No one is watching you, except for ...
Recently I wrote an article about a particular artist to coincide with his upcoming exhibition. I won't go into too many details here – I write about contemporary art for a living and it feeds back into my personal writing.
The title of this large survey show was No one is watching you. This at once smacked of irony given the large platform the artist was given. Imagine having a highly trained person (a curator here) go through your life's work, interpret it in a lengthy essay and then select works and present them to the public. Very few artists have the kind of careers which warrant so much attention, and here is this guy, telling us no one is watching us – nor him, a famous artist.
The title had all the more pathos because the centrepiece of the exhibition was a tableau of nudes, all based on himself – imperfect to the point of ugliness, rendered in classical styles. The artist has spoken of his religious upbringing and his rejection of his faith, the 'No one' of his title seems to extends out to God in an accusation. The premise of his show is embittered and childish. The artist is recreating his own likeness and lashing out at and denying a God whom he thinks isn't watching him. He becomes a sad demigod, a creator who makes a debased version of himself over and over.
It made me think of maturity, both spiritual and mental. Let me explain starting with the mental bit.
When I was 15 year old, my school sent our year level out to visit universities in our city. I elected to visit the art and design studios of one university which I coincidentally ended up studying at, so strong was this impression. After admiring the very adult-looking classrooms and lecture halls which I would be sitting in in no more than three years, we stopped in at the student gallery.
On display were enormous photographs of friends, the kind we take outdoors somewhere special. Everyone bunches together, their arms around each other and the smiling group is invariably obscuring some landmark in the background. The photos were expertly composed and had a staged crispness to them. These weren't merely expensive enlargements of a point-and-snap disposal camera.
The artist here was pointing to a slightly different concern to the above mentioned artist but they meet in their preoccupation with self. The self that desires to be seen. We may take photos of ourselves among our friends, but who is it that we look at the most? When you select from an assortment of group shots, do you choose the photo you look best in? As part of the exhibition we had time to climb inside a wooden box with a lid and think about the photographs. I wanted to think about art but I couldn't think about anything other than my discomfort. And myself.
So here's a confession: I used to think everyone was watching me.
Maybe I am alone in this. Perhaps I am not. This feeling was the strongest in early adolescence. Possibly at this point in life you are looked at a lot by both peers and adults with an interest that is tinged with lust and envy. I can't say it is completely unwarranted to feel you are watched at this point in life – but my awareness of it bordered on extreme. Whenever I walked up the centre of the church in the outfit I considered my Sunday best, I thought of all the eyes on me. I felt them. Even if I didn't want them and I wasn't in my best outfit, I felt the eyes and they affected how I walked and moved around the church. It was incredible foolish and vain but it wore off.
When I felt that real thirst for communion, when I grew up and realised I church was something I needed and wanted, I was hit with doubt.
What if I am doing this because I want to be seen as pious?
It seemed like I was surrounded by people who were naturally inclined to piety and I witnessed this external manifestation. They had confession on Saturday nights while I used to say, 'next week' to the voice in my heart, or else squash it completely and have a self-indulgent evening instead. Was I just trying to act like them all of a sudden? What was really in my heart? Was I trying to impress somebody?
I wasn't lost in a way that manifests itself externally. My friends didn't lower my crippled self through the roof to Christ, like the paralytic in Luke 5:17. I could only limp terribly to Christ myself.
So much of what we do is to form an exterior picture of ourselves and to communicate that to the outside world. Think of how long it takes you to get ready, how much care you put into choosing your clothes or how hard you work at your career to gain respect and financial reward. Sure, this can motivate us to work harder, but mostly it drives us sick as we constantly compare ourselves to others and obsess that somehow, we are less worthy.
Whether it is entirely true all of the time or not, perhaps it is beneficial to accept that no one is watching me, with the clause: 'except for the One who knows what is in my heart'.
The title of this large survey show was No one is watching you. This at once smacked of irony given the large platform the artist was given. Imagine having a highly trained person (a curator here) go through your life's work, interpret it in a lengthy essay and then select works and present them to the public. Very few artists have the kind of careers which warrant so much attention, and here is this guy, telling us no one is watching us – nor him, a famous artist.
The title had all the more pathos because the centrepiece of the exhibition was a tableau of nudes, all based on himself – imperfect to the point of ugliness, rendered in classical styles. The artist has spoken of his religious upbringing and his rejection of his faith, the 'No one' of his title seems to extends out to God in an accusation. The premise of his show is embittered and childish. The artist is recreating his own likeness and lashing out at and denying a God whom he thinks isn't watching him. He becomes a sad demigod, a creator who makes a debased version of himself over and over.
It made me think of maturity, both spiritual and mental. Let me explain starting with the mental bit.
When I was 15 year old, my school sent our year level out to visit universities in our city. I elected to visit the art and design studios of one university which I coincidentally ended up studying at, so strong was this impression. After admiring the very adult-looking classrooms and lecture halls which I would be sitting in in no more than three years, we stopped in at the student gallery.
On display were enormous photographs of friends, the kind we take outdoors somewhere special. Everyone bunches together, their arms around each other and the smiling group is invariably obscuring some landmark in the background. The photos were expertly composed and had a staged crispness to them. These weren't merely expensive enlargements of a point-and-snap disposal camera.
The artist here was pointing to a slightly different concern to the above mentioned artist but they meet in their preoccupation with self. The self that desires to be seen. We may take photos of ourselves among our friends, but who is it that we look at the most? When you select from an assortment of group shots, do you choose the photo you look best in? As part of the exhibition we had time to climb inside a wooden box with a lid and think about the photographs. I wanted to think about art but I couldn't think about anything other than my discomfort. And myself.
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| Edvard Munch, The Dance of Life, 1925, courtesy of the Munch Museum, Oslo |
So here's a confession: I used to think everyone was watching me.
Maybe I am alone in this. Perhaps I am not. This feeling was the strongest in early adolescence. Possibly at this point in life you are looked at a lot by both peers and adults with an interest that is tinged with lust and envy. I can't say it is completely unwarranted to feel you are watched at this point in life – but my awareness of it bordered on extreme. Whenever I walked up the centre of the church in the outfit I considered my Sunday best, I thought of all the eyes on me. I felt them. Even if I didn't want them and I wasn't in my best outfit, I felt the eyes and they affected how I walked and moved around the church. It was incredible foolish and vain but it wore off.
When I felt that real thirst for communion, when I grew up and realised I church was something I needed and wanted, I was hit with doubt.
What if I am doing this because I want to be seen as pious?
It seemed like I was surrounded by people who were naturally inclined to piety and I witnessed this external manifestation. They had confession on Saturday nights while I used to say, 'next week' to the voice in my heart, or else squash it completely and have a self-indulgent evening instead. Was I just trying to act like them all of a sudden? What was really in my heart? Was I trying to impress somebody?
I wasn't lost in a way that manifests itself externally. My friends didn't lower my crippled self through the roof to Christ, like the paralytic in Luke 5:17. I could only limp terribly to Christ myself.
So much of what we do is to form an exterior picture of ourselves and to communicate that to the outside world. Think of how long it takes you to get ready, how much care you put into choosing your clothes or how hard you work at your career to gain respect and financial reward. Sure, this can motivate us to work harder, but mostly it drives us sick as we constantly compare ourselves to others and obsess that somehow, we are less worthy.
Whether it is entirely true all of the time or not, perhaps it is beneficial to accept that no one is watching me, with the clause: 'except for the One who knows what is in my heart'.
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