It took me all of 47 years to return to Europe, the smallest of the seven continents and as Tony Judt wrote, “in the intensity of its internal differences and contrasts” a unique one. In March 2019, my wife Anna and I boarded a British Airways flight from San Francisco on what would be for me, a trip to remember.
On our itinerary were three European destinations, all of which were in Italy: Venice, Florence, and last but certainly not least, Rome. While there might be other reasons to visit these three prominent cities, our primary rationale for going to them was the ubiquitousness of the famous art and architecture that graced their municipalities.
Ever since I acquired a love and respect for great art and architecture going back to my days as an art history student in high school, my enthusiasm for works by great artists like Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Giotto, Botticelli, Donatello etc. could only be satiated by watching documentaries or seeing pictures of them in books.
For years I could only imagine literally standing in front of the paintings or sculptures of one of these artistic maestros. I had to make due with a television screen or a literary and/or pictorial page in order to scrutinize in any shape or form the highest of the highest of art pieces and architectural structures.
In admiring these images from afar, it becomes readily apparent that one cannot discern what French philosopher Gaston Bachelard referred to as the “poetics of space.” Not being in its physical presence, it is easy to settle for empirically examining and describing a great artwork as little more than a distorting simulacrum or as an unexceptional reproduction. Needless to say, it’s never the same as actually being in the same room as the original image.
But even being there is just the first step to truly appreciating and understanding an esteemed work of art.
Bachelard’s conception of a poetics of space allows us to imagine that the optimum way in which to perceive an object---an artwork in this case---should go far beyond merely looking and interpreting it based on what your eyes take in. The viewer should ideally experience some interiorized communion with the object---for Bachelard this was a residential dwelling---partially in terms of space.
For as Bachelard wrote in his 1958 book “The Poetics of Space,” “Space that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the surveyor.” Following Bachelard’s idea art, space, and the beholder are integrated into a creative relationship that can best resonate poetically.
Also inherently present in a work of art as far as a viewer is concerned is another Bachelardian point that is perhaps even more subjective than the meditation of space. In every work of art there is something innate, something indescribable within it that while not definitive, is certainly palpable. That is an artwork’s ability to impress upon the subjective observer a mood of blessedness and beatitude not necessarily in a religious sense, but in a mystical, psychological, or humanistic spirit.
Bachelard would have been proud of how Anna and I looked past what was simply discernible to the eye in each great work that we had the privilege of visiting. Highly-conscious that there was more to gather in our hearts and minds than just the art’s appearance, for the two of us to stand in the same footsteps that the masters once stood in as they produced and perused their incredible handiwork was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Unfortunately, there are many a common tourist who lack a more sophisticated understanding of the Italian masterworks. I shuddered the several times I heard a lamentably philistine traveler say a variation of “when you’ve seen one [artwork] you’ve seen them all.” They would utter this while staring mindlessly at Michaelangelo’s “Pietà” in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, or when they would make extremely brusque work of peering at Giotto’s memorable frescoes in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. One could chalk this attitude up to sensory overload for the unaccustomed mind or to plain old cultural shallowness.
To be fair, it is an unfolding progression for great art to be able to elicit the highest emotions and/or intellectual stimulus in a person. I tend to agree with those who presume that appreciating art is an acquired taste, something that has to be learned with the aid of external catalysts. It’s not something a lot of people are born with.
If not for having the genesis of my love affair with art set forth by my high school art history classes and the museum field trips they afforded, I would have probably found myself crying out today, “but they all look the same!”
Armed with our own acquired taste in art, Anna and I walked along the various rooms and corridors of revered institutions and monuments such as the Uffizi Gallery, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, and the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and the Pantheon in Rome, and St. Mark’s Cathedral and the Doge’s Palace in Venice, as each painting, sculpture, and architectural edifice demanded our undivided attention. We wanted to honor and cherish every work we came across with every fiber of our aesthetic sensitivity.
On the flight back home to San Francisco, my mind wandered back to my first trip to Europe in 1971 as a six-year old. The memories of that sojourn are sparse and episodic. But they have also been sharp and lucid enough to me over that nearly fifty-year interval between European excursions that I never stopped dreaming of setting out back across the Atlantic someday.
I knew that I would return, this time as a culturally-ripened enthusiast ready to pay unmediated homage to the greatest art objects the world had ever seen. For once my dream was realized.
ALLEN GABORRO
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