Living Jewels : A Tiny Insect Provides a Lesson in Art Appreciation
“Oh--somebody’s lost a pin,” I said, bending down to pick it up from the ground. It looked like an old French enamel pin, set in gold--brilliant, shimmering green, all shot with gold--really the most instantly beautiful piece of jewelry I ever remember seeing.
It was a dead bug. Just a dead bug, slowly drying to dust in the Arizona air. “Look,” I cried, bearing it into the ranch dining room, “at this incredible jewel I found.”
“Yes, you see them around this time of year,” the cook answered. “Aren’t they pretty?”
Pretty? How could anyone classify this finely wrought piece of art as pretty? Pretty, bonita, linda, nice--all thin words of weak praise hardly due such extravagance of glimmering detail, such amazing workmanship. If this had been in a jewelry store, it would be nearly priceless. It was like those Tiffany art nouveau pieces you see in museums, dragonflies with translucent, gold-threaded wings, butterflies of blue enamel and pearls.
But how clumsy they are compared with this bug, its wings gold-striped with such casual elegance, its iridescent green leg ending in a finely curved, toothed claw that no jeweler could duplicate. And because it was made of cells, formed of living material as we are, a living being, it is valued less than diamonds and gold--dead stones, after all, that only reflect the sun after they are dug up from dark earth. You would think that we would value life more than death, or is it because we realize (so reluctantly that it usually is unconscious) that precious stones will be here long after we are dead and returned to the ground that they came from?
They had been “seen around,” these green bugs. There was more than one of them; they were almost common. Apparently that means that our appreciation level is necessarily lower than if they were a one-of-a-kind jewel.
It has always puzzled me. Why is something unique prized more than something common? It is said to be more beautiful, but do the rules, the aesthetics of beauty, bend according to numbers? I don’t see why they should.
This is getting a little abstract, perhaps. What specifically do I mean? Well, take a paper clip. It is a perfect little symphony of form--curves and lines refined to the simplest possible shape. Elegant. I am sure if the sculptor Henry Moore or the architect Mies Van Der Rohe had looked at one with a critical eye, they would have lavished praise upon it.
Indeed, were I a sculptor (or, to be frank, if I had the ego and nerve of some of them), I would erect a stainless-steel paper clip, 100 feet tall, at the end of the Santa Monica Freeway. You would see it as you emerged from the tunnel, along with the first glint of the ocean. It would mark the beginning of the beach and would symbolize Life, Hope, Freedom, Soaring Ideals--and whatever other tinsel word the critics would care to throw in. It would also be blinding in the sun, cause traffic accidents, ruin the proportions of the beach buildings there and stick its tongue out at the old pier.
The pier needs all the help it can get, and so do bugs. One demolishes old piers, one throws away paper clips, one steps on bugs. But I keep fighting karma; surely fate is not entirely immutable. I am pleased to hope that there may come a time when we put a glittering bug in a museum and throw all those imitation jewelry things away.
