Friends,
Leslie Hewitt's still life photograph looks simple enough. There's a blank wood plank, some books, an orange, and fabric. It's a quiet collection of objects, something that you could almost overlook. But take a look again: we can't see the whole fabric, we can’t read the book covers, we can't even eat the orange, and there in the middle: blank wood blocking our view. What's going on there? Why take a photo of things we can't fully see?
It's a paradox: the way she hides the meaning of the still life is an invitation to go on a search. To learn more about what's going on and shift our perspective of the world along the way. After a bit of digging, I learned that most of the books are about Black history and that many vintage photos in the still life are from both Harlem, a historically Black neighborhood, and Haarlam, a historic art center of the Dutch Golden Age. Now all of a sudden, we're spiraling out from the still life into overlapping histories and new questions: what was the Harlem Renaissance? What is the history of still life paintings and how is her photograph in conversation with it? What is the space between Haarlam and Harlem? How do we keep this renaissance going?
No quick answers here, but that's exactly the point. She calls it an “invitation to wonder”—to explore art and all the histories and ideas they carry, and it's a kind of wondering that takes time. In other words: art and poetry and all the rest are diffcult on purpose, because it's good for us to slow down and reflect. The struggle to understand can help us grow. It reminds me of the poet Mark Doty whose small book on still life paintings was an early inspiration for me to write these letters:
I have fallen in love with a painting…I have felt the energy and life of the painting’s will; I have been held there, instructed. And the overall effect, the result of looking and looking into its brimming surface as long as I could look, is love, by which I mean a sense of tenderness toward experience, of being held within an intimacy with the things of the world.
For this poet, looking over and over at a still life painting helped him become more aware of the world around him, more grounded in his own body, and, ultimately, more compassionate toward others. That's the kind of art and poetry we've been searching for in Still Life since I started it in 2017. Art that opens us up, poems that stoke our tenderness. Or, to quote Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem below: “we hail what heals and sponsors and restores.”
For years now, I've experienced this final line of Brooks' poem below as my own “invitation to wonder.” What the heck does it mean for art to sponsor something? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I've been puzzled by that word for a long time. “Sponsor” has a few deeper meanings than advertising and Brooks is calling on all of them in her poem: to favor or support, to commit to instructing someone over a period of time like a ”sponsor” for a baptism or AA meetings, to make an offering of wine or libation. So, in a way, she's looking for art in the world that can guide us toward our better selves—no matter how long it takes for us to get there. That's “tenderness toward experience,” a tenderness we can share with each other.
I don't know about you but I need that practice. It’s just too easy to detach and focus on the next task: the doctor appointments and laundry, paying that bill, and bracing myself against the cold. It’s too easy to get buried under pixels, unable to feel much of anything after a long day. It can feel hard to stay curious, to feel our feet on the ground and the air in our lungs, to push past our own ignorance and connect with others in durable ways. But as the Buddhist teacher Kzigar Kongtrul put it, our future depends on this kind of tenderness: “The only way forward is for people to bind themselves closer together than ever before. The glue that will bind us has to be our common tenderness of heart.”
Common tenderness of heart. Taking time to explore an artwork, to recite a poem, to dance along to a song—these things can expand our minds and soften our hearts over the long haul. And I'm glad we'll be practicing this tenderness together. See you next week.
Take care,
Michael
“Art” by Gwendolyn Brooks Art can survive the last bugle of the last bureaucrat, can survive the inarticulate choirs of makeiteers, the stolid in stately places, all flabby gallantries, all that will fall. Lending our strength to keep art breathing we doubly extend, refine, we clarify; leading ourselves, (the halt, the harried) through the icy carols and bayonets of this hour, the divisions, vanities, the bent flowers of this hour. We hail what heals and sponsors and restores.
Bryan Stevenson on the power of art to communicate justice
Curation, taste, and resisting algorithms
The Gospel According to Mavis Staples