The Art Gallery in "Six Degrees of Separation"

Play "Six Degrees of Separation"

Art is a part of human history. 

Unlike speaking and writing like poems, paintings are more designed to give expressions to other people

In stone age, people draw to carry their history, and many famous artists after civilization period draw pictures to show their ideas and beliefs to the public. 

However, this loyal faith of artists in drawing has been deteriorated and degraded through materialistic and money centered human history. 

Six Degrees of Separation does mention many famous artists and their paintings, but the actors in the play degrade them.

John Guare uses this decay of arts to argue that the arts are degraded along the distortion of pure human relationships through the materialistic society.

Russian Artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

             One of most significant artist in the play is Kandinsky who is both an influential Russian painter and art theorist whose art reflects his opinion or belief to the society. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He was in Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was returned to Germany in 1921.After Nazis emerged in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939.

"Chaos"

"Control"

             In several scenes, a Kandinsky painting, which shows the balance between chaos and control, is used to illustrate the balance, or lack thereof in the different characters’ lives and relationships with one another.

When Paul enters Ouisa’s life, her main concern is maintaining her affluence and standing in the high class society to which she belongs. 

They both are very obviously upper class New Yorkers whose lives, though they depend on art, are ironically not enriched by it at all. 

Their out-of-balance lives have become obsessed with control, security, and money. 

Art has become for them a meal ticket, reduced to simple figures, and stripped of its imagination, significance, and function as art.

Moreover, the Kandinsky’s two sided painting symbolizes the double side that there are two aspects to every person. While Flan views Paul as an intruder to his control and security, Ouisa understands Paul’s desperate willingness to become the part of upper class, another side of Paul’s story; while on one side, Paul is just a con artist, whom people must stay away from, being a confidence man is tragically only path for Paul to enter the upper class community. Ouisa’s realization that her life has “color” but she is “not aware of any structure” suggests she finds the lack in her life, while Flan still believes his life is fully bright and there is not any problem (62). 

Paul whose story has two sides.

The flip of Kandinsky painting becomes a symbol of reflection that Ouisa becomes able to see the back side of her materialistic life by Paul. Along the decay of art in her career, Ouisa’s relationship with people before Paul is degraded as Flan calls two million more often than Geoffrey. At last retreating from the obsession of security, control, and materialism, Ouisa flips the Kandinsky painting into “wild and vivid” where human life actually should be. The Kandinsky painting revolving at the end has deeper significance by juxtaposing with geometry side. 

The "geometric side" of Kandinsky Painting

The geometry side, which the painting shows the audiences until the end of the play, carries Kandinsky’s artistic view on the immobile society in Six Degrees of Separation. Kandinsky in his autobiography mentions that a point is neither a geometric point nor a mathematical abstraction; it is extension, form and color. This form can be a square, a triangle, a circle, a star or something more complex. The point is the most concise form but, according to its placement on the basic plane, it will take a different tonality. 

The "wild side" of Kandinsky Painting

Point can be something while a geometric shape in the painting, is already established and cannot further create something. The geometric side of Kandinsky’s painting indicates the established order and pattern of the society where lower class people are immobile to move up. The painting, therefore, criticizes that the immobile society is not willing to disturb the order and structure by helping the lower class. Immobility of spirits ultimately claims the decay of the upper part of the society, that while Paul, who came from lower class, struggles but uses the dreams of the upper class life as energy to make or at least act to have social change, Flan and Ouisa’s life seemed to be stopped permanently where they not seek the imagination and dignity in arts but prefer unchanged materialistic status, security, and money.

          

French Artist Henry Matisse (1869-1954)

              Matisse is one of three artists, along with Picasso and Duchamp, who developed revolutionary ideas in plastic arts during 20^th century. Among three artists, Matisse had a distinct talent in drawing nature with indescribable colors. His deep understanding not in physically mixing and creating new colors but in how people’s eyes observe the tone of colors, developed Color Theory that mixing color by juxtaposing different color segments would produce more vibrant and pure colors than actual mixing colors. 

Women with a hat (1905)

  Although Matisse was a famous artist with this revolutionary technic, he was not able to fully use the technic and took a long time to understand how other people view his paintings. In the play, the play writer mocks the hardship and complexity of his painting that even 4^th grade, who could not understand Matisse’s artistic technic, can become “Matisse” that complex technic just became an unintentional stroke drawn by elementary students. Matisse’s dignity is further degraded that anyone can become as famous as Matisse if they give up their creativity and imaginations and forcefully fit to the taste of the society. If teachers do “take drawings away” before their imaginations bloom, students are not artists but machines that produce same but favorable painting for the society. Henry Matisse’s art is more simplified as Flan put emphasis not on its art quality buy what it does to the public. As the painting becomes more simplified, so does human relationship in the play that Flan’s huge spending instead of communication will give him credibility in the art community.

French Artist Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

           Cezanne is another father of art who makes transition from the 19^th century conception of artistic endeavor to a new different world of art in 20^th century. Compared to other French artists, Cezanne drew a few paintings since Cezanne often uses small brushstrokes to build up complex shapes. Despite Cezanne’s efforts, his painting are only materialistically valued by the society as “Japanese Japanese do not like anything about it except it’s a Cezanne” (16). 

Jas de bouffan (1876)

             Unable to see the actual complexity and significance of Cezanne’s painting, society does not the truly appreciate and do not understand the arts but simplify it to fit their category of expensive goods. Same problem is shown in characters’ relationship in the play. Although audiences learn that Paul is not a simply villain, Flan does not see the other side of Paul and just simplified him as a confidence man.