Can a camel sprout wings? We can imagine it, as Descartes says, because we can combine diverse elements into one thing, even though a “winged camel” doesn’t exist, keeping in mind that we don’t have to prove a negative. The burden of proof is on the assertion that there is a winged camel. Looking around my home office, where I’m typing this essay, I can say that I don’t see one currently. I’ll go that far. I can also imagine enjoying a statue of a winged camel on my desk.
I can see, for example, that two museums in my town have taken different tacks on the live issue of diversity. MoMA has plunged all in (or has it?), while the matronly Metropolitan has dipped its toe in. I’m reminded that, in looking at a painting, the words “abstract” and “representational” are relative terms. No painting at all is absolutely representational…there are always some abstract aspects present. And there’s no such thing as an absolutely abstract painting. Mondrian started out painting landscapes with trees. I still like to think of those trees with their traced branches when I look at his abstracts of blocked color demarcated by black lines. MoMA has a Picasso painting that’s as abstract as Picasso gets, but it’s still called “The Studio”. The title of the work is not absolutely abstract. And I like it very much, that art critic John Berger says that it’s relevant to ask of a picture “What is it about?” It’s not an unsophisticated question.
Likewise, “canon” and “diversity” could be two semantic extremes on a gradient that never reaches an absolute state.
Hey, what’s going on with the max diversity at MoMA? Do you want to change most of your friends every six months? Maybe you do.
Over at the more staid Metropolitan, I am associating “staid” with “stayed”. I don’t want the Met’s Manets to be removed from the walls because they have been there for years. I look forward to seeing them. If I wasn’t in the mood for them on one visit, I’d skip them that time. There’s a Rousseau (Barbizon school) that’s been in an adjoining gallery for over fifty years. I know because I’ve been looking at it since I was a teenager. Forty years in, I noticed something new about it. That was an event. There’s slow looking. There’s fast looking. But there’s also no looking. It’s the last which is the least desirable.
There are times when you don’t want the life raft to tip over…where there are sharks? The arts are my raft. Yes, sometimes, for contrast, I just want to jump in.
Can you diversify to the point where there is no canon? I’d say, not quite. There would always be a canon implied, even though it might be buried under a lot of anti-canon ideology.
I’d be inclined to say also that no canon, no matter how strict, can annihilate diversity. The diverse, with its outsiders and others, is always there, if only under the surface, if only quietly, undermining the substructure on which the canon stands. Let’s open our arms to both, and thereby keep our brains and hearts alive. We’re not on steady ground all the time, nor should we be.
