Skip to content

Is This Painting Upside Down?

2022-11-01 · letter vlog · John · 3:42 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Pop culture (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook, self promotion

Recalling how he hung Sarah's line painting upside down and the news of a Mondrian painting hung upside down for 75 years, John argues that whether an artist intended a road to wonder matters less than whether a viewer finds it: shared art is a gift exchange of attention.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — In about 2003 Sarah shows John her line paintings and sells him one for $50

  • ★★ Before they dated, in about 2003, Sarah showed John her recent paintings, mostly of lines; he asked to buy one, and she gave it to him for the friends-and-family price of $50. — 00:00:00 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ The line paintings made John think it is impossible to draw a straight line, because both hand and paint are imprecise and unpredictable. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Mock advertisement for the Awesome Socks Club

  • ★★ In a mock ad, John says the Awesome Socks Club is taking subscribers again: Hank's idea of great socks with 100% of proceeds to charity has exploded. (playful) — 00:00:29 · Awesome Socks Club, Hank Green
  • ★★ John asks viewers to join the Awesome Socks Club through his affiliate link in the description, not Hank's, since Hank already has many sales; it is not a paid ad. (playful) — 00:00:29 · Awesome Socks Club, Hank Green

00:00:58 — John hangs the painting upside down, Sarah corrects him, and its orientations over the years

  • ★★ John framed and hung the painting and loved it: it recalled raindrops sliding down a window, with lines growing denser toward the middle and sometimes converging. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ A few months after he hung it, Sarah told John in the politest way possible that he had hung the painting upside down. — 00:01:27 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ John still loves the painting upside down; it reminds him of the veins of a ginkgo leaf, approaching each other without ever becoming each other. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ John says the intended orientation is probably better, recalling Flannery O'Connor's title Everything That Rises Must Converge. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Over the years they have hung the painting in several orientations; lately it hangs sideways in John's office, its lines like distant mountain ranges or rows of crops. — 00:01:27

00:01:56 — News of a Mondrian painting hung upside down for 75 years, and why its orientation can't be known

  • ★★★ John says news recently broke that a Piet Mondrian painting has hung upside down in a German art museum for 75 years. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says the story is more complicated: the piece is unfinished and unsigned, Mondrian was probably working on it when he died and often worked upside down or sideways, so its intended orientation is unknowable. (hedged) — 00:01:56

00:02:26 — Art as a gift exchange of attention: the viewer's wonder matters more than intent

  • ★★ John praises the museum director's statement that we cannot know what is correct or incorrect as a great sentence he should utter more often. — 00:02:26
  • ★★★ The painting reminds John that art brings wonder and pleasure in unexpected ways, and whether the artist intended each road to wonder matters less than whether a viewer can find it. — 00:02:26

  • ★★★ John says art made only for its maker can be great, but art made to be shared is a collaboration: a commingling of artist's and viewer's attention, which meet in the work. — 00:02:55

    “The work of art is the place where those attentions come together.”

  • ★★★ John thinks art needs mutual generosity: making the work is a gift to an audience, and the audience's attention is a gift to the artist; this gift exchange is central to how he understands art. — 00:02:55

  • ★★ Nineteen years on, the painting keeps rewarding John's attention in new and thrilling ways whatever its orientation, so that he too cannot know what is correct or incorrect. — 00:03:24

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Sarah Urist Green · Sarah's line painting

Also: authorial intent · Awesome Socks Club · doobly-doo · Everything That Rises Must Converge · Flannery O'Connor · Ginkgo biloba · Piet Mondrian

← Previous: I'm Changing the Way I Think About Politics · Next → My Secret Obsession