Zai Kuning, A Tree in a Room [installation detail, 2004]

THE ETHICS OF WONDER: ART AND NATURAL HISTORY Lee Weng Choy 1. NATURAL HISTORY In his book, The Vehement Passions, Philip Fisher asks: "Could any pair of words seem as natural together as the words 'dispassionate knowledge'?". It's as if knowledge were a pursuit solely of the intellect; the emotions just get in the way. Fisher analyses a history of Western thought that both idealises the dispassionate inquiry into the world and self, and excludes from wisdom the high-spirited passions like anger, fear and grief. "[T]he word 'pathology', which would exactly suit the study of the passions [páthema, in Greek], serves instead, when we look in a medical dictionary, for the study of abnormality, the study of diseases." What Fisher argues for, in contrast, is an understanding of how "each of the strong emotions or passions designs for us an intelligible world and does so by means of horizon lines that we can come to know only in experiences that begin with impassioned or vehement states within ourselves."1 For me, it is not 'dispassionate knowledge' but the words 'natural history' that make an ironical if not exactly unnatural couple. As an art critic concerned with the socio-political dynamics of art and culture, one of the things I continually maintain is that what is deemed or justified as 'natural' is historically and socially constructed and contested. This isn't to say there aren't any 'natural' bases to human behaviour, rather, that nature doesn't explain culture adequately. The 'natural' and the 'historical', in this particular view of life, might seem at odds with each other. But to read 'natural history' simply as a contradiction is to gloss over the concept's own history, and overlook its once radical assertions. While the staple of my adult reading diet has been the humanities - philosophy, criticism, history, and so on - lately I've become a fan of natural history books. I've found the combination of reading about both human and natural history has given me a far fuller appreciation of what an ethical and politically progressive attitude towards history and knowledge entails. Let me elaborate by looking at three accomplished natural history writers, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and Edward O. Wilson. Dawkins is perhaps most famous for his book The Selfish Gene. Gould, I am very sad to say, died in 2002. He is one of my favourite writers, of any genre. He was prolific, never missing his monthly 'This View of Life' column over the course of 300 uninterrupted issues of Natural History magazine, from January 1974 to January 2001. Many of these essays have been collected in anthologies like Ever Since Darwin. The name of his column derived from the last sentence of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species: "There is grandeur in this view of life... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved".2 Both Gould and Dawkins engaged in fierce debates about the workings of natural selection and the nature of science. Nevertheless, what they agreed upon constitutes a cornerstone of the scientific consensus on 'natural history'. As Kim Sterelny notes: "They agree that all life, including human life, has evolved over the last four billion years from one or a few ancestors, and that those first living things probably resembled living bacteria in their most crucial aspects. They agree that this process has been wholly natural; no divine hand... has nudged the process one way or another. They agree that chance has played a crucial role in determining the cast of life's drama... the great machine of evolution has no aim or purpose. But they also agree that evolution, and evolutionary change, is not just a lottery. For natural selection matters too. Within any population of life forms, there will be variation. And some of those variants will be a touch better suited to the prevailing conditions than others."3 Darwin's ideas about evolution were highly controversial when they first appeared in the nineteenth century. Conservative theologians labelled him the most dangerous man in England. The idea that 'humans' had descended from 'animals' was considered extremely demeaning, not to mention scandalous. Thus, Darwin's insistence that there is grandeur in the view that humans are animals. [It may surprise readers that evolution is not entirely accepted today in the world's most powerful nation; a recent Gallup poll found that only about twenty-eight percent of Americans believe in evolution.]4 Only in the nineteenth century, with the discoveries of things like dinosaurs, and the rise of new theories of geology and evolution, did Western society finally accept that the age of planet earth was eons older than the biblical six thousand years. The Darwinian revolution was instrumental in ushering our modern age when scientific explanations gained almost complete prominence over religious explanations of the world. And so we do 'natural history' injustice if we think that 'nature' as evidence and explanation was not once a radical idea. But what happens when we use 'nature' to explain human 'culture' and 'society'? Edward O. Wilson came to fame, or for some, notoriety, in 1975 with the publication of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.5 Wilson began his career in myrmecology, the study of ants. For many of today's readers, Wilson is best known for championing ecology and biodiversity. For others, he will remain a