“If the world were clear, art would not exist.”[1] With this claim, from his 1942 essay Le myth de sisyphe, Albert Camus contends that art is necessary for us, at least in part, precisely for its capacity to allow us to better understand the world and our place therein. Because human existence in the world is characterized by its absurdity, there is no absolute way in which finite human beings can ever attain ultimate certainty or truth in the world or realize an enduring reconciliation with the world. Yet through art, Camus contends, the individual can achieve some measure of understanding, meaning, and harmony in the world. Art acknowledges the meaning that is absent in an absurd world, while depicting that world in a new way which, although not necessarily a present or future reality, still stands as a real and meaningful possibility. Thus the unity that art is intended to portray, although not presented as a Truth, is no less meaningful by being ‘merely’ a possibility. As Camus explains, art must hold at its center a recognition of the world as it is and as it is experienced, without illusion. Yet at the same time, art must likewise propose aspects of existence which, although not necessary or inevitable, are also not necessarily precluded from being so. Thus, in his 1951 essay L’homme révolté, Camus concludes that “art, in a sense, is a revolt against everything fleeting and unfinished in the world.”[2]

Camus’ contention that art, both as an endeavor and as an object to be engaged, may be rightly understood as a particular manner of engaging the world toward a greater understanding of its reality and meaning, was neither new nor original in the middle of the twentieth century. Variations of this way of thinking, although perhaps without Camus’ unique Absurdist perspective, can be seen throughout the history of Western thought. In his Socratic dialogue Phaedrus (ca. 370 BCE), Plato suggested that the experience of particular beauty, more than the experience of any other kind of quality, most nearly approaches the experience of Absolute Beauty, in that in order for any particular entity to be beautiful it must possess some degree of absolute beauty; the beauty of any particular object is illuminated by the radiance of Absolute Beauty which it possesses, thus in contemplating a beautiful object one thereby approaches, through contemplation, the “higher” reality (the Truth) of Absolute Beauty. Plato was not here suggesting that, through the beauty of art, one could fully know the Truth of Absolute Beauty; as finite beings who are fundamentally limited by the physical aspects of our existence, such knowledge is not possible. However, what the encounter with the beauty of art can reveal is the possibility of the existence of such Truth. As Hans-Georg Gadamer explains:

The important message that [Plato] has to teach is that…however unexpected our encounter with art may be, it gives us an assurance that the truth does not lie far off and inaccessible to us, but can be encountered in the disorder of reality with all its imperfections, evils, errors, extremes, and fateful confusions. The ontological function of the beautiful is to bridge the chasm between the ideal and the real.[3]

It is through the experience of beauty that one is able to most fully glimpse Beauty as an Absolute (and thus as Truth) and perhaps finally achieve a union (or even a re-union) with the Absolute (Truth). Art is, in this light, the most suitable means for a human engagement with the Eternal and the Divine. In Gadamer’s terms, it is the hermeneutic experience with art, a particular manner of engagement that is constituted in and as a dialogical question and answer between the viewer and the work of art, which allows the viewer to embark upon the path toward the realization of the Truth of art. Through the hermeneutic experience, an open dialogue is formed and perpetuated in the reciprocity of question and answer as both the individual engaging in the act of interpretation and the ‘object’ to be interpreted address each other in question and in response.[4] Surely Marjorie and Duncan Phillips shared the preceding understanding of art’s capacity to contain profound meanings, as well as the necessity of a certain way of viewing art—as a dialogical endeavor, an ongoing conversation—to allow for the full emergence of these meanings. Whether either Marjorie or Duncan would have articulated this understanding in exactly these terms, the fact remains that, through their creation of The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., in 1921, they established the perfect environment for exactly this manner of hermeneutic engagement with specific works of art.

