Clark and My Thoughts

In reading “The View from Notre Dame” I can't help but to sense a form of transformation and uncertainty. Uncertainty because the very beginning of this text promulgates how there is no exact sense of direction when observing this “modern” artwork – “We cannot be sure whether the tract of land he shows us stretches away to the north or the south, but it must be roughly one point of the compass or the other, for we are somewhere in the brief interval of open country…”. This quote is of interest to me for two reasons; first, when I think of art I think of traditional portraits depicting some famous person, of patrons wanting to have themselves reproduced on canvass or marble, or of something that is so breathtaking that it must be replicated. Second, I have always believe, and this art proves me wrong, that an artwork must have a sense of direction, some sort of guidance to understanding what we are observing, or a clue that reveals some sort of meaning. What Clark describes in the beginning of this text contradicts my notions of art, but somehow Clark still finds aesthetic beauty in an art that portrays mediocrity.

It is in this art of mediocrity where my sense of transformation is inspired. Transformation because we are observing art that portrays trivial things; windmills, dirt, yellow grass, animals, dead tress, etc. Things or objects that I would never considered worthy of being art because my notion of art had always been a depiction of only that that is lofty and extravagant. There is an obvious transformation taking place because even the city where art has occupied space is beginning to transform – “As a result of the transformation of the old Paris, the opening of new streets, the widening of narrow ones, the high price of land, the extension of commerce and industry, with the old slums giving way each day to apartment houses, vast stores, and workshops, the poor and working populations finds itself, and will find itself more and more, forced out to the extremities of Paris”.

It is precisely this talk of extremities that ties my sense of transformation and uncertainty. In describing the transformation of “old Paris” I believe Clark indirectly is describing the extremities of this “modern” art and how “artists” find themselves each and every day forced to those extremities of a transforming art – an art that is at once atypical and uncertain, but somehow accepted and gaining popularity. Frankly, I’m not sure if I am making much sense, but I believe that is exactly what the text is getting at – this feeling of vagueness, transformation, and acceptance. I would like to end by summarizing how I ultimately felt about this text by agreeing with Goncourts and how he felt about this new Paris – “I am a stranger to what is coming, to what is, as I am to these new boulevards.”