The Eye of the Beholder:

Art Is Love Made Public

“Art is love made public” is the name of a favourite episode of mine from season two of Sense8, a Netflix series created by the amazing Lana and Lilly Wachowski, who brought us The Matrix. I recently watched the series again and was struck by the messaging imbedded in not just the storyline or character arcs, but the imagery (textual and visual) used to build emotions. There are many characters and the plots are too vast to go into; the scene I'd like to write about focuses on two male lovers living in Mexico who, up to this point, thought their affair was private: Lito, is a machismo action movie star, his lover Hernando is an Art History professor.

While discussing a piece of art in his class, Hernando Feuntes (Lito’s lover) finishes his lecture with: “It (art) is the language of seeing and being seen.”

Then the class starts to giggle as their phones all light up. When Hernando asks what’s going on, one of the men in the class shares what they're all looking at by putting a viral photo up on the lecture room view screen, for all to see. The picture that has gone viral is a photo of Hernando and Lito having sex (and it is quite explicit.) Everyone laughs. The student who put it onto the screen then wryly asks “Is this art, Mr. Feuntes?”

After taking a moment, Hernando decides to continue the lecture using the picture as the subject...

“Is it art, Mr. Valles? Why don’t you tell us what you see?”

The student says “Looks like sh*t-packer porn.”

Nervous giggles emanate from the other students. A bit of silence, then...

Hernando retorts: “Sh*t-packer porn, that is very interesting. ‘Cause this is where the relationship between subject and object reverses. The proverbial shoe shifting to the other foot. And what was seen, now reveals the seer. Because the eyes of the beholder find not just beauty where they want, but also shallowness, ugliness, confusion, and prejudice. Which is to say the beholder will always see what they want to see, suggesting that what you want to see, Mr. Valles, is in fact, sh*t-packer porn.”

More chuckles from the students, while Mr. Valles looks on uncomfortably.

Hernando finishes, “Whereas someone else, someone with a set of eyes capable of seeing beyond societal conventions, beyond their defining biases, such a beholder might see an image of two men caught in an act of pleasure. Erotic to be sure, but also... vulnerable. Neither aware of the camera. Both of them connected to the moment of each other. To love. And as I have suggested before in this class, art is love made public."

There are many moments like this in Sense8. Turning societal conventions on their heads while asking questions of the viewers themselves. Trying to take a public art form - a tv series - and move it to reflect a person's private life, to get them to think about their own biases and ideas.

A colleague of mine, Paul Yachnin (Tomlinson Shakespeare Professor at McGill University) once said during a public talk that “theatre is the private made public.” He went on to say that one of the terrible things about incarcerating another human being is that you remove their ability to have a private life.

Social media is certainly making many people’s private lives, their thoughts, their meals, their dates, their holidays, their everything, super public. For some, public might mean a closed group of friends, for others, a much larger group of friends of friends, and for some a total public presence (like political figures and those lovely influencers). All their thoughts and selfies sent out into the world. Their Private worlds and words made very Public.

Social Media is, in its essence, THEATRE.

If we return to Hernando’s point, that Art is Love Made Public, and if private-made-public Social Media posts are theatre, then it all can be thought of as a form of Theatre. And as all social media seems to be self-focused, many people are finding that their lives, their literal faces, can be made into a type of public theatre. It’s yet another reason why faith-based opinions are being transformed into facts, why memes carry such weight regardless of fact-checking, and why people are being duped by fake news – it’s hard to discern real from fake in a world where everything is theatre.

For theatre isn’t real. It is fake.

Yet where art, music, theatre, and literature are concerned, people often have problems perceiving the real from the fake.

For example, they can see productions and think that images or words created in the theatre are real, or are offensive, or... dangerous. The uproar a few summers ago with a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar is a perfect example of people not figuring out what’s theatre and what’s real. After Caesar was assassinated, Trump supporters stood up in the theatre to protest the show’s Caesar looking a lot like Trump. Then real security showed up to remove those protestors. But, and this is the meta-gone-crazy moment, later in the play fake protestors stand up in the audience (as part of the play) and protest the assassination and are escorted from the venue by fake security guards. But then the meta goes beyond the horizon: real security guards were then needed to escort the fake ones to ensure their safety from the real protestors and, I guess, others in the audience upset about the protesting itself. Many in the audience were left perplexed.

Amazing meta mix of public in the private-made-public arena!

