I’m not an artsy guy.
Not really.
My eyes cannot differentiate between shades of blue. When compelled to render an opinion, I am incapable of ascribing aesthetic preference to one china pattern versus another. My house, whose principal unifying decoration is the coat of sage green paint I had smeared on the walls when I moved in, looks like a cross between a college dorm and an army barracks. People often ask me how I can stand having a giant, slobber-slinging Mastiff in my home. The truth is that Lester fits in well, and contributes regularly to the décor. I do not surround myself with pretty things. They are wasted on me.
All of this being said, I enjoy art.
Really, I do.
I had occasion a few weeks ago to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. I was in the city with a friend and business associate for a series of meetings that ended early enough for us to slip in a visit the AIC before heading to the airport. While my friend enjoys art, it’s nothing he’s particularly passionate about. He is, however, a great sport - he knows I like art and was game when I suggested that we make the visit.
For those of you who’ve never been there, the AIC has, perhaps, the finest collection of Impressionist art in North America. I read somewhere that part of the Art Institute’s original endowment came from the estate of a city matron who bought up tons of Impressionist works in the days when a Monet could be had for $ 1,500 and they gave out Van Gough pieces at grocery stores with every purchase greater than $ 15. In addition to an amazing impressionist gallery, they also have a fair sized modern art collection. While their collection of European works from the 12th to the mid 19th century is nice, it is not particularly remarkable when set next to, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or any number of European galleries.
For me, European art is the story of existence. It has a beginning, a middle, and, believe it or not, an end. When I visit a gallery, I like to start with the 12th century Gothic altar pieces and build to the Impressionist crescendo by working my way chronologically through the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-classicist and Romantic periods. After the orgy Impressionist color and creativity, I enjoy depressing myself by wandering past the post-impressionists into the modern galleries, awed by how mankind’s search for deeper meaning leads inevitably to a realization that the essence of everything is oblivion.
That, for me, is the story. We started out crudely rendering scenes from a book that purported to explain why we matter. Over time, technologies, techniques and skills evolved, allowing mankind’s artists to explore deeper and more profound shades meaning. Over the course of seven hundred years, these explorers dug deeper, looked harder and grew bolder in their effort to render to canvas a reality that seems to lie beneath the surface of everything that is. The reality they ultimately uncovered is to be found at the ass end of any credible gallery, and is represented by squiggly lines across a black background or a hat rack dangling from the ceiling by a length of piano wire.
One enters the Art Institute from the street, ascends a grand staircase and is deposited at the top into the main Impressionist gallery. My friend and I quickly found ourselves surrounded by Monet, Renoir and a gaggle of their impressionist buddies. Before we got too deeply entrenched in the exhibit, I took my friend by the elbow and led him out of the room. “Look,” I said, “let’s step back a hundred years, and build to this. You’ll enjoy this more when you see where the art in this room came from.” He was agreeable, and followed me back in time to the turn of the 19th century.
We started our visit proper about five galleries away with de Goya and a little boy riding a donkey. As we worked our way through the galleries, I walked from sign to sign identifying the artist, and trying to place his work and its significance on my mental timeline to oblivion. When I saw a piece or an artist that was significant, I took a minute to brief my friend about the genus and species of the particular insect the AIC curator had set before us on display. De Goya gave ground to the darlings of the Salon – David, Delacroix, Géricault, Gérôme, Ingres…teasing, teasing, J.M.W. Turner (wtf), Corot, Daubigny, Constable (more wtf), Millet, Breton (reactionary bastard)… “Don’t even get me started on Breton. They’ve hung him up right there next to Millet! Can you believe it? Right there next to him! Jesus!”…then….big tease….Courbet, Courbet, the pinko-rebel Courbet until….ahhhhhh…Manet. “You see,” I instructed, “without Breton, Manet is just what the critics of the time said he was – a lousy painter. But Corot, Daubigny, and even Ingres…even fucking Ingres with his six extra vertebrae laid down suppressing fire with the Salon while Courbet stormed the pill-box. Then, once the old guard was nice and shook-up, Manet stepped up, pulled the pin and tossed in a grenade. BOOOOOM, motherfucker! See?”
