Reflection and Commentary
Nicole L. Ponsler
October 6, 2008
The audience plays an important role in the symbiotic relationship between testimony and art. The reality of occurrence can be made so through an audience, thus creating a new truth for both willing and unwilling participants[1]. It has been said that contemporary culture has given birth to a new genre of literature being that of testimony[2]. The prevalence of testimony in contemporary art, poetry and literature has allowed for the dissemination of truth to a larger and more dynamic global audience. This distribution of truth and power has inevitably affected the way that diverse audiences interpret the artist’s conveyance of trauma and truth. This notion is reflected in this semester’s theme of sustainability and social justice whereby we discussed the artists’ role as truth-teller and witness to all manner of contemporary issues. I believe that the affects of artists telling their truths shapes our very understanding of the world, our shared history and our potential to change the many maladies that negatively impact contemporary life. It is through a “birth of knowledge via the testimonial process”1 that truth is identified and made real since memory is void of space and time3.
In order to better understand the outcomes of testimony, we must identify that “to testify is to form a “speech act” rather than simply formulating a statement”1. To testify is different from simple narration. Felman goes on to say that testimony is “not a statement of, but rather as mode of access to the truth”1. Through testimony, trauma is given a discernible place and time (to be simply located) through the artists’ conveyance of an event. Because so often psychological responses to trauma maintain a latency period, wherein a delay is registered prior to the recognition of traumatic occurrences (either consciously or unconsciously), the act of narrating the trauma through art presents a means of identifying a truth, discernible in place and time. To this end, Felman states, “By virtue of the fact that testimony is addressed to others, the witness, from within the solitude of his own isolated stance, is the vehicle of an occurrence, a reality, a stance or a dimension beyond himself.”1
By further examining the affects of the artists’ testimony to trauma, a question arises regarding the use of traumatic testimony in educational curriculum. Felman presents the question, “Can trauma instruct pedagogy and pedagogy shed light on the mystery of trauma, especially in a post-traumatic century”?1 In this instance, the individual’s experience can contextualize a moment in history, thus giving that period of time greater relevance as it relates to the human condition. As seen with the Holocaust, it is easy to become overwhelmed by instances that are difficult to “assimilate into full cognition”1. The use of artists’ testimony, in this instance, allows for a frame of reference. This testimony offers an unique understanding and perspective, allowing the student to integrate the reality of the occurrence. The use of artistic testimony provides the audience (in this case, students) the “appointment to bear witness”1. Inherent in this process is the paradox of the witness as medium, wherein the witness “transgresses the confines of an isolated stance, to speak for others and to others”1.
This pedagogy of trauma can be overt or made obvious through a deeper examination of the life of the artist. To this end, the French poet Mallarme “bears witness to the far-reaching transformations in the rhythm of life and to the momentous cultural, political and historical processes of change through the art of accident and/or the accident of verse.”1. In this instance, Mallarme chooses phrasing that reflects the cultural and political climate, albeit subtle and discernible only through a closer examination of his life and times. Similarly, Felman explains that “Writing and dreaming is conceived of history, not without previous experiential reference, as are all expressions”1. Mallarme presents an example of the difference between narrating and being a medium of the testimony. Felman explains that, “Narrating/reporting is different than being a medium of the testimony/medium of the accident…to pursue the accident without knowing its full meaning, where the journey leads and what is the precise nature of its final destination”.1 This concept of the testimonial medium relates to the need for resisting the artist’s urge to deconstruct and create simultaneously, wherein the two processes are separate and unique. It is difficult to imagine how effective testimony can be created amidst the messiness of justification.
The use of testimony of one’s own unique experiences versus the appropriation of the experiences of others presents a philosophical quandary. Jamison suggests that “The extent to which an artist survives, describes and then transforms psychological pain into an experience with more universal meaning, her own journey becomes one that others can take”4. The effectiveness of the artists’ message is directly related to how she interprets and provides testimony to her own unique experience. It can be said that many great works of art relate a kind of palpable sadness “that somehow becomes a generating motor that makes the artist persist even when she has lived an experience”4. Similarly, the extent that the artist has lived through crisis has a direct correlation to the conveyance of universal meaning. The path that the testimonial artist forges allows the audience to appreciate a unique experience from a human standpoint, while opening the door to successive and varied acts of art as testimony. To this end, Antonin Artaud said “Art first heals the artist and subsequently helps heal others”5. Speaking from your own history and about our own experiences creates the most powerful testimony that is capable of eliciting real change and understanding.
