, Magritte and Dalí. High up one of the walls there was a big Miró (Une étoile caresse le sein d’une négresse was it’s name, meaning ‘A star caresses the breast of a negress’). There were a lot of people gawping at it but my attention was drawn by the painting that hung beneath it. The Beached Margin by Edward Wadsworth.
The Beached Margin by Edward Wadsworth
Wadsworth isn’t very often associated with the surrealist movement, though this work may suggest the opposite. At first I found it – like most surreal paintings – unsettling. What do we see here? What does Wadsworth want us to see? The background is very normal, a couple of sailboats cruising on the deep-blue sea possibly enjoying the fine weather. Then there is a beach, but what is on the beach? Three big poles with various objects hanging from them make the entity quite puzzling. This star shape in the front suggests a starfish but it could also be a beach parasol. The figure hanging on the left hand side, could it be a man? The smaller objects popping up from the ground look like small shovels used by children to build sand-castles. Could this entire picture be showing how temporary these moments at sea are? Before you know it the blowing sand has buried the shovels and soon the sea (symbolized by the starfish) will take over the beach again through changing tides. Then the margin which is spoken about in the title could be the space that appears when the tide is drawn back.
It’s an utterly fascinating picture that leaves so much space for interpretation. This Beached Margin is built from many parts, and everyone sees another part highlighted. This is completely different from the exact sciences, they’re the same for everyone that studies them. Art gives the opportunity to critically think about what you see and to form an opinion of your own about certain matters. You don’t have to see what all the art book experts see; their vision is a good handrail to hold on to though.
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