Recently, I’ve been reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. The book is about a writer. For part of his life, he worked for artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In these relationships, Kingsolver explores some questions about art, including its purpose and function.
In one section, the protaganist, Harrison Shepherd, considers the difference between the artwork of his two employers. Diego’s murals "[command] men to rise from their knees and fight!" Frida’s, however, are "smaller . . . Something people would find dear" (p. 161). It’s Frida’s work, not Diego’s that inspire Harrison to want to write "something beautiful, that people would find very moving" (Ibid).
Side note: I doubt many people would consider Kahlo’s work "dear." But Harrison doesn’t speak about the surrealism of her work but the smallness and purpose of her work. She doesn’t paint political paintings or see her job as doing something big. She observes her life, her world, small as it is, and translates that to painting.
In another scene soon after that, Frida takes seriously the task of decorating a table for dinner. Harrison says about this event, "It’s a lot of work to use flowers as paints. By the time the party ends, they’ll be a mess of wilted petals. Stains on your white tablecloth that could have been prevented." Frida reacts: "Unnecessary stains and dead flowers! Soli, excuse me but what else do I have for making my marks on life, if not lo absurdo y lo fugar." Harrison supplies the definition to fugar (or attempts to) as "things that run away with time" (p. 169).
Later, Harrison and Frida have a conversation about art. Frida asks Harrison, who journals every day of his life as well as types away his novel, why he doesn’t consider himself a writer. He answers, "To be a writer, you need readers." She retorts that she is no painter, then. "Who ever looks at my dumb little pieces of shit?" (p. 197).
My point being: In today’s global world with its global problems, we think of our lives in global terms. How am I changing the world? How is my art changing the world? How can I have the largest impact, the most readers, the best marketing? J.D. Salinger said, "There are no writers anymore. Only book-selling louts and big mouths."
But in these passages, I found something freeing. I can create something small. I can focus on making something small and beautiful that might move only a few people. I don’t say that I wouldn’t like to have millions of readers who read my books and find something beautiful, moving in them, that I wouldn’t want half a nation to see my words and realize they’re not alone. I’m not even saying that we shouldn’t market our art.
But that’s not the point, is it? The point is "writing . . . with eye and ear and heart" (Adam Gopnik, "Postscript: J.D. Salinger," The New Yorker). As Andy Crouch says, we create unuseful things (as opposed to utilitarian things). And this is beautiful.
