A Morning with SAM

A few weeks ago I went to the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) with some friends. I had not been inside since the remodeling began years ago and like so many places in Seattle, I was never intentional about "playing tourist." Thankfully my friends were interested AND also had an inside connection for free entry, so I went. Once I walked up the staircase while looking at the floating cars speared with shards of light, I realized "remodel" was the wrong word to use-it really was a new museum from the ground up, a "reconstruction." They had permanent galleries: Modern and Contemporary, Native American, NW artists, African, American, Australian and Oceanic, Asian, Ancient Mediterranean and Islamic, and Textiles yet we first went to the Special Exhibits-"Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act" and "Michelango Public and Private."

Calder was a master sculptor in the mid 20th c. creating an array of work as small as jewelry to as large as room-size mobiles. There were trinkets and toys and abstract designs. Mobiles were hanging all over the ceiling, perfectly balanced yet seemingly unstructured, without pattern or consistency though any fraction of weight difference in any direction would ruin the whole. It was interesting to see the process of his work, his ingenuity and inspiration but it did not capture me. There was almost too much left to interpret. Yes I can get lazy and want a full explanation of the artist's intention but like so much modern art, depth and wonder are often replaced with shallow "appreciation" in light of plain or simplistic or even elementary elements.

A contrast would be the next exhibit I saw on Michelango. We often think of Da Vinci being the Renaissance man who was plagued by ambition from overwhelming ability and imagination. Yet Michelango had his struggles as well, to a deeper level in some ways. This exhibit focused on his preliminary work for the Sistine Chapel. SAM was able to get a very rare collection of his sketches and drawings, his trial and error so to speak. There are only 12 in the US total and SAM acquired 12 more from the Cada Buonarroti in Florence. There are so few because he habitually burnt his preliminary work. I felt privileged in some way to be able to compare the drafts with the final product, having seen the Sistine Chapel in August last year (in the Vatican Museums, entrance shown in the picture).

Unlike Calder's exhibit, Michelangelo's left me with a sense of weight, of depth, of real substance. The intensity with which he worked and the excitement and turmoil revealed in his letters are evidence of his responsibility as an artist and the weight of the themes he was seeking to contain and display through art. He was not merely trying to master a certain medium or style of art, but trying to use it to point to something greater, someone greater. Art has become an end in itself for many, yet for Michelango it served as a tool, a window, a gateway to understand the world.

As I walked through the other exhibits of SAM, I had to stop because I couldn't take it all in anymore. I have a limit on how much I can soak in at a museum, it is wearying to have a Matrix-like download of such a concise, processed collection of culture. You pay to get in so you want your money's worth I suppose. Though you have museums stocked full of artifacts and exhibits around the world so little is seen, so little is preseved of cultures long ago. Small fragments remain and few are valued appropiately. So much is lost and even more forgotten: A name, a village, a story, a culture. Which memories are kept and treasured and which do we choose to ignore, to degrade, to kill? Why?
Would I be satisfied with one room with one raw artifact without commentary, without dates or facts instead of a museum full of ones known and itemized? Would I be content wondering, pondering the mystery of that one piece? Would I be comforted yet challenged by the sheer weight and power of time, culture, history-humanity and my small yet significant existence as I reflect its place and my place woven and connected somehow in the fabric of creation? I hope so.

Of all artifacts of history, all slices of culture, art is the most insightful and deceptive, and like any power it can build and destroy, be used for good and for evil. Interpreting art requires wisdom and creating it demands responsibility and discernment. I fear both interpreting and creating art today demands too little of us. You must grasp something in order to bend it, otherwise you may break it and something broken has no value but to learn what to do next time. Even Picasso understood this: "Art is a lie which helps us see the truth." We forget the goal of seeing the truth when we treasure the lie more, when we prefer to be blind than to see.

My stomach rumbled, someone suggested lunch at Pike Place and the day moved on and less heavy thoughts filled my head but I am glad I had that morning with SAM.