"Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The David is a classic sculpture, but what makes it so special? What makes a 14-foot-tall guy so impressive? I mean, he’s tall, but it’s just a statue of a guy, right? You can see one of those walking around pretty much anywhere. Yet people travel across the world to see him. Michelangelo was originally commissioned to make him for a church, but David was so stunning that a committee of thirty people was assembled in order to decide where to put him. He was unusual, a portrayal of the biblical King David in his youth facing down Goliath. Statues of David taking a stand against Goliath were common enough but they often showed David victorious (with the occasional guest appearance of Goliath’s severed head). Michelangelo’s David is tense, thoughtful — he is at the beginning of the battle, about to make his move. The David eventually found its home in the Palazzo della Signoria where he became a symbol of freedom and the ideals of a city-state that often faced much larger opponents. His current home is in the Galleria dell’Accademia, where he is sheltered from the weather. When I saw the David I cried and I still cannot quite tell you why. There is such wonder and beauty to be found in a form that seems so simply human. I could have looked at him for hours.
Jackson Pollock is the artist of the infamous splatters. The ‘my five year-old could have done those’ splatters that ‘just don’t make sense’. Pollock’s method was kinetic, he threw paint onto a canvas that lay flat on the ground and he did not do so without purpose. Painters before him had rougher or smoother brush strokes, he chose to take the rough strokes to an extreme. There is a progression to digesting a Pollock painting. First, you are overwhelmed. Most of these paintings are rather large and if the size wasn’t imposing enough, there are spatters on spatters that seem infinitely layered upon each other. After a few moments, they start to order themselves. You’ll notice your eye traveling the same pattern over and over until another splotch catches your eye and takes you down a new course. The painting has rhythm, it seems to hum with life. You leave it feeling as if you had sat through part of a song that has been going for a long time and will continue long after you leave. The art has a voice and should you learn to hear it then the splatters will tell your story as readily as the man of stone.
I hated art museums when I was small but my parents still insisted that we go and the school trips could not be prevented. It would have been difficult to go through such a thorough immersion and come out unchanged. There is a reason these cut stones and paint smeared canvases are treasured and painstakingly preserved. Art is alive with meaning even when the artist is long dead. Art has something to teach all of us, whether it be a feeling caught in a color or a truth embodied in light refracting off a room of mirrors. Van Gogh’s feverishly alive colors, Da Vinci’s dimly glowing angels, Chihuly’s otherworldly glass, Frida Kahlo's somber self-reflections, all have something to say. Learn to hear them, teach children to hear them. Hear the voices of those long dead and see the souls of the artists that yet live. Let them all, from the rhythmic splashes to the men of stone speak to you.
