Art Heals: Sensitivity

As do many of you, I have been breathlessly following the news about possible reopening of our cities (breathlessly sometimes in the literal sense as I try to increase my walking pace in this city while wearing my mask). As I am a visually oriented person, (I perceive; therefore, I am) the lack of variety offered to my optic nerve has seriously debilitated my sense of wellbeing.  Translation:  I need to look at new stuff!  Especially art.  I am not alone in this.  There is a Facebook group, created by artists, called Art I am Looking at Every Day—During the Stay at Home.  The artists post art, their own or by others, that they have in their homes or are looking at, to share visual wellbeing with others.  I have a lot of art in my home, but after months of indoor light, it has become like wallpaper, visible but not really seen.  I have lost focus—in both senses of the word.  I am out of focus

(in the sense that I am out of Pringles—both things diminishing my quality of life).  I don’t see things clearly anymore—everything is filtered through the lens of my daily measure of optimism or the lack thereof.

Focusing on work takes most of my energy, (the rest being used up in the hunt for Pringles).  Despite my best efforts—daily walks, web surfing (or in my techo-challenged way, crawling), Netflix viewing, pantry exploring, there is a sameness to the things I see that I seriously think is damaging my eyesight.  Most of all, I fear the knife edge of my sensitivity is dulled to that of a butter knife.

So now it is time to bring in philosopher Gilles Deleuze.   I trust philosophers because reality doesn’t get in the way of their perceptions.  They live in their heads, and consequently see the world in new ways, make new connections about observed phenomena.  This lockdown has forced me to live in my head more than in my body, and new connections are what I crave right now.  Deleuze is also my kind of philosopher because he is mainly making connections about art.   Deleuze posits that art reintroduces bodies to “experiences of sensible chaos to which they may be resistant or increasingly immune.”  Oh yes!  Sensible (meaning the ability be felt) chaos was the definition of my life pre-covid. You only had to look at my office to understand that.

Deleuze proposes that “artworks are containers for essentially illusive or explosive forces that have no other means of being presented. Art introduces something new into the world and can take one by surprise.  Art can resonate with… primal sensitivity…

affecting one in ways one cannot pre-determine or prepare for. In doing so, art reactivates the sensitive core of the body…provoking new feelings and engendering deeper thresholds of vulnerability. This means that art can expand one’s experience of what it means to be embodied and what it means to sense. As something radically new and experimental in the world, art can make one anew. It can make one sensitive to things that can’t be codified, systematized or named.”  Yes indeed.  This is what I want and need—surprises, in real time, in real life, not this artificial one of the fun-house screens I am currently trapped in. 

So when things finally open, you will find me at a museum, getting my primal sensitivity on.

Here is some art to reactivate your sensitive core, an abstract construction by Ben Belghachi.  Art Heals.