I have never really fully understood art (see my post "There's no place like home..." for one anecdote about a family trip to a museum of modern art). It was usually my worst and least favorite subject in grade school (Art always competed closely with Penmanship for that distinction). However, I am starting to learn to appreciate it more as I grow older. I think I've finally figured out that it's not necessarily about how other people see, appreciate, and interpret the artist's meanings - it's about how I personally see, appreciate, and interpret it. I think most artists would agree. The French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas said, "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."
Art also provides a view of society itself. I think he was talking about all different forms of art, but the British comedian, actor, and playwright Ben Elton said, "Artists don't create society, they reflect it." I had this exact point in mind when I first read about something called "performance art" and one if its artists, Marina Abramović. Abramović famously did a six-hour work / performance which she called "Rhythm 0" in Naples in 1974. The work involved Abramović standing motionless and without speaking while the audience was instructed to do whatever they wished, using one of 72 objects (which included a rose, feather, perfume, honey, bread, grapes, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, a gun, and a bullet) that she had placed on a table. Her instructions (posted on the table) were simple:
Instructions:
There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.
Performance.
I am the object...
During this period I take full responsibility.
Duration: 6 hours (8 pm – 2 am).
Abramović said that her purpose for the work was to determine how far the public would go: "What is the public about and what are they going to do in this kind of situation?"
At first, the audience members were gentle. For example, someone gave her a kiss. Another gave her the rose. However, things deteriorated fairly quickly, and the performance became quite dangerous for Abramović. Art critic Thomas McEvilley witnessed the performance and said:
It began tamely. Someone turned her around. Someone thrust her arms into the air. Someone touched her somewhat intimately. The Neapolitan night began to heat up. In the third hour all her clothes were cut from her with razor sharp blades. In the fourth hour the same blades began to explore her skin. Her throat was slashed so someone could suck her blood. Various minor sexual assaults were carried out on her body. She was so committed to the piece that she would not have resisted rape or murder. Faced with her abdication of will, with its implied collapse of human psychology, a protective group began to define itself in the audience. When a loaded gun was thrust to Marina's head and her own finger was being worked around the trigger, a fight broke out between the audience factions.
Abramović described the event afterwards, stating, "What I learned was that ... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you ... I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation."
When I first read about this "work of art", I immediately thought of Stanley Milgram's experiment from the early 1960's (not his famous "small world experiment" which I described in "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" and "It's a small world after all..."). You've probably heard of this experiment too. Study participants ("teachers") were told that they were helping to conduct an experiment, in which they had to administer electric shocks to the "learners" (who were actually investigators in the study) based on their ability to learn a task. Each participant was given a set of instructions by another investigator, who was dressed in a white lab coat ("authority figure"). The teachers were instructed to administer varying levels of electric shock every time that the "learners" answered incorrectly (note that no shocks were actually delivered). If the "teachers" asked to halt the experiment (the "learners" acted like they were in pain each time a shock was delivered, and at times they would plead with the "teacher" to stop hurting them), the investigator would instruct them to continue. Surprisingly, more than half of the "teachers" continued to administer electric shocks, even up to what would normally be a lethal dose!
Milgram published his results in a paper entitled "The Perils of Obedience" in Harper's Magazine. He wrote:
The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.
The following statement is poignant, particularly in view of "Rhythm 0": "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process." I am also reminded of the famous "Stanford prison experiment" conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, as well as the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" experiment conducted by Jane Elliott, which was the subject of a 1970 PBS documentary "The Eye of the Storm". All of these experiments have a lot to say (none of it positive) about group behavior and provide some insight into what has come to be known as "mob mentality".
I have a couple of important observations. First, without question, there's no way that any research body would approve conducting the Milgram experiment, the Stanford prison experiment, or the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" experiment today. Second, given that all of these experiments, as well as the "Rhythm 0" art performance, occurred in the 1970's, it's tempting to speculate that society was different during the 1970's. While that is absolutely true, I would argue that, if anything, societal norms have changed for the worse. I actually shudder to think what would have happened if Marina Abramović had delivered her performance today. Her performance is still written about today (see "Rhythm 0: A Scandalous Performance" and "Marina Abramović’s shocking Rhythm 0 performance shows why we still cannot trust people in power" both written in the past couple of years").
Lady Bird Johnson said, "Art is the window to man's soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within." I would also suggest that art is a window to society's soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment