The Art of Seeing

Taylor Swift, Michelangelo, and how we perceive art

I just returned from a two week trip to Europe. For years my husband wanted to visit Tuscany, see Florence and invite as many close friends as fortune would allow. Technically this was a 25th wedding anniversary idea, upended by the pandemic, but this summer we finally made it. We started with a few days in Rome. Tacked onto the end of this trip would be a detour that my daughter and I would make to Edinburgh to see Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Though my daughter had already seen the concert with friends in the States, she had tickets available to her for this leg, and she very much wanted me to see the tour with her, so off we went.

These two seemingly disparate excursions kept raising a question for me: how we perceive art, beauty, and what matters to us at our core?

There is so much beauty in the landscapes of Tuscany that it defies description. At a certain point early in the trip I stopped taking photographs, because they cannot capture what my eyes were seeing, and how those sights made me feel. And though I set my phone down and took in all I could, it is easy to see how this beauty captured artists imaginations. It’s not hard to look at the light in the clouds and recall great artists’ paintings of the same, or how the light moves over the hills. Though perhaps separated by several generations, others looked up, grabbed a paint brush, and reflected back what they saw. But for me, at a certain point, I just prefer to experience whatever and wherever I happen to be.

The first time this landed for me was when I was sixteen. I was with a school group, a choir I belonged to, in India. This is a long story that could fill a separate post, but as a part of that trip we went to Calcutta to work for a day in Mother Teresa’s Home of the Destitute & Dying. As a Jewish girl from Connecticut, I didn't know who she was (to be fair this is the early 1980’s). But the minute she entered our space, the ions in the air changed. My worldview shifted. Not only did I forget about the new Pentax my dad had bought for me, I took very few photos that entire trip. I realized that I wanted to be present, and for me, to pick up a camera separates me from the moment. I have more than once asked documentary filmmakers on panels that I have moderated if they feel similarly: does the camera shield you from what is happening, or take you deeper into the experience? For me, the act of stepping outside just enough to have a visual perspective drives me too far away from what I am feeling. This is probably why I became an actor and not a filmmaker. I prefer the kinesthetic act of being fully present.

It seems that many people now prefer to see the world through their phone. I love pictures of family and friends. Having worked professionally in film and TV my whole life I almost never ask for a photo with a celebrity. I took a selfie once with someone to send to my daughter. It is clear these things matter to folks. But what about with art?

We spent a day at the Vatican, and saw The Pantheon. Both are religious temples. Both are packed with tourists. We took a trip to Siena and saw St. Katherine’s relics: her head and her finger. I am not Catholic, taking a photo seemed odd and disrespectful. Yet all the iPhones were going.

Where this landed the most for me was in Tuscany at the statue of David, and the other Roman era statues in the attached museum. We had this great, wonderful guide. She showed us artwork Michelangelo would have seen as a boy of the Bible. She talked about where the statue was meant to be displayed vs. where it was, why is David portrayed as a stately young man and not the boy of the story, what the statue told the world politically: that Florence was no longer a small, inconsequential city, but a powerful contender, and then of course the fact that a 27 year old sculptor had managed to capture the beauty of the male form from every angle without the same supports in the marble that all other sculptors had relied on. She told us all of this before we entered the hall where David is displayed.

There is simply no point in taking a picture of The David. Someone else has done it better, and frankly, these still do not capture its majesty. I just wanted to experience the amazing moment to be there with the piece. Yet all around me I saw people scurry as close as they could, get their photo or selfie of the statue, and then leave. I witnessed this over and over again. It brought to mind a documentary called Austerlitz, which is an entirely observational documentary set at the notorious concentration camp Auschwitz. It is black & white, and filled with tourists pushing through the site, selfie sticks in hand, laughing, reprimanding children, and seemingly missing the fact that they are on sacred ground.

They just want to document that they have been there.

And then there is Taylor Swift.

For months my daughter and friends have urged me to study up for the Eras tour. My daughter sent me playlists, friends would play her songs in the car for me, and yet I just couldn’t revert to my 12-year old through 19-year old self to sit on the floor, read liner notes and learn her songs. I appreciate them. I do. I even really like some of them - most of them! But when my daughter asked me to put together a playlist for a long car ride, here were some of my titles: What’s so funny ‘bout Peace Love and Understanding, (Elvis Costello), Life by the Drop, (Stevie Ray Vaughn), Once in a Lifetime,(Talking Heads), and I started to realize that what is crucially missing for me in Ms. Swift’s songs is The Political. Even if I think of my heartbreak songs, say, all of Joni Mitchell, there is a fair amount of politics mixed in. Don’t get me wrong, Taylor Swift sings about female empowerment, a lot. But the uber forces of society imposing itself on the poor, the middle class, or drug abuse, alcoholism, and the loss it causes, capitalism, I don’t know, these don’t have a place in her music. That’s cool. Not her thing. But I miss them.

What does resonate is the power of having 73,000 mostly young women singing in unison to all of your music. Marjorie, a song for her late grandmother, who was an opera singer and who we hear in the song, is deeply moving, even more so in concert. She sings it without introduction in every show. I find that kind of spirit lifting en masse resonate. She’s an amazing performer, totally aware of every camera angle, every beat of a very long show, present enough to point out when someone in the audience needs help, and yet so uncalculating, it seems, that she can stand still in the rain while all these people cheer her and just simply receive them, with true openness and humility.

Here again the phone was a major receiver- even perceiver- of the work. The girl in front of me, literally, recorded herself singing every song.

What exactly am I getting at?

I think this resonates for me the same way I was agitated with people who complained that Scorsese’s last film was too long, or worse the young people I witnessed leave a screening in the first act of Raging Bull because it was “too violent.”

Perhaps I am narrating my own demise. Maybe this is my version of “Hey, kid, get off of my lawn”. I realize that much of what I am saying makes me sound like a dinosaur.

If anything, the trip reinforced for me the fact that theater and religion began in the same place. They both ask for us to make change in the world for the better. They both imply spectacle. They both use a shaman to tell us their stories.

As we left The Uffizi Gallery, I asked our guide about the philanthropy of the political to engage Michelangelo, and how the art endured, and her comment was “Because the art always wins. Always survives.” I wish I shared her enthusiasm, especially as my other posts discuss our troubled distribution system and the rise of AI.

If this post has any purpose, it is to ask you to put your phone down and just receive the world for a bit on its own terms. Turn your phone off and go look at the sky, dance, listen to music, walk through an art exhibit, go to a concert with your daughter because she asked you to, and for god’s sake go see a movie in a theater…

BE in life. Just for a little while. Without documenting it. Let some moments be ephemeral.

What are your thoughts?