Creative process begun by artist lives on when viewers get swept away

By Danielle Rice

"I think a picture dies after a few years like the man who painted it. Afterward it's called the history of art … what remains of an epoch in a museum." So declared Marcel Duchamp, one of the most irreverent artists of the 20th century.

Duchamp also believed that the viewer of a work of art is every bit as important as the maker. It is this idea I'd like to explore: The art in the museum is not dead; it is merely dormant, like a seed in winter, awaiting the warmth of a viewer's gaze to awaken it.

In fact, the very act of looking at a work of art is a creative experience.

In today's media-saturated world, we often use our eyes instrumentally, to navigate our visually rich surroundings while multitasking. We read images very quickly, and often the images are either accompanied by sound or by clear, large, direct messages. Billboards and ads are meant to be understood immediately.

How many people look at a "STOP" sign in order to admire its color and shape? The very notion is laughable. We learn to shut visual information out in order to survive.

Because we are trained from an early age to use our vision in this pragmatic way, we are often at a loss when confronted with the silent, static art objects in the museum. To bring them alive we need to tell stories about what we are seeing, and draw upon our own imagination and experience.

But one of the things that often keeps people from coming to museums is the sense that they have to know the right stories in order to understand art. I often hear people say, "I really don't know much about art," which really means, "I'm not sure what to think or say about it, and I have a sense that I may say or think the wrong thing."

It is true that museums tell certain stories in the way that they exhibit their art. For example, the history of art is really a story about how art developed. This story determines the way that museums present their art and explains why generally they arrange their displays in chronological order.

Museums also tell stories about how artists work, so you will often find exhibitions that cover the span of an artist's career. And, of course, museums do like to celebrate how art is made, telling stories about process and inspiration through their labels and ancillary materials.

However, what makes art really sparkle is the creative energy that we as viewers bring to it when we really open ourselves up to the experience.

For example, take Howard Pyle's The Flying Dutchman, one of the most compelling works of art in the Delaware Art Museum. The museum label tells how the painting illustrates a popular legend about a cursed Dutch East India ship's captain doomed to sail the high seas forever on his ghostly ship. I like to point out that when painting it, Howard Pyle positioned his handyman on a slanted plank with a cape tied to a tree-branch and had his students drench the poor man with water in order to get a more realistic sense of the scene.

But looking at this painting today is an open invitation to compare this painting, finished in 1900, with our own experiences. Anyone looking at this can talk about memories of being in a storm, of encountering a ghost, of seeing a movie that scared them, and of course, we can compare the painted image with the more current image of this mythic character as depicted in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean II."

These are just the beginning. The art in the museum is an invitation to engage in the lost arts of conversation and free association, and as such to let imagination roam wild.

Because the Delaware Art Museum is home to a very large variety of paintings that tell wonderful stories and inspire others to do the same, the museum has just launched a special project titled "The Art of Storytelling." A storytelling competition was held, and more than 300 entries, inspired by art in the museum, were submitted by storytellers young and old from around the country.

The museum selected and recorded a few of these stories and is making them available on audio players free of charge. In addition, an interactive kiosk invites visitors to use the art in the museum as a launch pad into their own creativity.

To entice you to come visit and discover the creative energy within you, I leave you with just one of the many wonderful stories inspired by our sculpture "The Crying Giant" as written by Emerson Marine, a seventh-grader from Wilmington:

"A giant cried today. He sat down, put his head in his hands, and cried. He cried for things he wished he'd done, but didn't do, words he said he didn't mean to say. He cried for fear, and cried for anger. He cried for all things lost, and sorely missed, for people who hurt, and people who cried themselves.

"A giant is a big creature, more than you, more than me. So his heart is bigger, too. And this giant's colossal heart was filled with sadness, heavy and tired. And as this giant cried, for good things that went wrong, and wrong things that went right, for things forgotten, but still felt, for dreams that didn't come true, for rain when the sun wanted to shine, and tears when laughter wanted to be heard, for people with something to say, who went unnoticed, and a world that wanted to change, each tear that fell to the grassy ground made his eyes a little clearer, his heart a little lighter.

"Yet still he cried. And as this giant cried, the world around him began to change. The sun was brighter, the sky was bluer, the grass was greener, the air felt cleaner. People everywhere were smiling. Eyes twinkled, laughter sounded clear and loud. It seemed that as the giant cried, for things others wanted to cry about, but didn't, the world became a little better.

"But the giant, with his head in his hands, did not see what was happening around him. So still he cried. And how could a creature change the world so?

"There is a simple reason. Nothing's so big as a giant crying."

Copyright ©2006, The News Journal.