Theme:
Performance and Audience Depicted in Painting and Poetry
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My possible paintings as of now:
1) Two Dancers on the Stage - Degas (1874)
2) La Loge - Renoir (1874)
3) At the Theatre - Renoir (1876)
4) Portrait of Bibi la Purée - Picasso (1901)
5) Bar at the Folies-Bergère - Manet (1881-2)
6) Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando - Degas (1879)
Thoughts:
1., 4., and 6. deal with performers. There are differences among them, however. While there is no audience in 1., the ballet dancers aren't HEAVILY focused on. It's almost as if the background, a mysterious dark swirl, is more important to Degas than them. Indeed they are not very individualized. In the other two--4. and 6.--the performers are given names and shown on their own. The one in 6. is in the midst of performance, while in 4. the figure is not (at least in a strict sense, though the case can be made that he is still performing). One thing I like more about 4. than 6., though, is that we can see the face of the performer in 4.
2., 3., and 5. highlight audience members. I will probably not choose the Manet. I love it and was looking forward to spending more time in front of it, but it simply would draw too much attention to itself in the "room" of the exhibit due to its size compared to the other paintings. 2. and 3. are similar, both highlighting the audience as a sort of spectacle in themselves, not necessarily totally engaged with the performance. 2. is a more interesting painting, so I will probably choose that.
I will probably choose one from 1/4/6 (Degas/Picasso/Degas) and then 2. (Renoir).
In terms of poems, I have two poems I definitely want to use: "Magician" by Gary Miranda, about the relationship between magician and audience from the perspective of the magician; and "Cheap Seats, The Cincinnati Gardens, Professional Basketball, 1959" by William Matthews, about a crowd member at basketball games and how he experiences the games in terms of his own life.
"Magician" - Miranda
What matters more than practice
is the fact that you, my audience,
are pulling for me, want me to pull
it off—this next sleight. Now
you see it. Something more than
whether I succeed’s at stake.
This talk is called patter. This
is misdirection—how my left
hand shows you nothing’s in it.
Nothing is. I count on your mistake
of caring. In my right hand your
undoing blooms like cancer.
But I’ve shown you that already—
empty. Most tricks are done
before you think they’ve started—you
who value space more than time.
The balls, the cards, the coins—they go
into the past, not into my pocket.
If I give you anything, be sure
it’s not important. What I keep
keeps me alive—a truth on which
your interest hinges. We are like
lovers, if you will. Sometimes even
if you don’t will. Now you don’t.
"Cheap Seats..." - Matthews
The less we paid, the more we climbed. Tendrils
of smoke lazed just as high and hung there, blue,
particulate, the opposite of dew.
We saw the whole court from up there. Few girls
had come, few wives, numerous boys in molt
like me. Our heroes leapt and surged and looped
and two nights out of three, like us, they'd lose.
But "like us" is wrong: we had no result
three nights out of three: so we had heroes.
And "we" is wrong, for I knew none by name
among that hazy company unless
I brought her with me. This was loneliness
with noise, unlike the kind I had at home
with no clock running down, and mirrors.
That leaves me with two paintings and two poems. I think choosing the 3rd of each will be the hardest part, though. The question is, do I choose ones that will fit in really nicely with everything else (for example, choosing the Picasso in addition to Degas and the Renoir), or ones that will challenge them? Right now I'm leaning toward the latter.
I think Shelley's "Ozymandias" would be a very interesting poem to pair with the others, definitely taking them in a somewhat different direction, pulling the perspective out a bit.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The poem is not just about power's ephemerality but also art's, it seems, which might explain Shelley's
hesitance to make the main content of the poem come out of his own voice--instead, he gives it to "a
traveller from an antique land". In the poem there is also the presence of an audience and a
performer/artist, though they are very divided in time. So a question this poem might ask of the others is, "considering the relationship between performer and audience shown by the pairings of these paintings and poems, what does the future hold for that meeting (between artist and audience), and what is the importance of that meeting?
Then, a very interesting work of art to end with would be some kind of reproducible thing, like something from the Richard Hamilton exhibit or something from the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park, which is right now exhibiting the work of Haim Steinbach, which includes lots of everyday items.
My only worry is that including a poem and a work of art like that would stretch the limits of the exhibit and carry me too far away from the central themes...
