The Empire Stares Back

I had this dream the other night which began with me talking to James Elkins, an art historian kind of guy with frameless glasses and big interested eyes that are very aware of themselves, and in fact he writes books on how to use them and see everything all at once but this time in particular we were discussing The Object Stares Back.

And he’s going on about how seeing is being seen, how everything we look at looks back, and the world is so full of seeing staring things that we can’t comprehend most of them, our minds can’t keep up and it becomes overwhelming very quickly. Soon enough we’re talking about images and how they like to provoke this “stifled dialogue” (his words) where there’s always this possibility of “disinterested seeing” while simultaneously offering the eyes so much, so that the image always sets us up for disappointment because it isn’t real – it’s just an illusion sitting on the wall in frames (like parentheses that keep the world’s words flowing around them as they sit untouched), little fences keeping the picture and the things inside it from escaping out into reality.

And I’m right there with him even when he goes on saying “furthermore, images are corrosive and have the power to melt parts of what we are and re-form them into new shapes” and I’m really digging this guy now and nodding my head and saying things like “yes!” and “damn!” and I realize we’re walking in a seemingly endless hall of luminescent blue-grey stucco and the shiniest hardwood floor I’ve ever seen, so glassy that I notice the reflections of all these paintings before the actual paintings themselves and there’s no ceiling so where’s all this light coming from? I look around in a state of bewilderment at how it’s not pitch black in here and I go to ask old Jim what he thinks and he’s gone. I’m alone in this strange mad corridor full of whispers and my footsteps sound obtrusive and echo all over so I stop walking and turn to hear with eyes what all this quiet ruckus is about.

Hanging there are five gigantic landscapes in gilded frames at least six inches thick, if they were parentheses they’d be in 98-point font and bold faced, and inside these massive golden fences are classical American painter Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire series. Each landscape is a snapshot of the same river valley at five points in an unnamed Greek-looking society’s evolution, depicting the Savage State, Pastoral State, Consummation of Empire, Destruction, and finally Desolation in that order, constructing a narrative that spans hundreds or maybe even thousands of years. Naturally I begin with the first painting on the far left-hand side and I get so close to the surface I can smell the old musty oil paint and just when I think I hear it the surface begins to ripple and shimmer mysteriously. What else is there to do but poke and the second my finger tip makes contact there is a flash of light even brighter than the hall and the hall is gone and so am I.