https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-sordid-necessity-of-living-for-others

In revising my paper and thinking about my poem, and the various functions of mirrors, I was reminded of a museum exhibit that I saw several years ago, at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Ma. It’s one of my favorite museums, and my family goes almost every summer. There have been some unbelievable exhibits, especially in the largest gallery space.  This particular summer, this distinctive space was given over to an artist named Izhar Patkin, whose work consisted mainly of large, mural-sized veils. Though at the time I did not feel a strong connection to the art itself, the curatorial text on the wall at the beginning of the exhibit resonated with me strongly. The text mentioned in particular the distinction between three concepts or functions of a veil: representation, manifestation, and abstraction. The veil blurred the line between reality and depiction of reality. This triadic concept, of representation, manifestation, and abstraction, has stuck with me for quite some time, and it came into my thoughts when discussing mirrors. Intrigued, I went to the internet to see if I could find the text I had connected with so strongly from the museum exhibition. Upon opening Izhar Patkin’s website, I was struck by a truly unbelievable coincidence. From 1999 to the present, Izhar Patkin’s work has been a series called Veiled Threats, inspired by the poems of Agha Shahid Ali. Each of the veils that filled the gallery space of Mass MoCA over four years ago had corresponded to a poem by the very poet I’ve been writing about for the past two weeks. Ali’s last poem of his life, “The Veil Suite,” had been written specifically for this collaboration with Patkin.

I do not know what to make of this connection. I suppose in my thought process I was merely reiterating the myriad similarities between Patkin and Ali, well established before my viewing of the veils or reading of the poem. I doubt I was unearthing some shred of my memory from that exhibit that linked Ali to Patkin, or that I was somehow subconsciously tapped into their profound artistic connection. I’m also frustrated that there’s absolutely no way for me to incorporate Patkin’s art into my essay without completely changing my thesis to be more specifically about intertextuality.

On continuing to read Patkin’s website, I found another work of his, that was placed, at Mass MoCA, on the steps of the exhibit down from the wall text to the veils. A life-size sculpture, in bright iridescent colors, of Don Quixote, who holds in one hand both a mirror and a copy of Alonzo Fernández de Avellaneda’s illegitimate sequel to the knight’s first volume. Apparently in Cervantes’ legitimate sequel, much reference is made to this bastardization, and the characters themselves are aware that they have been written about, to the point where Quixote refuses to go to a jousting match and several other narrative events because it was described in Fernández de Avellaneda’s version.

In the new criticism movement of the mid-20^th century, the focus was on the artwork as an isolated, self-contained aesthetic statement. Is an artistic experience free of context as valid as one steeped in it? What does intertextuality add to your experience of art?

P.S. I have not been able to find a Patkin veil corresponding to “I See Chile in My Rearview Mirror.”