Ways of Seeing: The Gift

Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, from Color Problems via Public Domain Review....

Dear Friends,

In our culture, we usually think of gifts as presents: wrapped packages given on holidays, birthdays, and special occasions, but the gift is something much more powerful and pervasive. The gift is an element threaded through all of our relations with the world. To anthropologists, the gift is one of the fundamental ways we create enduring connections with each other.

The gift is perhaps a way of being more than a way of seeing, and yet it can also be a form of attention. Take a work of art and ask yourself the question, “where is the gift?” and see what it illuminates.

& for those who have joined us recently, welcome! “Ways of Seeing” is a series of inspirations and practical exercises for deepening attention and engaging with art and the world. Let me know your own experience in the comments.

— Sal

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The Economy of the Gift

I have come to feel that there is an enormous pent-up energy in areas of our society dominated by the market—a desire to give and be given to, a desire to participate on the basis of who we are rather than what we can buy or sell.

Marketers try to tap into these desires all the time. In a way, that’s what branding is. Thinking about gift economies and how they function illuminates something about why this works for marketers, at least to some extent, and why it fails us by turning our need to be active, engaged, and personal into something essentially passive and impersonal, and turning us into consumers.

Despite the name, gift economies are somewhat different from what we think of as “economies.” Material goods can and do change hands, but gift economies are not barter economies. Their purpose is not that of market trade, profit, or subsistence. Though there may be “economic” benefits in the traditional sense, the reasons for entering into gift exchanges are primarily social.

In other words, gift economies are fundamentally relational. A large part of the purpose of the gift is to establish and further relations between persons and groups. Part of what makes this possible, as Marcel Mauss points out in his wonderful Essai sur le Don (in English, The Gift), is that gifts demand reciprocation.

Gifts are inherently unbalanced—they cause a kind of rocking motion, a social momentum which is the basis of relationships. I might tell my friend a little story which I know will interest him. She then goes out of her way to walk me to the subway. I help her fix something on her computer. In turn she invites me to a dinner party with her famous chili. Our own pleasure and the pleasure of others is intermingled. The line between gift to the other and pleasure for the self is always blurred and shifting. The gift goes back and forth a thousand times a day. It’s a kind of game.

The relational nature of the gift economy is both its strength and its constraint. It both establishes relationship and requires relationship. On the other hand, the market economy works on the principle of even exchange. Every transaction is complete in itself, balanced, leaving the participants free of each other.

The gift economy is free in terms of money, of course, but constrained by the qualities and requirements of human social relationships. The market economy requires a constant flow of goods or money from the individual, a flow which may be difficult or impossible to produce, but it leaves the individual free to engage or not to engage. In this way, the two systems offer contrasting models of “free” and freedom.

In modern life, gift and market economies intermingle. Someone may go to her job every day for market reasons, but very often the way in which she does that job is a kind of gift. People bring more than is required to their work.

Systems of social prestige are a sign that the gift economy is at work. We are gift-givers to gain the love, admiration, or respect of those around us, consciously or not. Given how intermingled gift and market economies are, is peculiar that almost all of our collective conversation is about the market economy, and the ubiquitous presence of the gift economy in our lives has become a kind of secret.

[From “Art as Gift” originally published in the Journal Ethics & the Environment.]

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Exercise: Seeing the Gift

Choose an object of attention, or let it choose you. This could be a work of art, a work of literature, or something you encounter in the world.

First, take this work of art or object as a being, and offer your simple attention. Ask, “what are you?” or “who are you?”

Once you have made a connection, ask yourself, “Where is the gift here?” Let the question of the gift light up aspects of whatever you are attending to.

Afterwards, take note of the questions which arose and the gift-qualities you perceived or imagined; make a record.

Let this new gift-perception be like a pair of glasses with which you can see the world.

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As with all of these “Ways of Seeing,” the initiating impulse is to expand our possibilities for engaging with works of art and deepening attention to everything around us. These exercises are perfect for time spent in museums, galleries, and studios. You can also bring them into the rest of your life and experiment with streets, libraries, parties, landscapes. Try them as writing or art-making prompts.

These practices work best if you give them some time.

As ever, interpret these instructions freely and intuitively. Make them your own.

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The Gift by Lewis Hyde

The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde (now retitled The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World) is available from Penguin Random House.

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The Gift by Marcel Mauss

The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies is available from Norton.

A free PDF is available from Monoskop.

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The title Ways of Seeing is an homage to the continuing inspiration of the BBC TV series and book by John Berger.

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Share your results and reflections in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

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Further adventures and new ways of seeing can be found in my book, The Uses of Art.

Artist Sal Randolph’s THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with works of art, inviting readers into new methods of looking that are both liberating and emboldening.

Dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent.
— Michael Cunningham

A joyful, dazzling treasure-box of a book.
— Bonnie Friedman

Here’s a guide, to waking up, over and over again.
— Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara