Ottawa

This past week instead of hiking I loaded the family (and Grandma) into the car and we spent a few days in Ottawa, Canada. I really like Ottawa. Just a 5 hour drive from my house and presto – everything is different. My six year old loved it – weird money (loonies and toonies kill him), people speaking french (along with many other languages), buses, bicycles, and cabs all over the place (he took his first cab ride on this trip), the changing of the guard with their bright red uniforms and bagpipers.

Our hotel, the Lord Elgin, was just a few blocks down the hill from the parliment buildings, within site of the Rideau Canal, and not far from all sorts of cool things to do and see. Besides just wandering around the area, we hit the Canadian Museum of Civilization one day and The National Gallery of Canada (Musee des beaux-arts du Canada – everything sounds better in french for some reason) the next.

Civilization was right up my son’s alley. He wasn’t that thrilled with the historical recreation on the third level or the Canadian Personalities Hall on the fourth, but the First People’s exhibit on the first and the Children’s Museum on the second kept him plenty busy while the adults took turns visiting the rest of the joint.

The photo at the top of the page is a portion of a painting on a domed ceiling above a winding staircase. It is by Alex Janvier and called “Morning Star”. I just love this painting. I could have stood there and looked at it all day. The link above tells the story of this work and the meaning of the symbols. The symbolism was unknown to me at the time. I just liked the rich vibrant colors and the way the designs clashed and mixed and danced as my eyes followed them around the circle.

Right off the bat, the National Gallery scored points with my son by having a gigantic spider in front of the door. This is “Maman” by Louise Bourgeois. You gotta love a thirty foot spider!

The gallery didn’t hold the boy’s attention quite as well. However, there is a little area called “Artissimo” where kids can create their own works of art. He and his mom also had fun keeping a running count of the number of butt cracks he saw in the paintings. I think he said the total was 18. He really did remarkably well and for a kid he likes looking at art a lot more than I did at his age. This is a big building with heaps of stuff to see – maybe even too much for an adult to see all in one day.

The european collection was pretty good, but my favorite was the contemporary and canadian collections area. Being a nature type guy I especially liked the works of Tom Thomson and the “Group of Seven“. There was a special exhibit going on called “The 1930s – The Making of the New Man”. With science and war on the rise, it was a turbulent time and the arts reflected this. I especially liked the Grant Wood  (the “American Gothic” guy) works in here. I also liked the Max Ernst works; particularly his “L’Ange du Foyer”.

I liked what I saw of the Inuit art. The flowing colors and patterns rooted in life lived close to the environment really appeal to me.

They also had a collection of objects by Marcel Duchamp.  In one area they had a copy of the famous urinal, a snow shovel, a hat rack, a typewriter cover, some chunks of wood, etc. – all found objects or “readymades”. You may remember that a couple of posts ago I flippantly mentioned Duchamp’s famous urinal from 1917 as a point at which modern art (or post-modern or avant garde - whatever you want to call it), moved into realms that are beyond the average viewer or even the above average viewer for that matter.

Well, my friend over at artiseternal has taken me to task for this and has posted a defense of Duchamp on her blog. I deserve it. I know better than to blow this stuff off with snide comments.

With his urinal and other works, Duchamp was making a deliberate statement about the state of art at the time and especially about the closed mindedness of elite artists and critics who while ostensibly decrying the rigid confines of traditional art rules, fell into the trap of creating their own just as confining rules. His cubist work, “Nude Descending a Staircase, 2″, was rejected at a cubist art show because the multiple images, though static individually, hinted at movement which went against the cubist “rules”.

Duchamp broke out of just about all rules by presenting what some term anti-art. His work really has had a profound effect on the art world to the point that in 2004 a group of artists and critics named his “Fountain” as the most influential work of the 20th century.

I am definitely down with Marcel on this one. From now on I will avoid cracking wise about this kind of thing.

Just to clarify things before I quit. Laying aside the flippancy of my previous remarks, and with an eye toward natural aesthetics, I think that my original point remains valid. That is that the aesthetics of much of modern art is lost on all but the most artistically engaged individuals with a knowledge and feeling for the inner workings and prejudices of the “art world”. On the other hand, many of the aesthetic merits of natural environments are apparent to all people just by the fact that they are human and therefore part and parcel of the world in which they live. 

MDW

Great Gully

This week I visited Great Gully on the east side of Cayuga Lake. I had not been here before. I read that there were a couple of interesting waterfalls along the stream.

The gully is wide and flat bottomed and the entrance is near to the road. Such easy access of course leads to trash, fire remains, and grafitti; especially around the first waterfall that is within a few hundred feet of the small parking area. Fortunately things get better as the gully goes along.

I walked up the stream to the second waterfall and beyond. The stones here are a little different than in my usual haunts further west. Instead of layer upon layer of thin shale and slate that are sometimes so delicate that you can break the stones apart with your fingers, much of the stream bed is a solid foundation of dark grey stone with deep fissures forming large blocks. The surface is lumpy and worn smooth and slick by the water. Where the bedrock has not been scoured clean by the running water, the floor is covered in smooth round rocks; some small, some maybe as big as softballs. It is like walking on a floor covered with marbles – very tiring.

I splashed my feet through water as it ran this way and that over and around the stones. The wide valley is covered in a thick blanket of trees except where the water constantly sweeps the seeds away.  There was often a sweet spicy scent on the light breeze that followed the water down the gully. I never located the source – I wish I had.

