“The persons who separate themselves from
nature have to live every minute of their lives
without the power, joy, and freedom of nature. And
we, who apparently suffer grave sanctions from
such persons, betray on our faces that we are
drawing on forces of nature.
“But in fact the case is like the distinction in
theology between the Old Law and the New. In the
Old Law all are guilty, in the New they may easily
be saved. We see that in fact everybody who still
has life and energy is continually manifesting some
natural force and is facing an unnatural coercion.
And so, in some apparently trivial issue that
nevertheless is the key, he draws the line! The next
step for him to take is not obscure or difficult. It
presents itself at once, it is even forcibly presented
by the Society! Will he not soon develop in contrast
to the habit of coercion, a habit of freedom? And
positive natural acts bloom like the flowers.”
For all the radical talk, Goodman opposed revolution for the
hell of it. “I have always thought tearing up by the roots was
senseless,” he said. He chastised the radical young for lacking a
sense of history, for trying to force social change in the manner of a
Leninist putsch, for failing to imagine viable alternatives to the
status quo. Goodman and the young parted company when for
young people politics became a rite of moral purification. For
Goodman, politics was simply the activity of attempting to
“remedy institutions that hinder experience from occurring.”
Always Goodman only demanded from society the right to be
himself, to be autonomous, to be able to “iniate a task and do it
one’s own way” — though this of course had radical implications.
In fact, Goodman would probably have been right at home in
Jeffersonian America. Indeed, He saw his own political convictions
as representative of a truly American strain, continuing the hind <rf
“peaceful community, anarchy, spiced by mutinies that were
hardly punished,” which he believed characterized America in the
early eighteenth century. But he was no reactionary, and looked
ahead to the creation of peaceful anarchy through decentralism.
“My own bias,” he said, ”is to decentralize and localize whenever
it is feasible, because this makes for alternatives and more vivid
and intimate life. It multiplies initiatives.”
Personal, practical, concrete, eminently sensible— these
characteristics carried over into Goodman’s many other interests.
He was a founder, with Fritz Peris, of the Gestalt therapy
movement, with its emphasis of the creativity latent in everyone,
creativity that will automatically manifest itself as soon as the
crutch of anxiety is given up. He was an advocate of free schools
when educational reformers like John Holt were still chasing
degrees, and he recommended abolition of schools in favor of ap
prenticeships on a medieval model when no one had heard of Ivan
Illich. Fresh out of graduate school, teaching at the University of
Chicago and later at experimental Black Mountain College, he
spoke openly of his homosexual inclinations — and was eased out of
both campuses.
Paul Goodman’s writings represent a wealth of insight that will
continue to be significant long after his death. Little of his work has
yet had the wide, serious readership it deserves — perhaps one day
it will. In any event, I suspect that Goodman’s work will be best
remembered only in relation to Goodman himself. For all the value
of his work, Goodman’s uniqueness consists in the example he set
as an engaged intellectual. “Knowledge must be pursued for its
own sake, as part of the human adventure,” he wrote. Yet no one
has more clearly shown the inherent relevance of sustained,
rigorous thought in coping with social, political and personal life.
Goodman’s was a paragon of the inspected life, his mode of being
was a tested decision based on an acute critical knowledge of
himself.
Art critic Harold Rosenberg told this story recently in Dissent:
“Many years ago Paul Goodman called me mi the phone. ‘How are
you?’ I asked. ‘Right this minute,’ he replied, ‘I feel lousy. Un
derneath, though, I’m all right. Below that there is, of course, the
usual nagging. At bottom, however, I’m really fine.”
How intense. Can anyone really be that aware, that sensitive,
all the time? I’m inclined to believe Goodman was, that he was
perfectly serious in answering Rosenberg the way he did. This
suggests a certain obtuseness in Goodman with regard to the
binding expectations of social interaction; what a way to answer
such a routine question. But his answer showed such a knowledge
of himself, expressed his knowledge with such directness. And this
can be said of almost all his work.
He was so intensely himself. And he was a pain in the neck, for
he was a constant reminder that it is possible not to succumb to a
hundred little hypocrisies and cozenages in order to get by, not to
stop asking critical questions or demanding radical re-thinking
once we get past thirty, and not to stop trying to be oneself.
—Barry Mitzman
Art
Morris Graves:
Rooted Deep
Morris Graves is a Northwest artist with a
profound sense of place; like William Carlos
Williams’ spring trees, he roots down to waken.
He is also an intensely religious man, one who
has said he wants his art “to clarify the spirit.”
His ability to infuse the senuously physical with a
mystic energy has brought him international
recognition.
The Museum of Art at this University has
been fortunate enough to have acquired at least
12 of Graves’ major works, and an archival
group of 490 drawings, paintings and sketches,
representing over 40 years of studio ac
cumulation
What Barcelona is to Picasso, the University
Art Museum is to Graves. The museum has now
opened a permanent Graves Gallery, which will
Indian Bird
feature a rotating selection from this com
pilation of work.
Those visiting this gallery should be
prepared to approach Graves slowly. His work is
deceptively simple; a cursory glance will reveal
nothing. Jung once wrote that the symbol can
make the divine visible. That is what Graves can
do, if you give his paintings time, if you stand
still, think nothing and just look.
“I paint,” said Graves, “to evolve a
changing language of symbols, a language with
which to remark upon the qualities of our own
mysterious capacities which direct us toward
ultimate reality.” Thus the light streams down in
“Hold fast to what you have already and I will
give you the Morning Star,” and a diagonally
rising, half-veiled serpent uncoils from a Chinese
vase, holding a flower in “Effort to Bloom.”
The selection of Graves’ work now on display
contains many bird sketches—one of the most
powerful of these is “Indian bird,” reproduced
above. In “The Visionary Painting of Morris
Graves,” Kenneth Rexroth speaks of the sense of
ominous, impending meaning that Graves’ birds
generate: “It is as if these human-eyed birds
were judging the spectator, rather than he them,
and in terms of a set of values incomprehensible
to our sensual world.”
The Graves Gallery is on the second floor of
the museum in a little room bordering the stairs.
Visit it when you are ready not just to evaluate
but to respond. “The artist is only half the
canvas,” said Graves to a friend. “The viewer
must respond. This is the joy of painting.”
—Regina O’Neil