I don’t believe my friend did see.
Not really.
He nodded, of course, but then, he’s a very polite person. Still, I don’t think he quite grasped the magnitude of my lecture. In retrospect, I think this was partially due to the fact that he simply lacked (despite my best efforts) the historical context necessary to understand the drama playing itself out on the gallery walls. The other factor standing between him and a full appreciation of the situation was the fact that he was busy actually looking at the pictures, and so, was not sufficiently focused on the big picture I was struggling to sketch for him.
Having passed the Manet kidney stone, I felt good about releasing my friend to view “The Impressionists”. The AIC keeps the Degas fenced into a small gallery immediately adjoining the grand impressionist gallery. I think they do this so as not to disturb the saccharine vibe that vomits off the canvases of Renoir and, to a lesser degree, Manet. I like Degas. He used the force of impressionist light to capture human scars. His work-weary ballerinas smell badly, just like they probably did on the day Degas painted them. I pointed this out to my friend.
He nodded.
He really is very polite.
Free at last! Free at last! Good God, almighty, free at last, we passed from Dega’s cramped cell into the main impressionist gallery where we’d started our visit three quarters of an hour earlier. I flitted back and forth from painting to painting like a terrier trying to choose between competing fire hydrants while my friend methodically worked his way along the wall, viewing each painting in its turn. At one point, his march and my scramble converged in front of Christine’s favorite AIC painting – Berthe Morrisot’s “Woman at her Toilette”.
“This is Christine’s favorite,” I announced.
My friend nodded, politely.
We remained in the room long enough to agree that neither of us liked Renoir very much, and then moved onto the next gallery. His problem was that Renoir’s paintings went so far in obscuring objective reality behind the brush strokes so that when one steps back, the picture never quite comes into focus. I just think Renoir’s paintings are syrupy sweet.
The next gallery brought us to one of the AIC’s true treasures; Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece, “Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte”. “La Grande Jatte” is one of those painting where it’s fun to stand close and get lost in the details of the artist’s brush, and then step back and marvel at how, from a distance, the disparate parts should merge into so complete a painting. Of course, I was held back from this small pleasure by the twenty students of Mrs. McCarthy’s 7th grade art class who sat arrayed like a flock of beach-combing willets at the base of the painting listening to a docent lecture. This was annoying. Art isn’t really for children…especially when I’m in Chicago. As the friendly lady from the AIC explained to the kids why it was that the woman with the umbrella had such a big butt, I fought an irrational urge to rush in among them, barking and waving my arms, to see if they’d scatter.
I’m pretty sure they would have.
We circumnavigated the small contingent of bored art students monopolizing Seurat and contented ourselves instead with an examination of other paintings incidentally on view in the room. Again, I found myself moving quickly from canvas to unconnected canvas looking for unifying themes. My friend made his slow plod along the perimeter, savoring each work in, of, and for, itself. At one point, we found ourselves standing together in front of a Monet costal scene. The work depicted a harbor at dusk, the scene obscured behind a purple haze of fog and imminent nightfall.
“Hey,” asked my friend, “what does this make you think of?”
“Huh?”
“What do you see when you look at this?”
To be honest, I hadn’t really seen much of anything. If I registered the painting at all, it was to note only that the work was yet another example of Monet fucking around with the effect of light on color. I think, in answer to his question, I actually said “Yeah …. I see yet another example of Monet fucking around with the effect of light on color”.
He looked at. There was an odd expression on his face.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said.
Bait dangled on a hook before me. I have a keenly honed bait-o-meter. I’ve been married. I realized that I would not be free to move on to the next sign until I reached out, popped the bait into my mouth, and let him sink the hook.
“Okay,” I sighed, “what do you see?”
“It’s not so much what I see; it’s what I feel.”
