Musée des Beaux Arts
Dec. 20th, 2005 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievensWalking through the museum I'm struck by a painting that looks more like a screen. Four wooden pieces, hinged together, painted in reds and whites and blacks. I look at the swirls, mesmerized by a language that I can't read. Swirls fade into surfaces, whites fade into black. It isn't good art, but it's art that gets me.
My companion wants to know why I dare to say I like this painting, this easy piece of contemporary culture. The words fail me. This isn't a Henry Moore I'm staring at. Those sculptures I can stare at for hours, sucked into the surface of stone, shiny metal and bronze, longing to touch the object to feel what my eyes tell me that is there (the artistic experience is so much more than what our eyes show us).
But this is something I like for the colours, for the simplicity, the way I might like a drawing of one of the children in my class. Turning round I see a painting in the same style in blue and yellow. It disgusts me. Such a foul combination of colours. Maybe the museum is a colouring book in my head.
I shrug and walk on. He wants to see Rubens (not his best works they have here) and I remember sitting in the Uffizi gazing at a Botticelli. So much better than a colouring book.
My companion wants to know why I dare to say I like this painting, this easy piece of contemporary culture. The words fail me. This isn't a Henry Moore I'm staring at. Those sculptures I can stare at for hours, sucked into the surface of stone, shiny metal and bronze, longing to touch the object to feel what my eyes tell me that is there (the artistic experience is so much more than what our eyes show us).
But this is something I like for the colours, for the simplicity, the way I might like a drawing of one of the children in my class. Turning round I see a painting in the same style in blue and yellow. It disgusts me. Such a foul combination of colours. Maybe the museum is a colouring book in my head.
I shrug and walk on. He wants to see Rubens (not his best works they have here) and I remember sitting in the Uffizi gazing at a Botticelli. So much better than a colouring book.
