Poetics of the Small
"My profession is always to be on the alert to find God in Nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, of nature." - Henry David Thoreau
There is spiritual power to be found in everyday life and its facets. This is the central message of "the Poetics of the Small." The paintings of the New Deal Gallery are ripe with these poetics, because they remind us of the importance of conserving nature and art, not just for their beauty, but for their utility as well. The Gallery is also a locally focused institution, another facet of these poetics. But the conservationist movement is often hounded by accusations of sounding apocalyptic, fear-mongering, and even of perpetrating some kind of "hoax" by the powers that be. How can we find an affirmative, positive message for conserving art and nature? The answer may lie in the works of American transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
They preached of a democratized, egalitarian access to nature, where art and life imitated each other freely, and society allowed itself to be informed and inspired by what it found and observed in the natural world. Its mysteries should inspire in us awe and wonder and a desire to preserve so that future generations may enjoy them as we have, not challenge us to tame or conquer it with our own contrived "logic" of "civilzed order". To Thoreau and Emerson, nothing was more sacred than the individual, and their relationship with the natural and artistic worlds around them.
Do you have a favorite place to camp, hike, or swim? Do you doodle in the margins of notes to indulge the regions of your brain which long for creation? Have you ever connected with nature in an intensely personal way? Can art be meaningful without being pretentious? These questions are essential to conservation, because conservation is the responsibility of every single one of us. We must appreciate and forward its efforts on the individual level.
Though the conservation movement did not take off in a major way until the late nineteenth century, its roots reach back several decades before that, as the movement found philosophical inspiration in American transcendentalism. Exemplified by the works of Emerson and Thoreau, transcendentalism placed a premium on an individual’s rich inner life, and praised nature as the true realm of the spiritual. To them, art and nature were reflections of each other, not products of two different worlds. They believed that civilization exists not in opposition to, but in accordance with nature. In an age when industrialization and mechanization were increasingly coming to dominate American life, convenience and materialism were held to be paramount. Emerson, Thoreau, and their colleagues presented an alternative possibility. We did not need to conquer nature for our own benefit and luxury, they explained. We are happiest when we are a part of nature.
“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it… We need the tonic of wilderness - to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” - Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Here, Thoreau explains that our existence and our civilization are made better by their interactions with nature, however small and seemingly insignificant they may be. In another section of Walden, Thoreau explains that material wealth and possessions only bring us happiness up to a point. Once our bellies are filled, we have clothes on our backs, and a warm dwelling to return to when its cold, we begin to enter into the realm of luxury with any additional wealth. Thoreau did not oppose the possession of luxuries that truly make us happy, but he did believe that too much of a good thing is never a good thing: “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”
We often hear from politicians and businessmen that the newest tax plan, stimulus package, or product will bring “jobs,” “prosperity,” and “comfort,” but economic excess does not equal spiritual comfort. Thoreau insisted that true happiness, true elevation of mankind must come from within ourselves, and from engagement with great ideas, and the great beauty around us in nature and in art. Thoreau found this tremendous, life-changing beauty in the simple abodes of Concord, Massachusetts and Walden Pond, which, while beautiful in its way, certainly lacks the majesty of Yosemite, Yellowstone, or the Grand Canyon. To Thoreau, majesty was not a prerequisite for the appreciation of nature, but merely a convenience. We may not be able to step away from society for two years to test the benefits of "living deliberately" as he did, but we all can learn to value simplicity and the inherent worth of nature and art around us.
By the same logic, the paintings of Inez Abernathy and the other artists featured in the New Deal Gallery may appear to lack the prestige of the Van Goghs, Da Vincis, and Picassos of the world, but they are every bit as poignant, meaningful, and artistic as their more famous cousins being displayed elsewhere. They are just as worthy of our time, attention, and protection.
We must acknowledge the fact that economic priviledge has far too often predicated one's ability to spend leisure time enjoying and interacting with nature. The benefits society may reap through its interaction with nature should be egalitarian, democratic, and available to everyone, not just the lucky few with enough capital to afford it. We must not allow those few who stand to benefit tremendously from the status quo of environmental destruction and "slow violence" to dominate the conversation on climate change what which solutions we employ to meet the challenges of a changing world. We must preserve nature not just for its beauty, as the early conservationists believed, but solely for its own sake. Biodiversity, the preservation of resources for future use, and maintaining a liveable climate are all facets of the greater truth that when humanity lives in balance with nature, we live best.
Nature inspires and moves us, according to Thoreau and Emerson, because it is where we originally come from. We, despite our efforts to “civilize” ourselves, remain forever a part of nature, we cannot escape it. Just as someone would be unlikely to go into their house and smash up the joint, we must respect our natural home. It is the only one we have. As Emerson writes in Nature: “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.” These are some of the lessons we take in when we preserve works like the paintings of the New Deal Gallery, and when we make nature and art available to the masses through the process of democratization. Art and nature are not as far apart as those who wish our current, destructive status quo would like them to be. They, and we, are forever tied together.
For a visual representation of these poetics at play, join us for an exploration of Inez Abernathy's "The Lake Central Park".