“O-kayyyyy,” I said, reminded suddenly of the great “what color should we paint the kitchen debate” with Kim, where every answer I gave was wrong until I struck upon the color she’d had in mind to begin with, “so what do you feel?”
“Peace.”
I looked at the painting, examining it for signs of “peace”. To be fair, I saw what he meant. The subdued colors, obscured and heavy, created the distinct feeling of a day done well and ready for bed. The sensation of “peace”, of course, had been completely lost on me in my rush through the gallery in search of the “big picture.”
I was really happy to be able to spend the afternoon in the AIC. I really love to walk through the galleries, and absorb the story. It was really nice of my friend to tag along, and not press me to rush to the airport to catch an earlier flight home. Recognizing his kindness, and anxious not to condescend or disregard his view, I carefully weighed his comments and then respond with the most positive and encouraging feedback I could think of.
“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”
He nodded, agreeably.
He really is a very polite fellow.
Not really.
My eyes cannot differentiate between shades of blue. When compelled to render an opinion, I am incapable of ascribing aesthetic preference to one china pattern versus another. My house, whose principal unifying decoration is the coat of sage green paint I had smeared on the walls when I moved in, looks like a cross between a college dorm and an army barracks. People often ask me how I can stand having a giant, slobber-slinging Mastiff in my home. The truth is that Lester fits in well, and contributes regularly to the décor. I do not surround myself with pretty things. They are wasted on me.
All of this being said, I enjoy art.
Really, I do.
I had occasion a few weeks ago to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. I was in the city with a friend and business associate for a series of meetings that ended early enough for us to slip in a visit the AIC before heading to the airport. While my friend enjoys art, it’s nothing he’s particularly passionate about. He is, however, a great sport - he knows I like art and was game when I suggested that we make the visit.
For those of you who’ve never been there, the AIC has, perhaps, the finest collection of Impressionist art in North America. I read somewhere that part of the Art Institute’s original endowment came from the estate of a city matron who bought up tons of Impressionist works in the days when a Monet could be had for $ 1,500 and they gave out Van Gough pieces at grocery stores with every purchase greater than $ 15. In addition to an amazing impressionist gallery, they also have a fair sized modern art collection. While their collection of European works from the 12th to the mid 19th century is nice, it is not particularly remarkable when set next to, say, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or any number of European galleries.
For me, European art is the story of existence. It has a beginning, a middle, and, believe it or not, an end. When I visit a gallery, I like to start with the 12th century Gothic altar pieces and build to the Impressionist crescendo by working my way chronologically through the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-classicist and Romantic periods. After the orgy Impressionist color and creativity, I enjoy depressing myself by wandering past the post-impressionists into the modern galleries, awed by how mankind’s search for deeper meaning leads inevitably to a realization that the essence of everything is oblivion.
That, for me, is the story. We started out crudely rendering scenes from a book that purported to explain why we matter. Over time, technologies, techniques and skills evolved, allowing mankind’s artists to explore deeper and more profound shades meaning. Over the course of seven hundred years, these explorers dug deeper, looked harder and grew bolder in their effort to render to canvas a reality that seems to lie beneath the surface of everything that is. The reality they ultimately uncovered is to be found at the ass end of any credible gallery, and is represented by squiggly lines across a black background or a hat rack dangling from the ceiling by a length of piano wire.
One enters the Art Institute from the street, ascends a grand staircase and is deposited at the top into the main Impressionist gallery. My friend and I quickly found ourselves surrounded by Monet, Renoir and a gaggle of their impressionist buddies. Before we got too deeply entrenched in the exhibit, I took my friend by the elbow and led him out of the room. “Look,” I said, “let’s step back a hundred years, and build to this. You’ll enjoy this more when you see where the art in this room came from.” He was agreeable, and followed me back in time to the turn of the 19th century.
