Heart of Thrones
Equating centuries-old artwork to pop culture programming is a dangerous road to ramble down.
This morning I read the March issue of T Magazine over coffee (I tend to hoard magazines for extended periods so I can savor them rather than flip mindlessly, leaving me perpetually behind the times). In the issue was this spread, Heart of Stone, about Paola Santarelli's grandiose collection of marble. Busts, wall hangings, detailed moldings and tilings on every surface imaginable, accented by plush velvets and rich leather. A world known to me only through the pages of history books and visits to the castles and chateau's of Europe decorated from centuries past; meaning my firsthand paradigm for such a place is limited to secondhand experience.
So how does such a place fit into my own hive of archetypes? My first thought upon seeing the photograph was, admittedly, "This is just like Game of Thrones." You know, that iconic scene in the house of the Many-Faced God that became the face (ha) of the current season.
So that's what I thought. And then, my second thought was a bit of a self-analysis. "Why would I think that a careful and elaborate curation of marble from as far back as the third century would be 'like' a show from the post-millennium?" Third thought, "Am I so solipsistic that I can only imagine fitting things into the present forces of pop culture in my life? Can I not remove myself from the most obvious and easily graspable, spoon-fed experiences of the year 2016?"
And if you think that this is going a little overboard, being a little dramatic, take a look at this Pseudo-Seneca bust from the 18th century, think about the life of this thing, the life that has been for 300 years, the life that holds more wisdom and has seen and touched more lives in ways than a show on HBO can ever imagine, and then think about how I adapted this universe of timeless life into a category with "based on the book by George R.R. Martin" fantasy novels and cable TV programming.
Is this the 21st Century? Is what I have done here a typical example of how we view art, the antecedent reaction to ideas? How shallow is the relationship we create between what we know and what we learn?
Perhaps I'm overdramatizing. I know with all certainty that my use of the word "we" to describe anything at all is pretentious and ignorant. I can speak only for those who were raised in the same context in which I was raised. However, that is still a population worthy of worrying about. I worry about our (my) lack of self-awareness, of awareness of ourselves in the larger context of cause and effect. How our thoughts, the precursor to all actions, effect the future of everything. Fitting this curious and unique collector's work into the context of a television show narrows the meaning of the collection to a pinpoint. In a dystopian flash-forward, I see future articles in arts magazines being about television shows instead, as well-written HD programming moves closer and closer toward the center of what we believe is art.