re: The Collapse of Ritual
I'm a big fan of Adam Aleksic's (a.k.a. the Etymology Nerd) work. He recently made a Substack post about "the collapse of ritual" via social media, and I got very excited, especially after he mentioned museums. I studied art history and philosophy in college, and I think about the ways we communicate through art a lot.
In response to Aleksic's post, I wanted to talk more about how I think about museums and their related rituals.
Museums and Art
I have a lot of thoughts about museums. I've worked for them, I've formally studied them, I've been in them casually just to look at and think about art. So, this is the main place where I want to push back against what Aleksic says:
El Greco never meant for his painting to be viewed this way. New York didnât even exist during his lifetime, nor did an âart museumâ in the modern sense. Rather, the piece had a devotional purpose, as a conduit between worshipper and God. You would look at it as a means for religious connection, not as an end.
Yes, it is sad that we can't see that art in its original context, but it's sad in the same way you'll never be able to chat with your favorite historical figures. Even if Opening of the Fifth Seal were still in that side-altar in Toledo, and even if it still were used in devotion, it's likely that our methods of interacting with it--our understanding of what God is or how we are supposed to connect with it--would have changed. There is simply no way to see art as the artist or any individual audience member (even now) saw it, and I don't think that's something we need to strive for.
In his seminal work Ways of Seeing, the English art critic John Berger argues that this happened so that the ruling class could exercise power over art. By setting aside the act of looking in a new sociocultural context, the elites not only physically isolated artworks but imbued them with their authority. Now the only way to âproperly interpretâ El Greco is through the language of the upper-class art world.
I do kind of agree with this, in that I also think it sucks that we are told there are ways to "properly interpret" or understand art. That's bullshit, and I think you should understand art in whatever way you want. The white walls of most museums do not help. But I think any assertion of a "proper" way to view a piece, whether in a church or a museum, would be a prescription from the institutions in charge of putting it there--a prescription that can be resisted through varying experiences and interpretations.
I am admittedly a very spiritually-inclined person, but I know I am not the only one who has had a religious experience in a museum. I think that art always has the potential to make someone feel like they are being spoken to from elsewhere, whether that "elsewhere" is God or a memory or another person in a different time and place. I think that as long as museums still give us space for sitting with art and contemplating it, just taking it in and processing all the feelings it inspires in us, they're doing something right.
The Social Media connection
I'm getting sort of tired of writing so I'll keep this short. I think the dominant structures of social media take this space for contemplation away from us. Social media platforms always want us looking at the next thing before we're finished thinking about what we just saw. Each video or image is art, no matter how silly. I will die on that hill.
I'm not saying you need to philosophize about every meme you see, but pause every once in a while, at least to acknowledge the fact that someone, some real person took real time to make that. I realize AI might undercut that point, but the people who believe that art can be made by AI are misunderstanding the purpose of art. It is a form of speech.