We started our visit proper about five galleries away with de Goya and a little boy riding a donkey. As we worked our way through the galleries, I walked from sign to sign identifying the artist, and trying to place his work and its significance on my mental timeline to oblivion. When I saw a piece or an artist that was significant, I took a minute to brief my friend about the genus and species of the particular insect the AIC curator had set before us on display. De Goya gave ground to the darlings of the Salon – David, Delacroix, Géricault, Gérôme, Ingres…teasing, teasing, J.M.W. Turner (wtf), Corot, Daubigny, Constable (more wtf), Millet, Breton (reactionary bastard)… “Don’t even get me started on Breton. They’ve hung him up right there next to Millet! Can you believe it? Right there next to him! Jesus!”…then….big tease….Courbet, Courbet, the pinko-rebel Courbet until….ahhhhhh…Manet. “You see,” I instructed, “without Breton, Manet is just what the critics of the time said he was – a lousy painter. But Corot, Daubigny, and even Ingres…even fucking Ingres with his six extra vertebrae laid down suppressing fire with the Salon while Courbet stormed the pill-box. Then, once the old guard was nice and shook-up, Manet stepped up, pulled the pin and tossed in a grenade. BOOOOOM, motherfucker! See?”
I don’t believe my friend did see.
Not really.
He nodded, of course, but then, he’s a very polite person. Still, I don’t think he quite grasped the magnitude of my lecture. In retrospect, I think this was partially due to the fact that he simply lacked (despite my best efforts) the historical context necessary to understand the drama playing itself out on the gallery walls. The other factor standing between him and a full appreciation of the situation was the fact that he was busy actually looking at the pictures, and so, was not sufficiently focused on the big picture I was struggling to sketch for him.
Having passed the Manet kidney stone, I felt good about releasing my friend to view “The Impressionists”. The AIC keeps the Degas fenced into a small gallery immediately adjoining the grand impressionist gallery. I think they do this so as not to disturb the saccharine vibe that vomits off the canvases of Renoir and, to a lesser degree, Manet. I like Degas. He used the force of impressionist light to capture human scars. His work-weary ballerinas smell badly, just like they probably did on the day Degas painted them. I pointed this out to my friend.
He nodded.
He really is very polite.
Free at last! Free at last! Good God, almighty, free at last, we passed from Dega’s cramped cell into the main impressionist gallery where we’d started our visit three quarters of an hour earlier. I flitted back and forth from painting to painting like a terrier trying to choose between competing fire hydrants while my friend methodically worked his way along the wall, viewing each painting in its turn. At one point, his march and my scramble converged in front of Christine’s favorite AIC painting – Berthe Morrisot’s “Woman at her Toilette”.
“This is Christine’s favorite,” I announced.
My friend nodded, politely.
We remained in the room long enough to agree that neither of us liked Renoir very much, and then moved onto the next gallery. His problem was that Renoir’s paintings went so far in obscuring objective reality behind the brush strokes so that when one steps back, the picture never quite comes into focus. I just think Renoir’s paintings are syrupy sweet.
The next gallery brought us to one of the AIC’s true treasures; Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece, “Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte”. “La Grande Jatte” is one of those painting where it’s fun to stand close and get lost in the details of the artist’s brush, and then step back and marvel at how, from a distance, the disparate parts should merge into so complete a painting. Of course, I was held back from this small pleasure by the twenty students of Mrs. McCarthy’s 7th grade art class who sat arrayed like a flock of beach-combing willets at the base of the painting listening to a docent lecture. This was annoying. Art isn’t really for children…especially when I’m in Chicago. As the friendly lady from the AIC explained to the kids why it was that the woman with the umbrella had such a big butt, I fought an irrational urge to rush in among them, barking and waving my arms, to see if they’d scatter.
I’m pretty sure they would have.
We circumnavigated the small contingent of bored art students monopolizing Seurat and contented ourselves instead with an examination of other paintings incidentally on view in the room. Again, I found myself moving quickly from canvas to unconnected canvas looking for unifying themes. My friend made his slow plod along the perimeter, savoring each work in, of, and for, itself. At one point, we found ourselves standing together in front of a Monet costal scene. The work depicted a harbor at dusk, the scene obscured behind a purple haze of fog and imminent nightfall.
