On silence before art

Lost for words? You might be getting somewhere

I stumbled into an undergraduate course in art history not knowing too much about the subject but being in general prejudiced against it. I came from a foundation course in fine art, and art history struck me as little more than an excuse for pretentious rich people to click-clack their way around opulent galleries gushing at length about something they knew nothing about, that is, being an artist (which, I suspected, they all secretly wanted to be, but lacked the necessary courage or talent).

With the typical severity of a teenager, my thinking was more along the lines of: whereof one cannot speak, thereof be silent.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to do a degree in fine art because the courses obviously lacked intellectual rigour. Art schools, I thought, were places in which philosophical jargon was regurgitated without being properly understood. Nor were skills taught, so what was the point?

But art had become an obsession, so I decided to give art history the benefit of the doubt. At the very least I could determine whether it really was, as I feared, all froth and no coffee.

Ten years later, I can see that I was completely unprepared to take up the challenge. Works of art are such complex things, the category of ‘art’ is so historically contingent, the use of language to access these things is so fraught, and there is, amongst radiant insightfulness, such an awful lot of myth-making, marketing, misunderstanding and downright garbage written in the name of the history of art.

This is made all the more frustrating because the artworks are literally there: you can reach out and touch them and pick them up and shake them, yet they remain mute, sullenly guarding the secrets everyone seems to believe they contain. That’s not everyone’s cappuccino.

Art historians look at surfaces in search of an interior. When I began, it felt like eating an orange peel: surely I was missing the point.

However, one early experience at university helped develop my thinking. I had a great professor: witty, personable, kind, highly intelligent. If anyone could help me get to the heart of the matter it would be him.

One day we went on a trip to the National Gallery and stood, a little group, around a portable medieval altarpiece.

The professor described its form, its fluid Gothic lines; he told us how the object was made for a wealthy merchant who travelled with it and opened it up in the evenings to pray; he mentioned its maker, the great Sienese painter Duccio; he might have discussed the origins of the materials, or the techniques Duccio used; we admired its beauty.

Now, I thought, was the time. We’d got the facts out of the way, now the professor was going to let us into the secret of art. We’d peeled the peel: now we could get to the flesh. What can we learn from this thing? What truth does it have to reveal to us? I was excited. No-one had any more questions. It was time.

We stood around the little object for a few more moments, expectantly, not talking.

The professor said, ‘now let’s go and have a look at the Giotto.’

I would like to say that, in those moments, I learnt more about art than anyone has ever taught me, if that weren’t exactly the kind of trite comment my teenage self would have detested, not to mention a misrepresentation of my actual experience, which was one of disappointment.

Nonetheless, a little part of me was impressed. And on reflection I realise that I did learn something there. He said what he had to say and did not feel the need to go any further. Rather than riffing on some generalisation, he let us turn to the important act, which was to be silent and inhabit the work of art by looking.

That mode of acquiring knowledge, I (later) realised, so different from words, is the way to the heart of the matter. It wasn’t the kind of answer I had expected, but in fact the professor had given me exactly what I was looking for. Be silent, look, forget about lapis lazuli or whatever else and let the work of art work on you. If words come, they come. If not, they don’t.

And most likely all the better for it.

Of course, if one’s trade is to find words for art, one has to break the silence eventually; but if the words emerge from simple, even humble looking, then from time to time I think they might even justify the energy expended in their utterance.

But that would not be for an art historian to say.