Ars Gratia Artis
When I was in High School at Notre Dame International Prep for Boys in Rome, Italy we had a rotating roster of Brothers of the Holy Cross (the Catholic order founded in France in 1837, but made famous through the founding of Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana in 1841). Being a long-ago lapsed Catholic (lapsed when I was four-years-old, strangely because while in a tropical valley in Costa Rica we preferred to gather weekly with the other Americans in the valley, who happened to be Presbyterians), I do not pretend to understand how the various religious orders, especially the Catholic ones, operate. What I knew back in those late 1960’s years in Rome was that the Brothers were a strange but pleasant bunch that seemed to find pleasure in teaching young and impressionable men. I was too naive to think they had any objectives other than the joy of teaching and I never saw or heard of anything to suggest otherwise. In my Junior year there was a Brother Francois. He taught literature to us and seemed to love it. To be blunt about it, he was a bit of a fruitcake. He attributed very adult thoughts to those of us who were no more than growing boys. I do not mean that in a sexual way, but rather in an intellectual way.
One day, after class, Brother Francois asked me to stay after to discuss an idea he had. He had liked my analysis of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, about a trip up the Congo River. This somehow caused him to think I was a budding intellectual, which was far from the truth. I liked stories and Conrad is a great storyteller, that was that. But Brother Francois decided I needed to be “challenged” more, so he threw me (literally tossed to me) a copy of Theophile Gautier’s early Nineteenth Century work called Mademoiselle de Maupin, a book whose slogan was “l’art pours l’art”, the French version of the Latin phrase “Ars Gratia Artis”. I was far more likely to find that phrase interesting because of its linkage to the MGM lion than anything more cerebral, but Brother Francois thought Gautier would change my life. Truth be told, I don’t even remember if I even read it, much less was moved by it. But the words Ars Gratia Artis have stayed with me ever since then.
As I have reflected on the concept I have learned that the theories of the value of art have been at the center of a great deal of geopolitical controversy over the last two centuries. In fact, it might be said that the world seems to have divided itself into those who believe in art for its own sake and those that believe art must be a reflection of the social issues of the day and that in that way it serves a pragmatic or didactic value. The folks on the left side of the world (that would be Communists and Socialists) believed that art needed to serve a higher purpose than just to be “pretty”. That is particularly funny given its French origins, since La Rive Gauche or left (Southern) bank of the Seine is where the artists gathered and I think it fair that many artists are bohemian and thus tend more towards Communism and Socialism.
It would be hard for me to claim that I am any kind of an artist. Everything about my life choices have been geared towards the pragmatic and didactic, whether in my Wall Street work or my teaching. I am quick to say that I am a storyteller and not a writer and somehow storytellers can be didactic where writers are artists. But wait a moment, I also have aesthetic feelings and take the visual arts quite seriously. Now, more than ever, I care about the intrinsic beauty of those things with which I surround myself. There are my antiquities, my geodes, my native artifacts from the worlds I have traveled, and a few selective pieces of art ranging from paintings to photographs and sculptures. When people retire, they often take up painting or photography as an outlet for visual aesthetic feelings. I have done neither, but it seems that I am turning to sculpture.
It began in our new Cecil Garden when I took a liking to Bonsai. Sculpting Bonsai is at the intersection of gardening and sculpture. From there I went to our patio renovation, where I installed rusted Cor-Ten steel borders, more Bonsai and four sculptures I acquired or commissioned in the form of two Japanese stone lanterns (which I have since electrified), a Zen fountain of steel and stone and a pagoda that sits prominently atop a stone hill. I have also recently taken up the building of a rock garden planted with blue and purple sage on the hillside that falls away from our spa. Indeed, the outdoor lighting project I just completed is an extension of all of this aesthetic leaning since it is a visual statement highlighting all of these features and the natural features of our cactus gardens and natural landscape boulders. I even lighted the Otomi mural in the Cecil Garden done by my nephew. So I have been building a head of steam in a visual art sense and that brings me to my latest project.
I am in the middle of adorning my Western hillside, below my unforgiving deck renovation, with a twenty-five-foot sitting bison made from a combination of a natural set of boulders and steel additions comprised of a horned head, a hoof and a tail. The inspiration for this huge sculpture comes from several places. First of all I have been a collector of stone and metal sculpture done by a Polish artist names Thomashevsky for the past thirty years. Among those outdoor and indoor sculptures are a huge wooden and metal eagle, a reclining stone and copper Socrates (in Ithaca), and a lovely two-foot stone and metal Bison statue. I was also inspired by the rusted metal outdoor sculpture in the desert surrounding Borrego Springs, near here. Those giant figures range from horses to dinosaurs to a large sea serpent. It was those sculptures that drove me to the artist Ricardo Breceda. I commissioned him to fabricate the metal pieces for my Bison Boulder as a version three times the size of a bison statue in his sculpture garden.
I took delivery on those pieces yesterday. Breceda was willing to create the three pieces I requested, but would not come to the site to measure or peruse the boulder. Instead, he made the pieces to the measurement specifications I gave him. I realized that he was declaring this to be my sculpture and he was merely contributing parts to it. I got a firsthand lesson in that reality today as I worked with one of my carpenters to use ratchet straps to try to hoist the 400 pound head onto the boulder in the right position. It had taken no less than six men to move the head the 150 yards from the parking area where the trailer was parked and the boulder site. My efforts with four straps got me halfway there. On Saturday, I will be renting a Genie Lift to get it the rest of the way there. I will be using a Sawzall to cut the back side of the parts to better fit them to the boulders and a combination of a ball-peen hammer and a stone drill bit to attach these three parts to my Bison Boulder. I do not pretend that my statue will be as artistic as Tomashevsky’s or as big and impressive as Breceda’s other desert works. But when this is done I will be forced to declare myself a sculptor and a sculptor of big outdoor art. The Bison Boulder will serve no purpose other than my and our guests’ viewing pleasure. It will be Ars Gratia Artis.