Philosophy, Pleasure, and Folly

In Ecclesiastes 2:4–8, Qohelet describes how he built houses, and created gardens and parks filled with fruit trees, with pools to water them. He also acquired slaves, animals, treasure, singers, and concubines. This royal environment echoes the palaces of great Middle Eastern kings, with their vast botanical gardens and complex irrigation systems. These were both pleasure gardens for private enjoyment, and a public statement of wealth and power (Brown 2000: 32).

Like Qohelet, powerful rulers in Renaissance Europe built lavish gardens and filled them with rare plants. The Medici dynasty in Florence amassed a large collection of citrus fruit trees, including hundreds of oranges, lemons, and citrons, learning to grow these exotic species through extensive horticultural experiments. Gardens like those at the Medici-owned Pitti Palace were both a display of wealth and taste, and a reflection of their scholarly, humanist interest in philosophy and science.

These expensive citrus plants required skilled care by trained gardeners, and extra precautions in colder months, when potted specimens were moved into special lemon houses. A basket of specimen fruit was sent annually as a gift to the pope, and particularly unusual forms of citrus fruit were prized as ‘bizzarrie’ (curiosities). The many varieties were recorded and celebrated in paintings like this one by Bartolomeo Bimbi, and in plaster and wax casts.

Gardens may be an attempt to recreate paradise on earth, they may represent scientific curiosity, or they may be—as Qohelet’s gardens were—part of an investigation into the value of pleasure and the nature of the good life (2:1–3). He concluded that there was pleasure to be found in creating such magnificence, but that, nevertheless, all these achievements were ultimately nothing but ‘vanity and a striving after wind’ (2:11).

References

Atlee, Helena. 2014. The Land Where Lemons Grow: the Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit (London: Particular Books), pp. 5–27

Brown, William P. 2000. Ecclesiastes (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press)

Filardi, Domenico. 2007. Orto de' Pitti: The Architects, Gardeners and Botanical Design of the Boboli Gardens (Florence: Centro Di)

Brought up as a Roman Catholic, Paul Gauguin was later severely critical of the Catholic Church (Silverman 2008: 156, 160) and his art increasingly reflected his eclectic philosophy of life. Like Qohelet, the author of Ecclesiastes, Gauguin sought to understand the meaning of existence, and he used painting to explore his ideas. His 1897–98 work, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? is a testament to this personal search for meaning.

Although Gauguin resisted attempts to read this work in allegorical terms, he nevertheless described it as expressing the cycle of birth, life, and death. In letters to friends, he explained the significance of some of its elements. The central standing figure picking a fruit indicates the human passage from the Edenic innocence of the sleeping baby on the far right, to adult knowledge. (This theme is echoed by a child eating fruit in the foreground). In the background, two figures stand next to the tree of knowledge (or ‘science’), confiding their thoughts to each other and expressing the sorrow which knowledge has caused them. A crouching figure with a raised arm stares in amazement at the audacity of this pair in daring to contemplate their destiny. As Qohelet says, ‘in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow’ (1:18).

The old woman on the left of the canvas has reached a state of acceptance and resignation as she approaches death, while the semi-nude young woman seated beside her is touching her elder’s shadow, as if to suggest that she too is heading in the same direction. The large grey-blue idol represents the unknowable ‘Beyond’ (l’au-delà), and the strange white bird at the far left, clutching a lizard, signifies the futility of words. (Segalen 1930: 201–2; Malingue 1956: 305)

In short, as Qohelet suggests, knowledge brings sorrow, death comes to everyone, and there is a mystery to existence which is beyond human understanding (1:18; 2:12–18).

References

Malingue, Maurice (ed.). 1946. Lettres de Gauguin à sa femme et à ses amis, recueillies et préfacées (Paris: B. Grasset), p. 305

Segalen, Victor (ed.). 1930. Lettres de Paul Gauguin a Georges-Daniel de Monfreid (Paris: Plon), pp. 201–2

Silverman, Debora. 2008. ‘Transcending the Word? Religion and Music in Gauguin’s Quest for Abstraction’, in French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939, ed. by Barbara L. Kelly (Suffolk: University of Rochester Press)

In post-war America, ‘the automobile became a symbol of … freedom, opportunity and the pursuit of happiness.’ Its ‘flip-side’ was ‘the car crash … the existential full-stop on life’s highway’ (Brown 2007a: 43). The car represented liberty and prosperity for the ordinary consumer-citizen, but in Andy Warhol’s 1960s ‘Death and Disaster’ silkscreen prints, it took on a darker aspect.

Green Disaster #2 bathes the black and white imagery of a newspaper photograph in green, creating haunting, almost surrealist scenes. The mundane world of suburban affluence is repeatedly shattered by tragedies striking ordinary people. Warhol’s acute awareness of the fragility of life is reflected in the ‘shallow photographic realism’ of his silkscreen work (Brown 2007b: 30).

In the repetition of these images Warhol both abstracts the reality of death to the point of desensitizing the viewer, and relentlessly hammers the image into the viewer’s mind. Nightmarish and yet banal, they take on a quality of inevitability. The limp body in a crumpled car might be anybody; horrific accidents are commonplace; everyone will die. The hedonistic American dream is no more proof against death than the ‘great possessions’ (2:7) of the author of Ecclesiastes (Qohelet). As Qohelet discovered, all is still ‘vanity’ and the wise and the foolish share the same fate (2:11–17).

It’s an observation which, in the absence of any deeper meaning in life, both supports the pursuit of pleasure and undermines it. ‘There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil’ but there is also ‘nothing to be gained under the sun’ and ‘one fate’ comes to everyone (2:11,15, 24). Neither in Qohelet’s philosophising nor in Warhol’s bleak view of 1960s America can pleasure and possessions answer the great existential questions. As St Paul sums it up: ‘If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die”’ (1 Corinthians 15:32; cf. Isaiah 22:13).

References

Brown, Robert. 2007a. ‘Death and Disaster: Andy Warhol’s Car Crashes’, in Andy Warhol’s green car crash (green burning car 1): post-war and contemporary art evening sale Wednesday 16 May 2007 (New York: Christie, Manson & Woods International Inc.)

———. 2007b. ‘'Green Car Crash: June–July 1963’, in Andy Warhol’s green car crash (green burning car 1): post-war and contemporary art evening sale Wednesday 16 May 2007 (New York: Christie, Manson & Woods International Inc.)