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I
saw Yasmina Reza's play Art, translated by Christopher
Hampton, performed brilliantly at the Court Theatre, Christchurch,
in August 2000. Elric Hooper was director, Martin Howells played
Marc, David McPhail played Serge, and Mark Hadlow played Yvan.
This article is a meditation on the play, addressed to the playwright.
The
more I think about Art, Yasmina, the more ambivalent I become
about it. Not that I doubt its brilliance for one second, it's just
my own thoughts about it that I doubt. Am I more like Serge, the
fervent convert to modern art, or Marc, the critical cynical rationalist?
Or do I stand revealed as an Yvan-type in my spineless equivocation?
Could it be that I, like you, am a composite of all three characters?
In Freudian
terms, Yvan must equate to the id, the primitive instincts and energies.
He's the one who is passively moulded by circumstances but whose
emotions occasionally erupt when pushed too far. Serge is the ego,
the conscious subject, the self-defining individual intent on fulfilling
his desires and mastering his destiny, whatever the cost. Marc is
the superego, the conscience and critic, attempting to exert parental
control over the ego's wayward excesses.
The
plot, essentially, is composed of variations on "two's company,
three's a crowd." Serge wants to feel good about his extravagant
purchase of a minimalist white painting for 200,000 francs, so he
needs the validation of his friends. Yvan, as befits the id, is
happy to acquiesce. But Marc, as conscience, is impelled to cut
Serge down to size, and he too can only achieve this with Yvan's
backup. So Yvan is pulled in both directions simultaneously, a lose-lose
situation which blows up in his face when Serge and Marc catch on
and gang up on him instead.
The
standard critical line about Art is that it's really about
friendship, the art bit being little more than a pretext. I suspect,
Yasmina, that friendship may be a pretext too, because--let's face
it--those characters are rather predictable, more than a little
one-dimensional. What it's most deeply about is the psyche itself,
particularly the battles that can rage within sensitive artistic
souls like yourself. To put it another way, there are several levels
of meaning in Art: on one level, art; on another, friendship;
on another, the psyche.
On yet
another level it's about the creative process, where the act of
creation or bringing forth is accompanied by the ever-present voice
of the self-critic, editor and censor: the urge to reveal is reigned
in by the need to conceal, the desire to be free balanced by caution
and restraint.
For
me, the most telling line of the entire play is uttered by Yvan
at the end: "Nothing beautiful was ever created through rational
argument." I can hear your voice particularly in that, Yasmina.
I agree that rationality can only take you so far, at least if art
is what you have in mind. Beyond that, it's necessary to jump into
the deep waters of the irrational and follow your intuition.
Of course
you know this already: you write, you've said, "from my intuition,
my sense of freedom, my feeling of words and rhythm." What you write
mirrors your nature; your plays are essentially autobiographical.
As one self-perceived outsider to another, I can relate to that.
Such is my conceit that I feel I know you, a kindred spirit, very
well.
I have
a friend who argues with me relentlessly about the meanings of art.
She is well-armed and defended with many in-the-air theories, inculcated
at art school. If I try telling her that I create intuitively, from
my sense of freedom, she dismisses that as merely subjectivist.
She has learned from bitter experience, from weekly crit-sessions
with her tutors, that no position is entirely defensible: it's best
to remain chameleon-like, never allowing oneself to be pinned down,
never staking one's flag on clearly identifiable turf. Our diametrically
opposed situations generate passionate debate, the same sort with
which Art is imbued, only without the rancour.
Perhaps
this sort of friendship, the sort between Serge and Marc, or between
you and the real Serge you based the character on, thrives on one-upmanship.
Examples generate counter-examples, and more counter-examples in
turn, in the vain hope that one's own insight will prevail. But
it never does: You can only hope to clarify your own thinking in
the process of trying to clarify your friend's. It can be a rewarding
form of social interaction, using continual disagreement to stimulate
and refine your own thought processes.
Creative
energy is what all this disagreement is reduced to. It has to go
somewhere, so one points it in this direction rather than that.
Sometimes what results is art, such as the play you so aptly titled
Art. The audience stands in relation to the play as the characters
stand in relation to the white painting. Each of these art objects
is a kind of tabula rasa, a clean slate or empty construct over
which people do battle to ascribe their own interpretations. You've
set us up to argue over whether the play is about art or friendship,
Yasmina, just as the characters argue over the painting's value
or lack of it. There is never any final answer to these questions,
or to the internal ones which characterise the id, ego, and superego.
If any position carries the day, it is Yvan's ambivalence: and that
only seems to defer eventual compliance with either Serge's or Marc's
position.
At the
play's end, however, there is a resolution of sorts. Marc accepts
Serge's invitation to draw on the painting, albeit with an erasable
marker-pen, and depicts a man skiing downhill which is later rubbed
out. Marc is thus able to ascribe a meaning of his own: that of
a man moving across a space then disappearing. This illustrates
how, for Marc, a meaningless and valueless art object is transformed
into one which has both meaning and value. He has, ostensibly, made
the work his own through creatively engaging with it--though personally
I find that scenario less than convincing.
In reality
the "double answer," the quandary, remains, because that is the
way the world--and the creative psyche--work. The art-lover or artist
(Serge) vies with the critic (Marc) for the support of the public
(Yvan), and it is a rare situation when all three are in complete
accord. And while it bothers you, Yasmina, that you are probably
not seen through your plays as "the summit of intelligence and intellectuality
. . . on the other hand, deep down you don't give a damn. You know
what you do, you know what you want, you know what you want to say."
I concur
with that wholeheartedly. So do Serge, Marc, and Yvan, collectively
speaking.
REFERENCE:
Quotations
from Yasmina Reza taken from the following sources:
"Yasmina
Reza and the anatomy of a play" by Mary Blume, International
Herald Tribune.
"High
flyer with a fear of aging" by Pearl Sheffy Gefen, The Jerusalem
Post Internet Edition, Thursday, October 7, 1999.
Copyright
© 2000 Max Podstolski. All Rights Reserved
Max
Podstolski is a primitive modernist painter living in Canterbury,
New Zealand. He holds the distinction of being the very first
writer to be accepted for publication in *spark-online.
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