Art

Sitting in the médiathèque’s reading room in Rodez I can’t help but notice the walls are lined with books.

Yes. Well said.

Deep, knowledgeable commentary there genius.

But before the attacks become too personal, let me continue. First of all, it is no longer bibliothèque. In a surprising twist, the place where books continue to be loaned out is one of the more technologically forward places in Rodez, perhaps France. There are DVDs and CDs to borrow and computers to use. I know this is common practice in North America but given the general technological infrastructure of France it comes as a mild shock. The biblio is dead, long live the média. What does library mean anyway?

(Maybe they connected the public institutions to the new technology first, thereby tying people more fully into the bosom of the state, and only later did technology spread into public use, the opposite of NA. This notion that the French state is under perpetual construction from the centre is not an original idea of mine, but is something I am considering and will likely give further depth to elsewhere.)

I really must try to remain focused, the title of this piece, is ‘Art’ not ‘A short treatise on the vagaries of book storage in the early 21st century’ (really more of a movie than a blog entry).

So, the walls are lined with books. But these books aren’t novels, those are elsewhere, along with all the other books one finds in a city’s library. These books are the fat, juicy art, cinema and technical folios - I think folio is the right word but perhaps describing them as encyclopaedic in nature would be accurate as well - that cost a fortune and to my experience are a more common sight in university libraries. Or I suppose the one university library I am most familiar with.

From where I sit, the wall of art books deal with topics such as the Baroque era of French art, the 19th century, Australian art, COBRA’s work in the first half of the 20th century, and Istanbul. And that is the tiniest sample of the spines I can read, there are many more.

Without getting too carried away by the other sections - science, cinema, history, geography, politics, economics, etc. - the thought that a city library of this size has this type of collection for art books intrigues me. Along the lines of my earlier commentary on urban space designed for living rather than purely economic exchange, I think this inclusion of art in the zeitgeist of the country is simply tremendous.

(On the topic of urban space, very briefly and simplistically, the idea of art in said space is good, largely regardless of one’s taste. Looking out the window here I am certainly not overly enthused with the French modernist (post?) style I can see. But within the art and architecture lies the basis for public discourse, so the end result is positive in my eyes.)

Do people use the books? That I don’t know, but the point is they are here. A person can stumble across them or search them out specifically and access them for free. Even if rarely touched, they still hold within their covers potential. Potential for an artist to realize himself or herself, someone else to realize their iconoclasm, or, indeed, the potential for someone stumbling in on a cold, wet day, to have light brought to their face with the realization that humanity can, has and will continue to create amazing things.