On the campus of Stanford University there is a statue originally made by Rodin and since then, recreated in a limited series. Only a few of these recreations exist and Stanford, due to its large endowment for the arts and its reputation, is lucky to have a whole garden dedicated to the number of Rodin sculptures they currently have on display for their students.
I didn’t know any of this when I was at Stanford this summer. I was there to visit a friend who works for a tech company in Palo Alto, and whose house is a ten minute Lyft ride from the Stanford University campus. His name is Cave, short for Caveman. A nickname that is the prime example of ultimate frisbee idiocy. An idiocy that I myself take part of and met Cave through over five years ago. When Cave and I get together we generally do one thing; play frisbee golf. A bastardized version of disc golf that ultimate frisbee players invented to have something to do on boring closed college campuses, and which mostly involves a small bit of drinking and yelling about losing your disc in a dense thicket of thorn bushes, or if your especially unlucky, throwing directly into a poison algae invested lake.
We were playing frisbee golf that night, along with a few members of the Stanford ultimate frisbee team, when we came across the Rodin statue. Without even thinking about it I took the beverage in my hand an put it on the head of the statue so that I could throw my disc towards the hole. I had no idea what the statue was, and in that level of sleep deprivation and lack of inhibitions I didn’t particularly care. I snapped a picture on my phone, thinking it was at least vaguely funny, and left.
A few months later, having completely forgotten what I had done that night with Cave. I was in the MET with my Mother and oldest nephew, James. His class was on a field trip with their pre-school and I volunteered with my Mom to chaperon for a little while, just to see his first reaction to the vast expanse of art that is that is the MET (a totally underwhelmed reaction, as a side-note here.) While walking through the halls of the MET, taking in the beauty of its stone columns and architecture, not to mention the stunning collection of priceless art hanging just a few feet away from me, I saw a familiar face staring at me back.
The same Rodin statue was there, an original this time, staring me down as if it knew what indignities I had preformed to its twin over a thousand miles away. In that moment I realized how stupid I had done in not treating the objects around me with respect, but I had also learned just how important context is to a situation like art. When seeing the statue on a college campus in the middle of the night while my mind was on other things, I was unimpressed and unmoved. I didn’t care what the statue was beyond a helpful place to put my drink down for a moment. But in the halls of the MET the statue came alive. Its beauty and intricacies hit me with full force and I myself was forced to come to realization of what I had done.
Do yourself a favor, don’t be like me. Take the time to really look at the objects around you. Take in their beauty, or lack thereof, and appreciate it for what it is in that moment.
-Tim Caston
The Junction Journal 