Art and Voyeurism

The other night I was watching Grey's Anatomy, even though the show is an absolute crapfest that makes people want to go through four torturous years of medical school, just so they can become bed-hopping interns, who have implausible, inappropriate relationships with their attendings.

Anyways, as I watched Izzie and George awkwardly banter in bed about their sexual incompatibility, I had a feeling I had never felt before while watching TV - utter discomfort. Why was I watching these interns deal with such a private matter? Relationship issues and matters dealing with chemistry were so utterly private in real life, and here I was, actively engaging in whether Izzie and George would make it. And then, I realized, serialized dramas transformed the average TV viewer into a typical voyeur, our 40-inch flat screens becoming a surrogate window into peoples' secret lives, truths they didn't even share with themselves.

For example, I knew more about the interns of Seattle Grace than I did my own friends because with friends, there are certain things you just didn't discuss. For instance, I knew the elaborate sexual circle of the characters, and the intimate and embarrassing moments that had transpired between the sheets. These were things I didn't even want to know about many of my friends as there are certain, sensitive matters that are better kept away from prying eyes.

Nevertheless, all art is essentially a voyeuristic journey into both the artist's psyche as well as the fictional world he or she has created. For example, Look Homeward Angel is a novelized autobiography of Thomas Wolfe's life - Asheville, North Carolina became the mountain town Altamont, and UNC-Chapel Hill became Pulpit Hill. In one incident, Eugene Gant (Wolfe's thinly disguised alter-ego) visits the local brothel to lose his virginity and contracts syphilis from his habitual visits. While I was reading Wolfe's autobiography, I read that this actually happened to the author, and I found it shocking that he included it in his first novel. And I realized that while I know that North Carolina's most famous writer had an STD, I will probably never be sure which one of my friends ever had one - I don't think anyone would like to admit to that (unless forced to do so by the Department of Public Health).

E.O. Wilson, a professor at Harvard, examines what the scientific evolutionary purpose of art is in his work in a field of Biopoetics. Perhaps art's true purpose is that it appeals to our voyeuristic sensibilities. Maybe we realize that we can never know anyone fully (pride often gets in the way of embarrassing confessions), and art satisfies that curiosity by providing surrogate characters/artists we can engage ourselves with rather than real people, who are secretive and disconnected from each other.

And even famous art force many of us to engage in conspiracy theories about the nature of the subject to the artist. We have an obsessive desire for these paintings to reveal some hidden truth about the artist's secret inner life. For instance, many conjecture that the model in "The Nude Maja" was Goya's secret mistress. At the Prado, I was told that Goya did two paintings of the same model - one clothed for the subject's husband and a secret, nude portrait. While this conspiracy theory is rejected by art historians now, it reveals an inherently human need to find secret meanings in art - so that we can become Peeping Toms of even history.

However, to be fair, though, artists (and even bloggers) are to some extent narcissists and exhibitionists, inviting the viewer to take time out and marvel at and speculate about their rich, inner lives through their cryptic, symbolic art. After all, ask yourself, why are we so angry at J.D. Salinger for disappearing into anonymity and not becoming a flamboyant equivalent of Truman Capote?

--By Mariam, who still thinks art is, like, way cool!