But this isn’t only a problem with people who are blinded by their support of Trump, or who haven’t read the play to know what it is actually about. (These protestors are often derided by us liberals for being ignorant, fyi.) Ignorance lives on both sides of the political coin. However, the left often sees itself as not just holding the upper hand, but holding the correct hand. Productions of operas, movies, paintings, and books are being singled out for being politically incorrect, oftentimes without realizing the subtleties of the history of the pieces, or the lives of the authors/artists. They are doing the exact same thing as the Caesar protestors – trying to shut down the private made public.

They are trying to control art by defining it as acceptable or not.

As I've often written, lectured, and said in public: All Art Triggers. That is it's purpose. Here's pre-Covid blog of mine from 2017 about artistic freedom: https://patricksoperablog.blogspot.com/2017/03/art-and-freedom-of-expression.html

Often, the people being silenced are being singled out because of their outward appearance, i.e. their race or their visible cultural or gender identity. Some see me and conclude that I'm a straight, European, male. For those close to me, my personal identity is much more fluid and complex than that, like anyone else on the planet. Part Scottish/Danish, part Bohemian, part Irish Catholic - so some of my great grandparents would be welcomed in WASP institutions and communities, while some would not have been considered to fulfill the W in WASP, let alone the P...

The defining aspect of my identity is actually my atheism. According to many polls, being an atheist makes me the most disliked group of people in America; we're considered to be the most "immoral". My privilege is great, but an atheist could never even try to run for President. Atheists can't run for office in seven states (Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas). Amazing eh?

Maryland? WTF?

Times might change, we shall see. I make no travel plans to certain countries because my atheism would be grounds for my execution in at least 13 countries (Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Libya, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.)

Maldives? WTAF

Should Art or Artists be seen solely through the lens of their identity? And if so, what is that identity? For example, is my art atheistic or bohemian? Or should it be distilled down to that of a white married guy pushing 60, negating my actual and more complex identity? If names and identities were hidden from the public, would art be seen and heard differently? On the operatic stage we can see people and form opinions about their identity, but I don't think we can hear identity. We can't hear race, for instance. Sometimes we can hear an accent (Americans singing in French, the French singing in English, the English singing in 'Merican), but usually the training of a professional opera singer overrides their cultural backgrounds.

In an art form like opera that is predominantly about music-making and acting, what should the dominant element be when discussing a performance? Do we apply our perceived notions about a person's identity to hear and see them? Is this how our Eye of the Beholder is now being trained? Do we even perceive the Art onstage?

Time does move forward and no issue lives beyond its time without mutation. Issues typically evolve. Times change, people change. The Eyes of the Beholders change. But the ART basically stays the same, even with different performers, directors, and conductors who alter the details 'cause that's how we roll.

What changes is WHO sees the art. Art reveals our current biases, issues, preferences, hearts and minds. Same for the creators or re-creators of any art. The viewpoint shifts. But the score, play, or book sitting on the shelf stays the same, the sculpture or painting presented in a museum stays the same. It's only when the art gets read/heard/seen/felt that we perceive its living presence in our minds.

In opera, theatre, and music, the art does change based on who performs it, where it's performed, the circumstances and choices involved in the performances. Lots and lots of variables are at work. For instance, one Hamlet is very different from another Hamlet, but the bones of the play are the same. The play one reads is never the play one sees, but they're both "Hamlet".

Intertextuality plays into these ideas. The various voices interwoven from the source material to the text of the play/opera to the composer's score, to the original collaborators'/casts' contributions, to the director/conductor, to the next casts' performances, etc. When you see Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, you're seeing that cast/conductor/director/designers working on a score that Britten and Pears put together with another original cast and team, adapted from Shakespeare's play, which was put together by a troupe of actors in the early 1600s, based on multiple source materials including Ovid from thousands of years before. Art permeates through the ages and outlives all of us.

So – what are The Eyes of the Beholders, i.e. the public, revealing what’s in their own hearts and minds now? Currently, I think they reveal a lot of hatred, bias, close-mindedness, anxiety, worry, anger, offensiveness, defensiveness, shallowness, ugliness, confusion, prejudice, but mostly: fear. Otherwise, I think we’d see more discussions about how Art – whether it’s public art, theatre, music, poetry, murals, or even facebook posts – is empathetic, enlightening, open-minded, positive, educational, beautiful, spiritual, or culturally broadening.

As Hernando stated, Art is the language of seeing and being seen. Art is love made public.

What do you see when your Eye beholds art? What does that say about you?