Examining the Antonin Artaud quote, one finds reference to the use of art and artists who heal themselves. Testimony through art not only educates the audience, it presents a creative outlet for the artist’s experience. John Ruskin wrote, “The artist is closer to the fundamental pulse of life because her daily and yearly rhythms are more similar to those of the natural world”6. This touches upon the notion that artists are more sensitive to the plights of humanity and thus responsible in some way for articulating their observations through their artistic practice. This artistic sensitivity and in some cases outright depression, enables the artist to observe the “finite role played by man in the history of the universe”4. I would argue that this concept is a necessary force in relevant contemporary art. It speaks to both the artist’s unique perspective, while educating an audience to issues that they might’ve previously been oblivious to. In this instance, creative practice is a gift to the artist and to those experiencing their art. To this end, Henry Krystal’s research into trauma and aging suggests that only in “exceptional cases, like those endowed with artistic or literary skills, are the effected able to develop and reconstruct damaged functions”7.
Theodore Roethke said that “The greatest piece of luck for high achievement is ordeal”8. It can be said that artists living with manic brain disorders have ongoing and life-altering trauma and ordeal. In the exploration of artists, poets, composers and writers who have parleyed their manic/depressive states into fodder and means of creating art, I have come to understand how mania translates specifically in the canvases of effected painters. In the instance of Theodore Gericault who is thought to have exhibited signs of a manic disorder, one can see many examples of how such psychological trauma is manifested through his art.
Gericault’s crowning achievement, The Raft of the Medusa portrays one of the worst disasters in maritime history9. Massive in scale, the 23’ canvas depicts the disastrous events following the sinking of the Medusa carrying 148 passengers. Huddled together on a raft, the survivors spend 13 days without food or water, resulting in murder, suicide and cannibalism.9 Gericault’s choice of subject matter is interesting when compared with the list of painting characteristics associated with artists suffering from manic disorders as prepared by Kay Redfield Jamison. It is suggested that “Artistic expression changes across mood states”, whereas “manic patients tend to use vivid and highly contrasted colors”10. Similarly, the composition of paintings created by those experiencing mania tends to reflect greater motion and gesture combined with subject matter often relating to “bright portrayals of natural phenomena such as fires, waterfalls and landscapes”10, as represented in the Raft of the Medusa. Paintings created during mania typically exhibit an “agitated or swirling quality”10. These qualities, coupled with the use of opposing mood states, constitutes many of the tenants associated with Romance artists like Gericault. The period of Romanticism was the first in the history of art where emotion was obviously conveyed through use of formal and compositional devices11. The opposing emotional state of depression is also adequately demonstrated in Gericault’s famous sketches of severed limbs and bodies that he sketched at the morgue. In this instance, the use of darker colors, coupled with the “paucity of ideas, a lack of motion and the themes of death and decay”10, form a clear example of depressed mood reflected in painting.
The qualities associated with manic painters are exemplified in the Raft of the Medusa, as is the art of accident as previously described using the poetry of Mallarme. To this end, The Raft of the Medusa represents the first painting of a historical narrative. However, this painting is beyond a simple narrative as it is teaming with references both overt and subconscious as they relate to the life and psyche of Theodore Gericault. These references are formal, compositional, personal, psychological, historical, political and cultural. In viewing this painting, we are free to peel away the layers of association, representation and narration to unveil a complex testimony of true experience unique to Theodore Gericault.
[1] FELMAN, SHOSHANA, “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching”, Trauma: Explorations in Memory. John Hopkins University Press, 1995.
[2] WEISEL, ELIE. Dimensions of the Holocaust. Northwestern University Press, 1977.
3 CARUTH, CATHY. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. John Hopkins University Press, 1995.
5 ARTAUD, ANTONIN, ed. Sontag, Susan. Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. University of California Press, 1988.
6 RUSKIN, JOHN. Modern Painters. Wiley & Halsted, 1857.
8 BERRYMAN, JOHN. Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews. Viking Press, 1976.
9 MILES, JONATHAN. “The History of the First History Painting” Art News, pg.112, May 2008.
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