Many opinions could be stated about life in our Nation’s Capital, and several would be — and are — unpleasant. But those of us who call Washington, D.C., home are afforded the unignorable luxury of free, daily access to world-class museums. Though few of us “swamp people” take advantage of this, we would do well to, and the two buildings of the National Gallery of Art are particularly worth a visit.
The West building, with its marvelous sculptures and striking collection of paintings, offers a classical array with an impressive depth and breadth. The East building, for its part, boasts big, bold, and “funky” pieces from the modern and postmodern periods. While I would love to offer a studied interpretation of the works displayed in these two galleries, owing to my lack of artistic competencies, I must refrain. I will, however, attempt to use the visual dialectic which forms between the two as a paradigm for this particular topic: the imagination, or rather, and more specifically, the diabolical imagination of the modern man.
The imagination is not, as we might be inclined to believe, mere fancy or puerile playfulness. It is not the trivial pastime of children, nor is it a tool left to artists and authors alone; rather, it is, as George McDonald puts it, “that faculty which gives form to thought.”
Unlike what we might call a fanciful daydream, the imaginative act does not abstract us from the world but rather grounds us in it. For it is through the imagination that we see beyond the world as it presents itself, so that we might behold the true nature of things. We move, in other words, past sense perception: penetrating the surface and entering into a profound engagement with the phenomenon of life. This movement is a deepening of our understanding, a concretization of thought, and is therefore both inherently rational and necessarily concerned with this reality.
Imagination envelops the world in a clarifying brilliance and fills the deepest recesses of one’s mind with a knowledge of beauty that is at once enlivening and arresting. Few have captured the duality of this apprehension in such a profound way as did Yukio Mishima:
“In life, an instant that assumes the form of eternity will intoxicate us; but … such an instant is insignificant compared with what happens when eternity assumes the form of an instant.”
It is this eternal, rather than instantaneous, beauty which we behold, and attempt to re-image, through the imagination. But of course, this eternity we glimpse does not yield to the strictures of the human intellect. It can never be known fully as it will never be contained: It is boundless, timeless, inexhaustible. And yet, it is because of reality’s infinite depth and unknowability that we are called ever deeper into relation with it. We are drawn into the eternal unfurling of being, and therein we behold the perpetual creative act of God.
And as all human action, effective movement into the world, presupposes an apprehension, a taking in or understanding of the subject, this initial beholding has extraordinary consequences. For it is only upon a reception of the truth of the world that we might hope to “give form to thought;” and, in so doing, to reflect (with a likeness, but ever greater difference) the imaginative act of God — that in which we live and move and have our being.
The artistic “capture” of man’s participation in this primordial creative act distinguishes a true artist from a sophistical one; just as Simone Weiss opines, “The great artist is one who presents us with reality.” Art, true art, is iconographic as it both presents us with and inspires us to seek out the essential nature of things. True artistic genius is expressed, then, not through absolute mastery of technique or impressive visual narration. While these elements might be necessary in the creation of a great work, they will never sufficiently attend to art’s telos: sublime imagery of the real.
Take, for instance, Johannes Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance. It depicts a simple scene: a young woman, with a peaceful countenance, looking at the scale she holds in her hand. The jewel-tone colors are rich; the light striking but soft, and clearly intentional. The technical mastery, even to a lay onlooker such as myself, is clearly impressive. This adroitness has certainly contributed to the painting’s prestige, but it does not exhaustively explain it. The scene depicted is laden with meaning. Behind the woman hangs an image of The Last Judgement, and upon the table in front of her lie jewels and opulent fabric — we see, as the woman holds the scale, the contrast between earthly pleasures and eternal joy. It is a depiction of life, of perhaps a mundane activity, and yet we see something new — the drama of life, which unfolds in even the simplest of tasks.
The most exquisite works of art depict reality in a way which allows us to see the true wonder of the world, to see the “more” that always existed. This more is complex; it deals with the minute eccentricities of life which are easily glossed over and quickly forgone and forgotten if one is not attentive to them. To see this complex depth, and to portray it truthfully, one must have a “healthy” imagination.
Today, however, we seem to have very nearly distilled all life’s complexities from our offerings, artistic and otherwise. Only the sheer facticity of existence remains as reality finds itself prostrated before our refined, modern approach. Take, for example, Stuart Davis’ Study for Swing Landscape. Meant to have a “nautical” theme, the abstract work is almost hard to describe. Blocky shapes, bold colors with striking contrast, and random placement leave one with a sense of unease and confusion. What goes on in the mind of a man who paints like this? What shape must his imagination have taken? In short, a diabolical one. Instead of drawing him deeper into communion with the world, and situating him within it, our contemporary imagination abstracts man from the reality of his existence.
Technological progress fueled by a computational — not contemplative — reasoning supported by the scientific method is arguably modernity’s definitional characteristic. This scientific manner of thinking has, in a sort of Dewian utopia, come to profoundly influence our governing systems (think bureaucracy), our interactions (Do you follow me on Instagram?), and our self-understanding (transgenderism). Most importantly, however, it has fundamentally altered our epistemology.
As the late Martin Heidegger incisively noted in The Question Concerning Technology, “Modern science’s way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces.” In short, the scientific rationale is one wherein that which is mathematically quantifiable surpasses any ontological, metaphysical, or teleological dimension.
Unity and finality have, in our technological age, been replaced by abstraction and randomness. As a result, we see in the drama of life not an infinite depth worthy of our contemplation, not the immanent subtleties of created life, but superficiality and mathematically quantifiable characteristics. The imagination birthed from this ethos is of the same kind. It seeks order, not in a teleological sense, but in an experimental one: minimized risk and repeatability. The forms we have given to our thoughts substantiate this, and they should give us pause.
We are meant to wonder at the world, to see in the exquisite beauty of our surroundings a reflection of our own goodness, which is a likeness of the Creator’s. A true imagination allows us to do just that. In allowing us to see in all that is simple and mundane an inherent, aesthetic drama, imagination offers us a more human experience of our lives. The D.C. “swamp people” would do well to spend an afternoon contemplating the brilliant pieces in the National Gallery of Art because, in addition to being a wonderful excuse to get off social media, it’s activities like these that will aid in the cultivation of a healthy imagination. And as Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance illustrates, contemplation of the eternal is the only salve for temporal maladies.
