Lights On in the Bevatron: An introduction to Art in Question

Hello, Readers! Welcome to Art in Question, a weekly bulletin about no one thing in particular — but mostly art. I say this sardonically, but I’ve formed this newsletter to continue sharing true, good art in long form. This’ll consist of a short essay-like critique of a traditional work of art (a painting, photograph, or sculpture) and follow with related inquiry found in various forms.

If you’re here, you’re probably an art enthusiast of some sort — whether in the common, everyday sense or you elect to read and learn about the masters. No matter if you consider yourself to be in the so-called “art world” or not, you have a connection to this powerful thing.

We know people worship to art but is often created in a fragile state. It’s bought and sold and loaned and bartered for. Sculpted and shelved, sung and listened to. So many of us gravitate towards it unknowingly, only for it to be a saved file or to sit in a dusty box, in the back of a cabinet, or rolled up in the attic. It’s on both the movie poster and screen. It is Madame X and sunflowers. It’s era after era and styles following movements. It’s replicated and copied. Stolen and destroyed. It’s for the sake of itself or a portrait of the family or the president or the pope. Found in all places, no relationship between a viewer and a work is the same.

In Question

Art that shimmers is really what I’m questioning in this bulletin — that which draws one in like a desert mirage and requests prolonged attention. “It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning,” Vincent Van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother and art dealer, Theo. If we could all give our attention to these things more often, perhaps a calmness may come.

Throughout her decades of writing and in interviews, Joan Didion — a literary, journalistic, and stylistic saint — talked often about the lights in the bevatron. While a student in her last year of college, her attention was drawn away from the classroom and out the window toward the bevatron in Berkeley, California. Didion said time and time again that she was simply wondering if the lights were on in the building and was not connecting it socially or politically to anything in particular. For even just a moment, periphery questions rose because this curious building in her line of vision shimmered.

It’s not always art with a subversive topic that has the most emotion, but sometimes that which is devoid of an agenda that creates the most emotion. And it’s not art if you don’t feel anything. Art in Question will focus on artworks that have this magnetism for the same undefinable and seemingly untethered reason. The bulletin is about the perpetual asking of questions — most importantly, why.

For you

Once weekly, I’ll link things to watch, read, and see associated with the weekly artwork. So, as I hope you now understand, the commonality between the weekly bulletins is that in each one, I’ll weave a variety of arts together, all rooted in a single work of art. It will be about the way things look, the way things sound, the way things seem, and the way they are. Although I cannot tell you how a thing exists in your life, I can explain it the way I see it and endeavor to bridge meanings. I hope this will encourage you to do the same!

Before reading these weekly letters, remember: art is only ever concerned with itself — never with who is experiencing it — and consideration is the only requirement. With knowing that, you’re golden.

Thank you for following along, and see you next time!