“Hey,” asked my friend, “what does this make you think of?”
“Huh?”
“What do you see when you look at this?”
To be honest, I hadn’t really seen much of anything. If I registered the painting at all, it was to note only that the work was yet another example of Monet fucking around with the effect of light on color. I think, in answer to his question, I actually said “Yeah …. I see yet another example of Monet fucking around with the effect of light on color”.
He looked at. There was an odd expression on his face.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said.
Bait dangled on a hook before me. I have a keenly honed bait-o-meter. I’ve been married. I realized that I would not be free to move on to the next sign until I reached out, popped the bait into my mouth, and let him sink the hook.
“Okay,” I sighed, “what do you see?”
“It’s not so much what I see; it’s what I feel.”
“O-kayyyyy,” I said, reminded suddenly of the great “what color should we paint the kitchen debate” with Kim, where every answer I gave was wrong until I struck upon the color she’d had in mind to begin with, “so what do you feel?”
“Peace.”
I looked at the painting, examining it for signs of “peace”. To be fair, I saw what he meant. The subdued colors, obscured and heavy, created the distinct feeling of a day done well and ready for bed. The sensation of “peace”, of course, had been completely lost on me in my rush through the gallery in search of the “big picture.”
I was really happy to be able to spend the afternoon in the AIC. I really love to walk through the galleries, and absorb the story. It was really nice of my friend to tag along, and not press me to rush to the airport to catch an earlier flight home. Recognizing his kindness, and anxious not to condescend or disregard his view, I carefully weighed his comments and then respond with the most positive and encouraging feedback I could think of.
“That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”
He nodded, agreeably.
He really is a very polite fellow.
somewhere i have this photo. if i find it i shall send it to you straightway. (that will require that i sort out why my scanner has recently refused to participate in scanning exercises.) said photo was taken by my daughter when she was 13 and traveling, by accident, in Greece with her uncle.
ReplyDeleteit's a photo of a man looking at a statue; a photo of a man looking in a mirror.
the statue itself is amazing: apparently in stainless steel, perhaps bronze, a man about 4 times life size, modernist, sitting, as it were, in a public square or pedestrian roundabout of some sort.
------------------------
"It's Icarus" she said. his name wasn't on it but the wings, what was left of them, were there; his head and shoulders buried where he had hit the concrete sea, just beginning to drown. and the boots gave him away.
"Icarus?" he asked, as if he had heard the name before. from her tone it was clear that it was someone he should know. he didn't.
she sighed in that incredulous way that she often sighed when presented with, was it ignorance? even she can't sigh like that anymore. not since she turned 20 a couple years ago.
from his tone, or mostly his body language, it was clear to her that he understood the internal turmoil of this dying Greek. even if his name didn't ring a bell. she wondered what he'd done in school. she wondered why they let you have a college diploma if you didn't know who Icarus was. she was 13.
she told him the story. he listened. he absorbed it.
he came home to a flat world. a few months later he walked up to edge of it, and dove off.
----------------
can't i have it both ways? prettypleeez?
paintings make me laugh, feel peaceful, and sometimes cry. even more-so because i see the big contextual picture. i like to understand the movement, circumstances, or the anguish, joy from which they were created. what little i know of technique enhances my enjoyment. i agree with you about Renoir, it find the work bordering trite, however, i love the out of focus quality. something about it rings true to my grasp of the universe. and even trite has it's place in the spectrum of human understanding from time to time.
education - the great liberal hope held by elitists like myself who believe that we would be better served by funding art classes (yes, even for engineers and accountants) with as much gusto as we fund the D.A.R.E. program. in truth i believe that the D.A.R.E. program is useless. or worse, evil. i'm guessing Icarus, and poetry would go farther to that end.
also - i don't believe for a second that you are ambivalent to the color of your household surroundings. the wall of your blog is taking my side and screaming a protest. i would dig for some underlying reason to this self professed environmental austerity if i was married to you. but then you would divorce me, or hate me, or both.