Why is it that tourists want to see Michelangelo’s Pietá in St Peter’s Basilica and Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre, but show little interest in searching out other staggering works by the same artists just a few minutes away? Only certain stellar works have this mysterious power to attract huge crowds.
Tourists in St Peter's Basilica, Rome
Martin Gayford thinks it’s because contemporary cultural tourism is not about our appreciation for art or the pleasure we take in visiting new places, it’s about a raw obligation we feel to pay homage to certain objects, and to tell ourselves and others that we have fulfilled this obligation. He recalls standing in front of the Pietá:
Around me there broke a ceaseless tide of humanity. Some, a minority, simply looked at it, one touching family — from, I think, South America — holding tiny children up to gaze at the distant Madonna with her dead son. Most simply took a photograph, often on their mobile phones. As I stood there, a burly American shouldered his way forward, bent on displacing a small man of East Asian appearance who was busily snapping on his iPhone, and as he did so he assertively barked out, ‘Next!’
He had, I realised, understood precisely what was going on. This mêlée in which we were jammed together had nothing to do with art appreciation. It was a queue to take a photograph. The urgency of the desire to capture the famous object on your camera makes it nearly impossible to contemplate. Every day at the height of the season, thousands of pictures are taken of this object, all largely identical and all bad — since it is impossible to get a good image of a work like this from 20 feet away through glass.
Gayford notes the suffering that the tourists have endured to get this close to the sculpture: the Roman heat, the queues, the airport-type security. It’s like Dante’s Inferno.
But in a way, modern tourists are more like pilgrims than the damned. They share the same focus on a few closely defined sights. I saw a similar torrent of humankind — indeed much greater — at the shrine of the eighth Shia Imam at Mashhad in eastern Iran, all bent on getting to the grill that surrounds his tomb. Once there — a place too sacred for unbelievers to intrude — they cling on to ironwork, which is worn away steadily by their touch so that every few decades it has to be replaced.
The contemporary tourist-pilgrim must visit Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling, ‘Pietà’, and ‘Moses’, just as in France they must form a crocodile round the flower beds of Monet’s garden at Giverny, or in Egypt sweat it out at the Pyramids of Giza. Enjoyment has little to do with it.
The mystery, perhaps an insoluble one, is what anyone gets out of mass cultural tourism. The appeal of other varieties of popular travel — the beach, the pool, the ski slope — is obvious enough. But what satisfaction can be found in pounding round hot and packed streets, probably following a guide with a little flag, and stopping at certain points to take a photograph of something the appearance of which is completely familiar to almost everybody alive in the first place?
The difference between modern tourists and the visitors to shrines and relics is that religious pilgrims get some spiritual benefit — at its most concrete, so many years less to spend in Purgatory, a step towards salvation. Whereas the 21st-century, postmodern tourist gets nothing but a digital photograph, perhaps to be posted on a social-networking site sometime later. As a reward for the expense, the weariness, the sunburn, the boredom, the hours spent at airports and in coaches, the sore feet, the headaches, it just doesn’t seem enough.
It’s the same for me whenever there is a new ‘five-star’ exhibition in London. Yes, a genuine excitement, but also a sense of obligation, and a fear that if I miss it this will be a failure of duty, and I will be forever relegated to the ranks of the culturally unwashed – those who were simply ‘not there’. Our language reflects this, when we talk about a ‘must see’ event.
I’m getting better at saying to myself ‘What would you actually like to see this afternoon? What would you enjoy?’ Perhaps this is just part of growing up.
It is interesting reading your piece after returning from Paris with my teenage daughters, and contrasting the crowds at the Musee d’Orsay to see the van Goghs exhibited there, with the revelation that the van Gogh recently stolen in Cairo was exhibited in a museum which welcomed only 10 visitors on the day of the theft. Ten people wanting to see a van Gogh! It’s not a terribly surprising insight that cultural pilgrims are culturally conditioned…
I compare it with the time I worked in a cathedral, and the pressure from cultural pilgrims to get tickets for the Christmas Carol Services, compared with the indifference to attending evensong in the week before when the choir sang the same pieces as anthems, but *it wasn’t the carol service* and therefore wasn’t the same thing and therefore wasn’t worth attending. Cultural pilgrimage is time limited as well as culture limited.
(By the way, for two of my daughters the pilgrimage to the Orsay was more to do with the Dr Who episode and the vicarious presence of Matt Smith! )
I suppose we simply want what others want! That’s the ‘mimetics of desire’ that energises/afflicts us whether we are a year old or a hundred.
Yet another thought provoking piece, Father Stephen. I, for one, am glad that you vicariously visit such exhibitions for people like me who are, often, too far away to do so. Your discussion of them in your blog then informs us all of their good and bad points.
I would add that, if there is absolutely no enjoyment in doing so, then there must come a point where any individual has to say “enough’s enough” and turn to something they really want to do. I had a similar experience when my wife pursuaded me to go along to a newly opened contemporary art gallery. Having spent an hour trudging around the gallery viewing various pices which appealed not one bit, I had to tell her that, when she wanted to go to the next exhibition, it must be without me as I couldn’t see any point to the type of art displayed. Some may say I am a philestine but I have my tastes and they clearly were not addressed there.
I believe that others insights inspire us to want to ‘see for ourselves’. Will we be moved in the same way? Or left embarrassingly cold? I have always Loved works of art which make you want to reach out and touch, something which tangibly draws you in, and then sublimely embellishes the senses. It is as much about the art work and the artist, as it is about our response to it, as it is about the person who inspired us to see it and their response to it.
What amazes me about being a pilgrim is the tangible feeling that, just for today, just for this very minute, just for the immediate moment to hand, just for this very second of eternity, everything has just been perfectly designed, solely for the intimacy of ‘me and Him’.
Art doesn’t often do that!
Father Stephen:
My thoughts and prayers are with the miners five miles below in Chile. Please pray for them.
I will do – thank God for this recent news that they are doing OK…
Father Stephen:
I cannot imagine those poor men trapped five miles below the ground, and now knowing that at best it will be four months before rescue. We all have our little problems in life, and they are certainly little compared to this. I am sorry to interrupt your blog, I was wanting to comment on the books but this is the only meaningful comment that I can muster.
Thank you for your prayers for the Miners in Chile Father Stephen. Sometimes life is so hard. . . so hard
What I wanted to comment regarding the greatest books (sorry that this is the wrong place) is about Out of Africa.
That is also one of my favorites, for the following reasons; 1) The native Africans who resided on, or nearby, Karen Blixen’s farm, would say “God is great” (or something similar I cannot remember it has been maybe 15 years since I have read the book) They would say “God is Great” both with hardship or triumph, injury or blessing. What a reminder for all of us that when we win (or finish) the race that it is because of God’s greatness, and when there is hardship or worse that God is with us as well.
The second reason I remember the book with fondness is about the child that Karen Blixen helped heal burn wounds and who became a part of her household and Cook. He could whip egg whites better than anyone with his little paring knife that was a multi purpose tool. Much like my own kitchen policy against “appliances”. I want something to be used for multiple jobs, and have a personal policy against kitchen appliances with one purpose.
And finally, when she was leaving her farm for the last time, the thought that Karen Blixen had regarding other women, “God be with her, thank God it isn’t me”
Please sometimes all we need is recognition, all we need is hope. . .
In response to Bo’s most recent comment, I would like to reassure Bo that, in my opinion, there are times when priorites in life change – utterly. It is clear that, for these miners in Chile, this is one of them and that, rather than talking about secular pilgrimages, their plight has become vastly more important.