On the way back it started to rain – a gentle tingly rain. It calmly and reassuringly patted me on the arms and head and on the back of my neck. It came on so gradually and quietly that I didn’t find it a distraction or a bother. It just became part of the day, part of the woods, part of me.

It threw little rings into the pools. It cooled and cleaned the air. It made light pattering sounds on the leaves of the trees.

This isn’t the kind of rain that you run from – seeking shelter under the trees; a place to escape from the pounding torrent that stings your skin, splashes in your eyes, and cascades off your body. No lightning or thunder to startle, threaten, and bully. No challenges daring you to come out and face the gauntlet. This rain coaxes you little by little to come out and play.

I found myself hurrying out from under the spots where the trees formed a natural umbrella. It blocked out my friend and I wanted to get back to the open. I knew that it might stop at anytime and then I would miss it. When I arrived at the second large waterfall, I climbed down to the bottom and sat down at the edge of the plunge pool.

The stream cascaded before me in long thin streaks of white; bursting outward in wide rays on the surface of the water. It was like a continuous upside down fireworks display. The long trail of the missiles one after another and all together at the same time were launched from above my head and came hissing down toward me. Reaching their “peak” the innumerable shells exploded at the bottom as I looked down on the brilliant display scattered across the dark surface of the water instead of up across a dark night sky.

Not to be outdone, the clouds created a waterfall of their own. A waterfall that fell all around me and added its chaotic sprightly treble steps to the constant base dance of the pool. I watched as each drop, falling from unknown regions above, spawned a bubble on the surface of the plunge pool. I could not see the tiny clear drops as the singletons slipped quietly through the equally clear freshly washed air.

I could only see bubbles suddenly popping up out of the water, as if by magic. Some of the little domes would just be a flash and then gone. Others had the will to exist a little longer. They lingered for a little while, a few meager seconds, balancing precariously on the wiggling jiggling water until, no longer able to keep body and soul together, they quietly popped out of existance as quickly and mysteriously as they had been born.

Each one left behind a parting gift – a small ring that quickly spread out to be swallowed up in the wild dance of the pool – a dance that is at once steady and unchanging while at the same time shifting and infinitely variable.

MDW

Natural Aesthetics

 

I have recently been reading ”The Aesthetics of Natural Environments” edited by Allen Carson and Arnold Berleant. This is a collection of philosophical essays beginning with Ronald Hepburn’s seminal work, “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty”, first published in 1966.

It is slow going. Working my way through the scholarly articles is like wading through the proverbial molasses in January. Packing years worth of thinking into a single volume makes for some real density.

The basic idea of Hepburn’s article is that while 18th and 19th century works on aesthetics focus significantly if not primarily on the enjoyment of beauty in nature, later works give natural beauty very short shrift if they even mention it at all. Aesthetics has moved from a general theory about beauty to a specific treatment of the merits of human created art works only. He goes on to discuss some of the reasons why this might be the case and what might be done to bring nature back into the fold.

Now, you might be thinking, so what? Who cares what some eggheads writing philosophical essays think about nature? Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, how we think about nature will determine how we treat it. If we think an area is beautiful, pleasing, valuable in some way, we are likely to take pains to preserve it. Otherwise why not just bulldoze it and put up a parking lot? After all it was just an empty field or a swamp or whatever, right?

Whereas the merits of what is considered art these days (like say ever since Duchamp signed a urinal and entered it in an art show in 1917) are largely opaque and absurd to those not on the inside of the ”art world”, the aesthetic merits of the natural environment are very accessible to you and me, the average Joes and Janes of the world. We may not be able to see any aesthetic attributes nor any beauty in dime store rubber rats spray painted and hung in a tree, but at varying levels we can all participate in a discussion of the attributes and beauty of a wild forest.

Not only can we, but indeed we must all take part in discussions about natural aesthetics. As more and more pressure is put on our dwindling natural areas, we are the ones who through our votes and how we spend our money will decide what stays and what goes and how what we have left will or will not be used.

How will we make those decisions? What criteria can we use to judge?

Should we preserve just majestic mountain ranges like the Rockies or the Alps? What about the much smaller less majestic yet more intimate hills and valleys near my home? What about marsh lands (a.k.a. swamps)? Many people might not view them as beautiful and/or valuable, but other people do. What about a vast prairie with nothing but tall grasses for miles? How about a dry sun scorched desert?

Evaluating the aesthetics of nature is not so easy once you go beyond first impressions gained from a car window. Should we judge natural areas by how much they look like a painting? Should rational science be our only guide to the value of nature? Where does that leave imagination and folklore? Is nature only valuable in so far as it can supply us with resources like medicines, lumber, and a place to ride our ATVs?

The essays in this book may be a bit on the dry side, but the issues they discuss, unlike the esoteric world of man made art, are going to become more and more relevant to all of us as time goes on.

Besides the big hairy deal of the environmental protection angle of natural aesthetics, learning new ways to more fully appreciate the world around me is a personal plus. On top of that there is the double whammy of trying to take aesthetically pleasing photos of natural objects. Not only is there the issue of appreciating nature as nature, but also the ramifications of isolating and manipulating an image of nature and presenting it to other people as a sort of surrogate.

I plan to touch on this subject from time to time as I learn. Being a practical sort of guy, I hope to cut through the philosophical mumbo jumbo and work out what the upshot of it all is for you and me.

MDW