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Dr. Carter-Birken emphasizes throughout the present work that, with the establishment of the collection, Duncan and Marjorie were driven by their desire to foster the optimal conditions for the personal exploration of art. As Carter-Birken explains, Duncan’s job, his ultimate mission, was to “continually present his collection with the maximum potential for meaningful encounters by members of the public.” With this intention, Duncan and Marjorie were guided by the fundamental presumption that what matters most in the experience with art is the manner in which each individual viewer relates to each individual work, and vice-versa. Citing his 1931 text The Artist Sees Differently, Carter-Birken notes Duncan’s contention that the experience of beauty is necessarily subjective. Yes, the artist may have a specific idea or sense that she wishes to create with any particular work of art, and yes, that particular idea may be received by the viewer in more or less the way in which the artist intended. But this is not to say that this is the onlymanner in which meaning may be transmitted, from artist to viewer, through the work of art. In fact, not only is this very often not how the transmission of meaning occurs, there is perhaps greater value in a different manner of engagement, one which depends as much on the viewer as on the work itself. The individual conversation with a work of art—the give and take fostered wholly through the viewer’s openness to experiencing the work and the reciprocal openness of the work itself to be interpreted in different, perhaps unintended ways—this is precisely the experience with art that Marjorie and Duncan Phillips sought to create; what’s more, as Dr. Carter-Birken so aptly and ably demonstrates over the pages that follow and as the enduring legacy of The Phillips Collection attests, they were wildly successful in this effort. 

To fully demonstrate the depth and breadth of this success, Dr. Carter-Birken chooses here to focus on six specific artists who were key to the foundation and structure of the collection: Pierre Bonnard, Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, Jacob Lawrence, and Mark Rothko. With a full chapter devoted to each artist, Carter-Birken situates each artist both historically and thematically and provides a comprehensive account of how each came to be associated with the collection and with Marjorie and Duncan themselves; these accounts, which often reveal the immense overlap in sentiment and sensibility between the artists and the collection founders, beautifully reveal precisely why each artist, and her or his specific works, resonated so profoundly with Marjorie and Duncan. To augment these accounts, Dr. Carter-Birken also includes sensitive, evocative descriptions of several of the artists’ works; at times, these descriptions attain the status of poetry, of art itself. Each description is itself an encounter with a work of art, engaged by and expressed from an individual, subjective experience. In this manner, Dr. Carter-Birken presents unique encounters with the work of art, of precisely the same style and quality that Marjorie and Duncan hoped to foster with their creation of the collection; just as the collection was intended to inspire contemplation, conversation, and collaboration between the work and the viewer, here we see, through each moving description, a perfect example of this dialogical relationship in action. This, then, is the twofold value and profundity of the present text—it clearly and concisely articulates the artistic principles held by Marjorie and Duncan Phillips which would ultimately inform and structure the collection, while simultaneously, and beautifully, demonstrating the kinds of encounters with art that The collection was intended to foster. Imperative to the collection was the generosity that Marjorie and Duncan showed, welcoming and engaging artist, art work, and viewer. In the same fashion, the present text is a similar act of generosity, equally engaging the collection (and its creators), the artists, the works, and the viewer–reader.

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Duncan Phillips’ work The Artist Sees Differently shares many of the same principles as John Dewey’s landmark text Art as Experience, publication of which followed Phillips’ text by three years. As Dr. Carter-Birken notes (see Chapter 1), in Phillips’ own copy of Dewey’s work, the following line was both underlined and recopied by Phillips: “For to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience.” And although Phillips would have encountered these exact words more than a decade after the opening of the collection, there is perhaps no better way to describe the motivations and means which guided Duncan and Marjorie. To initiate the experience, Marjorie and Duncan selected examples of Modern works of art which they believed had something urgent and profound, if also ambiguous, to say to the viewer. At the same time, however, they did not limit the works on display to just these works of Modern art; to create a broader context for engagement, pre-Modern art was also included and highlighted in the collection, borne of the Phillips’ desire to demonstrate the links traversing the history of art to the Modern, to provide a ground to inform the conversation between viewer and artwork and from which the conversation between the two could grow (see, e.g., Chapter 2). Yet, although Marjorie and Duncan felt it important to establish such historical threads and influences to better elucidate the meanings of the Modern works (or rather, to better allow the Modern works to present their meanings), they intentionally avoided definitive explanations of the works they chose to display; just as the presence of historical precursors could potentially inspire new directions of conversation, so this avoidance of ‘sanctioned’ interpretation would better allow each viewer to engage the work on its terms and on one’s own terms, toward an individual, personal determination of the meaning of the work for oneself.  Here again, we see the Phillips’ intentional commitment to creating the perfect conditions for a unique engagement between an individual viewer and a work of art, as equals, in a relationship toward the determination of meaning. 