controversial figure for his sociobiology. As Ullica Segerstrale explains: "Wilson defined sociobiology as a new discipline devoted to the 'systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior'. Among animal species Wilson explicitly included our own species Homo sapiens, and the final chapter of his work looked exclusively at humans... Wilson suggested that human sex role divisions, aggressiveness, moral concerns, religious beliefs, and much more, could be connected to our evolutionary heritage, as it is represented today in our underlying genetic dispositions."6 Sociobiology was strongly defended as well as attacked by fellow scientists. Some of the attacks - directed mainly at the last chapter - came from Wilson's colleague at Harvard University, Stephen Jay Gould. My purpose here isn't to discuss the debates on sociobiology; nor do I have the expertise to elucidate the arguments over genetic selection and determinism, one of the points of contention. Let me raise just one question - is sexual orientation genetically determined? If I had never read a book on natural history or evolution, I would still feel perfectly equipped to criticise the way this question has been framed. In this crude form, genetic determinism looks at vastly complex social phenomena, then portrays them in exceedingly reductive terms. What it means to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual or transsexual is no simple thing that has been agreed upon by people, gay, straight or otherwise. Therefore how could something that is itself not clearly defined as a phenomenon be so definitively determined by a chain of causes directed from a genetic script. To repeat, I do not dispute any 'natural' bases to human behaviour - none of our actions defy any 'natural' laws [people with kinky sex lives don't do anything physically impossible]. Rather, the question of sexuality is not about biology but about how humans understand, construct and contest certain behaviours and attitudes. The debate between Gould and Dawkins is not, at any rate, over a crude form of genetic determinism. Theirs is a debate about the details of evolution and natural selection, and what these scientific findings mean for humans. It is a debate that is rich and exciting, but one I follow as an amateur. Why I should take the reader along an excursion into genetics [in an art publication] when I have no authority on the subject is precisely because I believe it is important to engage with debates that one is not expert in. One has a political- intellectual stake in expert discourses like science, even if one isn't involved in them. And I would add, even if one isn't really interested in them either [for instance: we all have a stake in the way the world's financial system is run, even if one can't afford to invest in the stock exchange, or if one's reflex is to change the television channel when the business news comes on]. This is the political-intellectual disposition behind the questioning of the 'natural' that I began with: to question that which is explained as 'natural' when it has a social history that is constructed and contested. While I'm cautious of overextending my reach on debates of scientific evidence, I do feel more competent to comment on matters of the philosophy of science. This is why I feel a strong alliance with Gould rather than someone like Wilson. Gould often wrote about the social history of science - that science is hardly immune from politics. I don't know what Gould thought about Jacques Derrida, but I do know that Wilson has lashed out at the French philosopher and his theories on deconstruction. Wilson finds deconstruction's skepticism of the Enlightenment, its insistence on unpacking the social construction of truth, to be anathema to his own belief in the unity of science. I couldn't disagree more with Wilson on this issue. What I find inspiring in the writings of Gould is how he advocates a historical questioning of science, yet at the same time respects its hard-won advances and marvels at the worlds it opens up for him. In his writing I find one of the best examples of the unity of the humanities and the sciences. Which brings me back to Fisher and the passions: "The passion of wonder has always been described by scientists and mathematicians as the heart of the experience of the search for new knowledge... Wonder occurs at the horizon line of what is potentially knowable, but not yet known. We learn about this horizon line when we find ourselves in a state of wonder."7 Gould's recognition of the limits of science does not leave him with a world that is any less intelligible or any less wonderful. There is grandeur in this view of life. 2. ART HISTORY Gould dedicates his book Ever Since Darwin to his father: "Who took me to see the Tyrannosaurus when I was five."8 Like many people, I had a fascination with dinosaurs when I was a child. I can remember borrowing all the dinosaur books in the library of my elementary school. And like many people, this fascination passed as I got older. Growing up where I did, where there were no natural history museums, I never did get to see exhibitions of dinosaur fossils. That would have to wait until I was an adult in my late thirties visiting the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Who knows if this fascination might have led to something, a different career even, had I visited the American Museum of Natural History alongside my first visit to the Museum of Modern Art about