Beginner’s Eye
INWARD SOUND | 4.11.21
Yesterday was Slow Art Day. I had never heard of the term until I read this article in the Washington Post about a movement that invites people to pause in front of a work of art. The minimum recommended time is 10 minutes, but some practitioners sit and gaze for as long as three hours.
The goal is not so much to take in more details, though one university has medical students practice Slow Art in order to hone observation skills. Rather, it seems to be about viewers establishing – and trusting– their own relationship with art. And it takes time for that personal connection to gather enough mass to at least balance the accumulated weight of scholarship, market value and reception history.
Needless to say, I love this idea. If I ran a museum, I would outfit it with sofas and hammocks and provide portable folding chairs and meditation cushions. I would make all signage optional, the way the Metropolitan Opera lets you turn off the captioning screens at each seat. And of course I’d rename the whole movement Beginner’s Eye.
Spend enough time with some paintings – like this lute player by Artemisia Gentileschi – and they begin to reveal their inner sound. With practice, the eye can hear, too.
In the New York Times this weekend I write about another way to make music visible: song in sign language.
“Music is many different things to different people,” Alexandria Wailes, a deaf actress and dancer told me in a video interview, using an interpreter. Wailes performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 2018 Super Bowl, and last year drew thousands of views on YouTube with her sign language contribution to “Sing Gently,” a choral work by Eric Whitacre.
“I realize,” she added, “that when you do hear, not hearing may seem to separate us. But what is your relationship to music, to dance, to beauty? What do you see that I may learn from? These are conversations people need to get accustomed to having.”
I was particularly moved by a production of Bach’s St John’s Passion that brings together hearing and deaf performers in Leipzig. The video currently only has German subtitles, but I think what comes through regardless is the social kaleidoscope of voices. As the vocalists sign their words, accompanied by deaf sign language soloists, you can see the music splinter into polyphonic passages and then pull together again in unity.
Susanne Haupt, the soprano who created Sing and Sign, worked with deaf people and a choreographer from the world of mime to develop a performance that would not only translate the text, but also convey the character of the music. The sign for “flowing” stands in for the gurgling 16th notes that run through the strings; the sign for “rejection” renders the aching dissonances in the oboes.
“We didn’t want to just translate text,” Susanne said. “We wanted to make music visible.”
Corinna
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Image: “Lute Player” by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656)