Loss of the Creature Notice how Rembrandt employed chiaroscuro in his works," began my art history professor. "His technique revolutionized the way that artists portrayed sources of light on the canvas." glanced around me. About twenty students sat neatly behind their desks, faces illuminated eerily by the glow of the overhead projector. The scene was ironic: our professor trying to convey an understanding of chiaroscuro through a painting done five centuries ago, when right before our eyes was a true example of the contrast between light and shadow. Art history is an arena in which the "loss of the creature" is felt most profoundly. In his essay "The Loss of the Creature," Walker Percy notes that biology students are removed twofold from their subjects of study, first by layers of packaging, of labels and names, and second by a confounded array of theories. Similarly, any classroom discussion of art fails to offer what art was intended to do in the first place: a first-hand experience.

One of the most profound examples of how art history innately entails a "loss of the creature" is that of my friend who visited Paris last year.

The Mona Lisa is totally underwhelming," she told me frankly. "It's so small. I don't know why it's so famous."

Those of us who haven't been to Paris can't believe that such a thing could be said about the world's most famous work of art. We all expect to be awestruck upon seeing the Mona Lisa, just as tourists expect to be blown away when they first see the Grand Canyon. However, this was not the first time I've heard this sentiment regarding familiar works of art. Many people feel let down by famous pieces because they bring to the museum or gallery an entire set of preconceptions. Percy calls these preconceptions "seeing the symbolic complex" rather than the thing itself. Rather than viewing Rembrandt's "Philosopher in Meditation" with fresh eyes, I saw it through the eyes...

I knew where Rembrandt was born, knew what kinds of paints he used, knew that he influenced such-and-such an artist and knew that he was influenced by so-and-so. I could see, up there on the screen, a canvas awash in paint, and I did grasp the concept of chiaroscuro through this visual example. However much I was learning from class, I could never recover the creature from the quagmire of second- and third-hand experiences. I would always look at art through the eyes of others, criticizing depth perspective, color, arrangement, and execution.
Yet I was just a student in a class, and one who didn't even intend to major in art history. Therefore, I didn't mind losing the creature now and then. My professor, on the other hand, was an art historian, someone who had an obviously deep appreciation for fine works of art like this and a deep understanding of art theory. She had dedicated her life to the field and had researched and written extensively on her areas of expertise. She had traveled throughout the world to see first-hand the works of the great masters and had read all the relevant scholarly material pertaining to her work.

A wondered if through her first-hand encounters with these masterpieces, my professor had recovered the creature. Perhaps when she laid eyes on the Mona Lisa, my professor became one with the mind of Da Vinci and took in his line, form, perspective, and emotion, forgetting completely the "symbolic complex," experiencing the painting in the here-and-now. Percy would say that in all likelihood she had not. Even my esteemed professor of art history experienced the "radical loss of sovereignty" that comes from respecting the packaging more than the heart of the concept, honoring the theory more than the object itself (Percy 593). In almost every class in almost every school students surrender their sovereignty.

For example,…