twenty years ago. These two great New York institutions have become my favourite museums. I can't recall exactly how many times I've been to MoMA - about as many times as I've visited the city, which must be over a dozen. But I've only been to the AMNH once, in 2002. I didn't even see the whole thing, focusing mainly on the dinosaur exhibits, yet the experience ranks as one of the most wonderful museum experiences I have ever had. The AMNH and MoMA have, of course, fantastic collections, though that alone is not what makes them so impressive. They each tell powerful stories about their collections - about evolution and about modern art. My sense of the AMNH dinosaur story is that it represents some of the best contemporary thinking on the subject, with all its unresolved uncertainties and open speculation. One can see a triceratops exhibition with the creature's forelimbs in two different positions: one similar to a mammal's; the other splayed like a lizard's. Or the improbably long-necked barosaurus precariously rearing up on its hind legs to ward a predatory allosaurus away from its offspring. The debate over dinosaur posture and biomechanics is on display. It's interesting to note that, in contrast, as compelling as I find the permanent exhibition at MoMA, I also always have the feeling of how incomplete and incorrect it is. This is the old story of modernism that so many of my colleagues and I have come to view as problematic and in need of critique. Yet it persists, not only because of authoritative institutions like MoMA, but because understanding modernism is a problem that won't go away; indeed, as at least one of my friends would concur, the problems of modernism continue to define our present moment. Although, for me, the MoMA narrative in particular is a 'historical' one - in the sense that it doesn't so much give us an accurate picture of the past, as it gives us a picture of how we used to depict that past. The art historian James Elkins wrote an essay entitled, 'How Close Can We Come To Admitting We're Really Writing Mostly About Ourselves?' To which he answers: I really do think we are all writing mostly about ourselves, and if I needed to prove that, I would just unfurl one of those long cartoon scrolls, inscribed with the endless list of names of art historians who are no longer read by people who want to know about the past. No one reads Winckelmann to learn about the Greeks. Vasari is read, but as a document of his own times: no one takes him seriously as a historian of Roman and medieval art. No one reads Rumohr to find out about the Renaissance. And so on. As a general rule, only two kinds of art historical texts seem to be infused with truth: those written in the last three decades or so, and those written back in the time of the artists we're studying. Most of us don't read sources more than thirty years old to find out about our subjects. Like a chameleon, older art history takes on the colors and patterns of its surroundings. Soon enough after this conference is over, we are all going to be read - if we're read at all - as evidence of the art world of the late 1990s. The historical truth will bleed out of our essays, and they will become pale records of our lives and times...9 The art history text as destined to become a fossil for future historians. I think Elkins is right about this. However, the MoMA story isn't the same as an art historian's text - that's the difference between a book and an institution that evolves - so I don't mean to suggest that MoMA is merely a time capsule of the twentieth century. The museum has changed a lot, and is undergoing an intense period of change as I write: the building is being renovated, and the permanent exhibition being rethought. One thing I am sure of is that the new hang will continue to inspire criticism. If anything, that is the destiny of the cathedral of modernism on West 53rd Street, for its authority to be perennially challenged by critics and historians, whether specialists in Western modern art or not. My comparison of the AMNH and MoMA may seem to turn on the irony that a modern art museum is more dated than a museum that showcases fossils tens of millions of years old. It may also seem obvious that because I'm an art critic rather than a researcher in natural history, I might experience unbridled wonder in a dinosaur exhibition, whereas an 'establishment' art museum would provoke my criticism. But what I really want to suggest is something more fundamental that these institutions share; as I said, they are my two favourite museums. Whenever I visit MoMA, I always want to experience the exhibitions in sequence. So I start at the room with the Cézannes, and work my way through the Picassos and onward, up to the next floor, continuing to wend my way around the larger and smaller rooms. It's happened a number of times - I will turn a corner and come upon Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, which I should know very well is in the museum, but it catches me by surprise. The painting, rather, a reproduction thereof, is perhaps the first that I can remember from having seen as a child. While I think it's a good painting, it's also a sentimental favourite. MoMA's narrative, which I know quite well, is therefore experienced as a combination of the anticipated and the forgotten remembered. The surprises aren't only of this kind, though. For all the anticipation of looking at the Jackson Pollocks, seeing them has never been a predictable