The poems of Rainer Maria Rilke helped me understand how difficult it is to enter the experience of another human being. We spend so much of our day alone in our own thoughts, that when confronted with another person, we are so feeble in our ability to affectively communicate. Twelve years into my marriage I am still surprised at how easy it is to miss communicate, for my words to be so ineffective at expressing my inner reality.

In our work at The Salvation Army Alegria we are aware of this challenge. Our ability to “know” the person we seek to help is critical in our ability to sensitively guide them towards “wholeness”. At times it is a frightening scenario, one human influencing another; because our actions are based on the premise that we know what the person we are helping needs. Sometimes we are right, sometimes we are not.

There are very few visual artists that create this particular tension for me as a viewer. I often feel a certain distance between myself the viewer, the work of art, and the artist themselves. It reminds me of the time when one of our youth felt detached from a group of portraits on display at our facility because she didn’t think the people were real. When I introduced her to a subject of one of the paintings at the art opening her face light up with revelation; the paintings had became an intimate substitute for the real person.

The work of Louise Bourgeois is different. When I view her work in a museum or gallery, I often feel a very close connection between her work and the woman herself. Due to the deeply psychological and organic nature of her work, I often leave deeply affected by the visceral experience. Last week I took a Sunday Sabbath to view her exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Two particular pieces absorbed a large amount of my interest. In the second room, two of her spiral cell pieces dominated the viewer’s attention. The work demands that the viewer circle the object looking for cracks or windows into the inner space of the cell. The voyeuristic experience creates an intentional viewing posture that pushes distractions to the edge and allows the viewer to focus their attention on the contents of each cell. This focus creates an intimacy that reduces the distance between the audience and the artist, with the work operating as a powerful intermediary.

Intermediary objects and experiences are important vehicles for human interaction. Whether it is a conversation about the weather or the ball drop on New Years Eve, both objects and experiences help create bonds between people that help us overcome the limits of language. If we rely to heavily on the “word”, we run the risk of limiting our ability to relate to a broader diversity of people.