Secular Relics

As I may have mentioned earlier, I have been reading Etienne Gilson's Painting and Reality (at least I think that is the name of the book, I left it in the car and am too lazy to get it or to google it). I just read the part about Authenticity, which is an interesting aspect of painting. I will not at this point get into all of Gilson's excellent points on the matter, but something struck me. He talks about what happens in our perceptions if a painting we admire is suddenly revealed to be a fake. Obviously the art is still the same. The pigment does not magically rearrange itself upon discovery that the painter was not Mr. Esteemed X but Mr. Obscure Y. However, we pay a lot of attention to such things, and if the painting in question turns out to have been a recent one, it fades from the general discussion of art.

Of course, as Gilson later points out, what the interest is in such a painting is art history rather than art itself. I understand this distinction, as I come from a school of thought that always sniffed at historical musicologists, seeing them as the bastard cousins of theoreticians who can actually tell us something about the music, rather than gossip about the composer. So it is in art history. Too often art historians are painfully ignorant of art qua art. They can place a painting in a historical context, which is valuable, but they often fail to tell us much about the painting in terms of the painting itself.

As I write this I can think of many exceptions, but I have encountered this type of art historian too many times.

However, this was not meant to be a rant against art history. First, I will be the first to recognize a valid and valuable place for art history in the world. Second, what got me thinking was the very notion of historicity of an object.

We Catholics recognize relics as something worthy of veneration. We find examples in Sacred Scripture of things like the shadow of St. Peter healing the sick (what class of relic is that anyway?). We have the garment of Christ healing, etc. The thing about it is that we have a well-developed theology around relics. We can speak with the authority of the Fathers and Holy Mother Church on how the veneration of relics benefits us.

In the secular realm, relics completely baffle me.

Take a ball point pen. An ordinary Bic. You know the one, the warhorse that keeps on writing after all of your Parkers and Cross pens have gone belly up. Ordinary pen, useful tool, worth a few cents. Now, take the same pen and put it in the hands of the President. Already it has increased in its secular relic value.

I can see it on eBay: this vintage Bic ballpoint pen was used by President Bush.

Now, take said pen and use it for a historic event:

This vintage Bic ballpoint pen was used by President Bush to sign the Really Really Big Deal Act.

I remember watching Clinton signing some piece of legislation, and he used multiple pens, signing and passing the pen on and taking another and signing another copy, and so on. Obviously these pens went to big backers of said legislation so that they could each own "the pen that President Clinton used to sign the Very Really Important Act of 1998."

What is it about these things that makes them valuable?

What about the first flag of the State of California (bonus points to anyone who can tell me its distinguishing feature)? I can kind of see this, as the object itself is the historic event. The bullet that killed Lincoln, perhaps, as it touched death directly, and that has to be somewhat sacred. But a standard item that Lincoln used as a means to some other end, for instance (back to pens again!?! C'mon Keilholtz, I know it's 1:30 am, but can't you do better?) the pen Lincoln used to scribble the funeral address at Gettysburg just does not strike me as something that exciting, although if I had it, I could probably make a fortune on eBay with it. The manuscript itself, certainly, as that was the unique thing, but the pen, or the spitoon Lincoln used before writing it, or....

The baseball that Bonds broke the homerun record with?

I never could understand that one. The thing that makes a baseball worth having is that it is uniquely suited for playing baseball. This particular ball should still be a good ball for batting around, playing catch with, and so forth. But it will not be used for what it is perfectly suited for. Instead it will sit on a shelf as a reminder of one memorable flight at Pac Bell Park.

Now, this sort of sports fetishism is bizarre, but harmless. What really galls me is that Stradivarius violins, prized for their sound, sometimes end up in glass cases, where they look like fine fiddles, but do not offer nearly the enjoyment to the eyes as they would to the ears (and that is not even getting into the fact that one of the worst things one can do to a musical instrument, preservation-wise, is to not play it).

But this is a Stradivarius, it must be kept from accidents! No risking it on the road! Here is can be seen by all!

So what? It is another lovely brown fiddle. Why not display some other equally lovely brown fiddle, one that does not have such a magnificent tone, and allow musicians to demonstrate what it is that makes this fiddle particularly valuable?

Of course my Cajun musician friends assure me that Stradivarius fiddles are not that uncommon. Why, of the few hundred (or thousand, I really don't know the count) that he made, 30,000 of them are in use in Louisiana! I would rather that Michael Doucet, who may be the best living fiddle player in folk music, have access to a real Stradivarius (I can't wait to hear the protests from classical snobs on that one) than have a Stradivarius sitting unused in a case.

Anyway, that is a brief window into what I think about on a cold night (how did I ever tolerate this weather when I lived here? Sacramento is cold in that damp, get under your skin way. Not cold enough for snow and winter wonderland sort of doings, in a Minnesota-style so-cold-it-makes-you-glad-to-be-able-to-feel-your-extremities-and-won't-a-cup-of-cocoa-consumed-indoors-by-the-fire-be-just-the-right-thing-particularly-the-indoors-part way, but cold enough to really make you wonder why anyone would live here. Oh well, at least it isn't cold and foggy in July). More thought on this later, when I have had time to think about it and not just watch random thoughts bounce around.

Speaking of later, as I mentioned earlier, blogging will be light for the next week. I will be in Redding and have no idea how much time I will have for this sort of thing. For those of you who celebrate this Thursday as Thanksgiving: have a great one. For those of you who see it as Penance: well, may every bite of dry, mealy white meat covered in brown glue and every conversation with that black sheep you only see on holidays draw you closer to God! We had our fun last week, now it is time to prepare for Advent.

Posted by erik at November 26, 2003 1:58 AM | TrackBack