Artificial Flowers and Other Human Inventions

I once stood in front of immense sculptures made entirely of fresh flowers. They were stunning. They defied gravity. Some sculptors had bent natural objects into unnatural forms. Others looked like fever dreams made of petals and stems. Room to room, they changed. Not one of us was capable of taking them home. Not one of us could reproduce them exactly. Their singularity was assured by the wilting that would happen during the week.

Another time, I stood before an artwork made of wooden blocks that shifted as my shadow passed by. A pixelated image of me emerged and dissolved. I breathed. I stepped away. It altered. No one saw the same thing because no one occupied the same place at the same time.

And another time, I stood before a piece that invited flash photography. Every burst of light erased a little more of the image. By the end of the exhibit, it would be gone entirely, never to exist in that form again.

These pieces felt special.

Singular.

Impossible to replicate.

Perhaps in a world of mass production, they were a kind of reply. The freshness of the idea itself could not survive endless repetition. Their value seemed tied to impermanence. They were moments. They required interaction and time.

But something strange shifted in me while walking through those galleries.

The paintings on the wall suddenly felt less than.

Static.

Predictable.

Traditional.

They had not changed.

I had.

Somewhere along the way, I had unconsciously accepted a value equation:

Singular equals special.
Special equals valuable.

Repeatable equals familiar.
Familiar equals less valuable.

And now perhaps:

Known artist equals reproduction equals devaluation.

Ironic.

The paintings had not become smaller. A hierarchy had quietly entered the room.

Humans seem to do this often. I'm human. I can't claim I'm unaffected.

I'm infected quite frequently.

Self-awareness is the only inoculation and antidote I've found, and I have to take it regularly, like a vitamin.

We sort fruit and books and socks because sorting helps us navigate the world. But then we continue sorting long after practicality has ended.

Natural versus artificial.

Handmade versus digital.

Film versus phone cameras.

Watercolor versus digital illustration.

AI versus human.

Black and white versus color.

The starving poet versus the professor with the office.

The gallery artist versus the artist whose work appears on coffee mugs.

And somewhere along the way, categories put on crowns.

Vincent van Gogh was not universally treasured while he was alive. Later culture wrapped him in mythology. The suffering artist. The misunderstood genius. The singular voice that could never be repeated.

Now reproductions of his work cover mugs and tote bags and calendars.

Psst... by the way... he had some bad art too. Some might say muddy. He may have been not a genius, but simply human.

Something odd happens with reproductions.

We flatten the work through repetition, then mourn the loss of its specialness, forgetting that we created the hierarchy ourselves.

Even authenticity becomes slippery.

Today we hear:

"Everyone has a phone camera. That doesn't make you a photographer."

Years ago perhaps it was:

"You bought your pigments? I grind mine by hand."

Different tools.

Different centuries.

Similar anxieties.

What is really being said?

Sometimes perhaps it is:

"I devoted my life to this and I want it to matter."

I understand that.

But sometimes I wonder if another sentence hides underneath:

"I am special because I possess special knowledge, and you do not."

That feels strange and uncomfortable to me.

Not because skill differences are not real. I love admiring skill. I practice guitar badly, and I love listening to those who know what they are doing.

Not because expertise is not real. I love museums and galleries and studying the work of others.

But somewhere in society we begin mistaking artificial arrangements for nature itself.

I suspect this is why I love layers more than ladders.

I love simple bread with a complex pinot noir and a sliver of dark chocolate.

Heavenly.

But I will chow down on fries with equal pleasure.

I love my herbs in my garden, and I'm weird enough to put lavender in coffee or cocoa powder into ginger tea.

For me it's always:

Oh! Layers!

Delight rarely asks permission from hierarchy.

The world keeps trying to convince me that there are proper doors into beauty, but beauty has never behaved particularly well for me.

[I only buy real flowers.

Real flowers are often produced in unnatural ways.

I only forage flowers.

I would never take flowers from the pollinators.

I only buy artificial flowers.

Mine are made by a textile artist who lived on an island that doesn't exist anymore.]

Exhausting.

We do not have to stop appreciating what is rare or beautiful or difficult.

Maybe we simply need to remember that different is not always better, and singular is not always more worthy.

Maybe it is merely the delight it gives us or the moment of community it extends.

Art is expression.

Some things only last a week.

Some things last centuries.

Some things live on coffee mugs for a season.

Some things sit quietly in gardens.

And perhaps the point was never to climb the ladder at all.

What if art and culture were never meant to validate specialness?

What if hierarchies and standards were merely artificial flowers of our own making?

What if it was all meant to extend presence?

I tend to think the latter. I think art and culture were meant to extend presence and invite community, but somewhere along the way we became tangled in our own arrangements.

That is what I’m pondering over my macchiato. What do you think?

Inquiring minds want to know.