encounter; there is always something new in seeing them again. All this may sound rather typical. And why not? Being a critic of modernist myths - wanting to unpack the naturalisation of modernism - should not mean that I find its best works any less wonderful. Moreover, I would insist that what is at stake here is not the seduction by the aura of famous paintings. There is a difference between aura and wonder. In late 2003, the Hong Kong Arts Centre hosted several staff from MoMA for a 'cultural exchange', inviting a number of curators and writers from the region, myself included. Among other things I learned about the museum is that it has what are apparently excellent family and educational programs. Next time I'm in New York City, I'll try to borrow a kid, if I can, and enroll in their family program - it would be a great way to revisit the museum. Would I share the sense of awe that the child might have, or would it be the other way around, that my admiration would influence the youngster? In Hong Kong, I asked the MoMA family programs co-ordinator if she thought about the difference between wonder and aura. She hadn't, unfortunately, and I didn't get her educationist's insight on the matter. If psychoanalysis teaches us anything, it's that children are not innocent, and that socialisation starts remarkably early. Even young children can be readily indoctrinated into the ways of 'aura'; their trips to the museum at an early age may very well be about precisely that. The educators at MoMA told stories of how during school trips, the teachers almost always discipline the kids to act as if they are in front of precious, indeed, sacred objects. Aura is the reverential, sometimes ecstatic, recognition of high cultural value. From what I could gather, to the credit of the MoMA educators, they take pains to place wonder - although they may not use the term - in the midst of the students' encounters with art. I had thought to call this essay, 'the aesthetics of wonder', but quickly realised that that would not be right; what is at stake is more than just the judgement of appearances. The word 'ethics' seemed more fitting, as it expresses the most important dimension of the human encounter with the world. If, in the first section of this essay, I argued that wonder is foundational to scientific enquiry, to the discovery of knowledge itself, then, in this concluding section, I want to argue that wonder is also foundational to the process of critical enquiry. Too much contemporary writing about art [and not just about 'contemporary art' but about art of all times] suffers from want of rigour and forcefulness of critique. But even the best of today's writing seems not worth keeping, certainly not for more than the thirty years that Elkins uses as a benchmark. I think one of the main tests for longevity has to do with, not reverence for the object of study, but a sense of being precariously on the horizon line of insight and judgement. I'd like to suggest that the most lasting art criticism has as its central object the experience of wonder. Notes 1 Philip Fisher, The Vehement Passions, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002: 1-2, 4 2 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, New York: Modern Library, 1998 [first published 1859]: 648-649 3 Kim Sterelny, Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest, Cambridge: Icon Books, 2001: 4; the italics are mine 4 Cited in Nicholas Kristof, 'God, Satan and the Media', The New York Times, 3 March, 2003 5 Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975 6 Ullica Segerstrale, Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000: 13 7 Fisher, op. cit.: 1-2 8 Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, New York: Penguin Books, 1991 [first published 1977] 9 James Elkins, 'How Close Can We Come To Admitting We're Really Writing Mostly About Ourselves?', lecture given at the College Art Association meeting, New York, February, 2000. It is posted on the author's website, jameselkins.com. Parts of this essay first appeared in Ish magazine 2 April, 2003. Image: Zai Kuning, A Tree in a Room, detail and installation views, Sculpture Square, Singapore, January - February, 2004. This new work makes reference to a previous large tree trunk that Zai installed on the campus of the Theatre Training & Research Program. TTRP was co-founded by one of Singapore's most important artists, the late Kuo Pao Kun. Kuo, who is highly regarded for his plays as well as his leadership in civil society, commissioned the first tree piece from Zai. The latter has said that the work installed at Sculpture Square is "the best way for me to remember [Kuo]" [quoted from The Straits Times, 20 January, 2004]. Photos courtesy the artist. I chose Zai's work to illustrate this text for a couple of reasons: first and foremost, I like the work very much. These days, it's rare to walk into an art exhibition and be impressed, to feel a sense of wonder. Secondly, if I were to rewrite and expand the essay, I would include a discussion of A Tree in a Room. Alas, I only came upon the artwork after I had completed the text. What could be more emblematic of 'nature' than a tree? However, as Zai tells me, he isn't interested in making pro-environmentalist statements with the work [not that he's unconcerned with local or global eco-politics]. Zai's A Tree in a Room is less an evocation of the power of nature, than a powerful reminder of an important part of Singapore's art history.