Underlying the experience of meaningful, reciprocal dialogue in general, and the dialogical relationship envisioned and established by the collection, is the fundamental commitment to openness. In 1931, Duncan contended that the “collector or critic who adventures in modern art is wise if he…simply advocates tolerance and respectful study of the many different ways of seeing and painting” (see Chapter 3). The manner in which specific works were presented as part of the collection, in the presence of precursor works but without explicit, prescribed interpretation, as discussed above, was only the first step in fostering the kind of openness to experiencing art which would ultimately define The Phillips Collection and set it apart from other museums of Modern art that would follow. Recognizing that the conversation between viewer and art could never be static, and similarly acknowledging that experiences with and meanings of works could change over time, Marjorie and Duncan regularly changed the structure of specific exhibits, re-arranging the works themselves, moving works into and out of different collections to inspire new conversations between the works themselves and the viewer; as Duncan himself explicitly stated in 1926, “[the] arrangements are for the purpose of contrast and analogy” (see Chapter 3). This contrast is critical; it is the separation, the difference, which demands, perhaps even presupposes, the relation that will develop between viewer and work and the communion that will occur between the two in a resolution toward an understanding of meaning. 

Here now perhaps can be seen the full brilliance of the values and intentions that guided Marjorie and Duncan in the creation of the collection: Not only did they foster the ideal conditions to invite a personal, subjective exploration of, and conversation with, each work of art for the individual viewer, but they constantly reshaped the terms of that conversation to encourage questioning on the part of the viewer, not just of what a particular work might mean but also of what the viewer herself has decided that the work means, an ongoing and evolving hermeneutic exploration of the work, of oneself, and of the relationship between the two, directed not toward an ultimate, final ‘truth’ but rather toward a myriad of potential meanings to be discovered and explored. Although it is essential that each work of art be allowed to present itself without commentary, it is equally essential that each work be allowed to present itself in proximity to other works, be they precursor or contemporary works. This is the brilliance of The Phillips Collection—the combination of a profound openness, guided by the insistence on allowing each work to present itself on its own terms, juxtaposed with other works as ever-present partners in a dynamic dialogue that compels the viewer not only to question, but to continue to question, the possible meanings presented in any given work. It is perhaps only through a constant, and constantly renewed, re-arranging and re-examining the work of art, seeing each work again and again, seeing each work differently, that the viewer can not only more fully experience the meaning of a particular work but also the greater meaning of ‘Art’ itself. What’s more, this unique perspective on art, emphasizing openness, patience, and tolerance, can equally and profitably be applied on broader terms, in times increasingly defined by the wonder and diversity of humanity but equally undermined by the forces of marginalization and polarization, as we seek to be not just better viewers of art but also better participants in culture and in society—in short, to be better human beings.

Notes

[1] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), 98.

[2] Albert Camus, from “Create Dangerously,” a lecture originally delivered at the University of Uppsala in December 1957; published in Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 265.

[3] Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Relevance of the Beautiful,” in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). This is a translation of the 1977 essay Die Aktualität des Schönen, which itself was a revised version of a lecture entitled “Art as Play, Symbol, and Festival” (delivered 1974, published 1975), 15.

[4] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, second edition, translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1989, 2004), 363.