On the flight to England, I read the New York Times, "The Art of Slowing Down in a Museum" article we were assigned. It encompasses the idea of spending more time on fewer pieces in a musuem, instead of quickly passing by each piece. [If a person were to look at every piece of artwork in the Lourve musuem for thirty seconds, it would take them six months. While this is more time than most anyone has to walk through a musuem, the article would argue a lot less is achieved by looking at all the photos, opposed to viewing fewer for a greater length of time. It suggests walking around a musuem for a period of time but then going back to the piece(s) that you were drawn to. Which is very different way of touring a museum than I had grown accostumed to.
After we reached England, we went to the British Musuem. Keeping in mind the article I had just read, I wondered around looking for a a piece of artwork that drew me in. I passed through many rooms of exhibits admiring the handiwork of artists of different cultures throughout the ages. However, the piece that captivated me was a sculpture in the hallway intitled, Heech in a Cage created by an Iranian artist named Parviz Tanavoli. Heech is Persian for 'nothing', so the literal translation of the piece is "nothing in a cage." The artist had created something within the cage, that was emerging outward. The more I looked at it the less I could characterize it. How could I describe something that to me was everything inside a cage, yet nothing at all. A quotation from Tanavoli on the description reads, "It is not life that amounts to nothing, but rather nothing which brimmed with life itself." The artist, I have come to realize, has found hope in nothingness. The idea comes from a branch of Islam called Sufism where heech is the annihilation of self as a final threshold along the path towards unity with God. While lookng at the structure forr twenty minutes I couldn't depict the hope within the cage, I only saw that the cage could not contain it. I finally walked away unsure of how I felt about the meaning of the piece, alls I knew is it drawn to it and I wanted to figure it out.
When I was standing in front of the artwork many people scurried by with just a sideways glance, one guy even stopped to look at it with a puzzled expression, shrugged, then walked away. That is what the article taught me, different pieces will stick out to different people if we take the time to find them. There are artworks that are attractive because of the popularity and the historic value, but sometimes it the statue in the hallway that makes you stop and think.
Sydney Harris