It’s more an art than a science

The other great show there, that we didn’t even know about till we got there, was of works by American painter Oliver Lee Jackson (b. 1935). It’s running for another month or so in the East Gallery.

Seeing these two totally different shows, one expected and one totally unexpected, reminded me about what I like about being married to Kathleen. There are many things, but the one I remembered specifically that day was that I like being married to an artist.

I was a bona fide scientist when I met Kathleen, and I figured I liked art, and life with an artist, because it was completely different from science, giving me a chance to experience a whole separate universe of experience. This was a contrast, I thought, with many scientists I knew who were married to other scientists, and so missed out on some of this diversity.

But over time I decided maybe the worlds of science and art aren’t so different after all. They both are endeavors to describe how the universe works and our place in it. They both have rules for how the process is to be conducted, and have widely agreed-upon conclusions that could nevertheless be changed or discarded over time as our understanding grew. The main difference (and it’s big one), as I saw it, is that science seeks to describe the world in ways that are independent of human biases and experiences, and therefore constant no matter who was measuring or experiencing them, where art seeks to describe the world in ways that are completely dependent on human biases and experiences, with all the chaos and unpredictability that brings.

On 9/11/2001, Kathleen was at work teaching at GWU in DC (across the street from the State Department, a viable possible secondary target) when the World Trade Center and Pentagon buildings were hit. During the days after that, she watched the news and analysis of the attack, and waited alone for me to get home from a Sea Grant meeting half way across the country, in a car because of the total ban on commercial flights. During the nights she painted.

She produced a still life from an apple we had in our fridge at the time, which she called “The big apple still shines”. It was a faithful rendition of the apple, but it was more–

The Big Apple, of course, is a nickname for New York, which was the meta-subject of the artwork. I don’t know how well this small picture does it justice (the original is almost two and a half feet wide), but the stem of the apple feels like it is descending into a shadowy vortex. The apple is sound, but dark and foreboding. When I first saw it, I could feel something starting to try to pull down the apple, make it less bright than it was.

This is what art does for me: it captures the human experience in ways that science cannot. The feeling of danger, both immanent and long-term, was pretty universal in America right after 9/11, and I feel Kathleen captured that, as well as a sense of resiliency, in “The big apple still shines”.

Other art doesn’t describe a galvanizing moment in history or an easily identifiable human thought or feeling, but I can still feel its power even if I know that most people might see something completely different. This happened with one of the paintings by Oliver Lee Jackson this weekend, which struck me deeply enough to want to try to write about art.

This work is untitled, so I have no idea of the context of the painting. For me, it evoked a feeling of supernaturality. The blue figure on the right and the red one on the left seemed almost human to me, but dreamlike. But the black one in the middle really captured my imagination. In form, it was very like the other two figures, but it was completely unhuman, while still seeming (to me) to be very much alive. The picture made me feel like I was experiencing human and other spirits communicating together through a ritual dance.

I don’t know if what I saw bore any relationship to what the artist was trying to show. But that’s all right, because art is intended to be filtered through human experience, which is different for me, him, and everyone else.

I can feel the validity of the work even if I can’t begin to describe it in the scientific language I am more used to. And it’s the idea that I can feel the rightness of an artwork, or an artist, even if I can’t yet understand why it’s right, that keeps me coming back for more.

Thanks,
Dorn
8/21/2019