John Berger states in his 1972 book, "Ways of Seeing," "Seeing comes before words." We can express more in an image than we can in words, as it targets many complex emotions. This is part of the reason why art is so vital; looking at a painting or a photograph can draw us into another person’s way of seeing the world. We connect with the eyes of someone else and we’re transported to their reality.
We feel this connection more profoundly with certain artists rather than others. I’ve always felt closest with Vincent Van Gogh, the first artist whose life and work I ever studied in detail. Watching his documentary during my high school art class, I saw a clear evolution of his life in his paintings, which reflected the turbulence of his emotions. I identified with his fickle feelings, translated into thick, swirly brushstrokes that reminded me of how in flux our lives are. We made copies of his paintings in class and recreating the colors in his palette and imitating the forms in his paintings transported me to the moment he made them originally. His skillful painting temporarily released him from his frustration with life. Studying his work connected me to that release, too.
When traveling in Amsterdam, I went to the Van Gogh Museum and saw the real images of the paintings I had beforehand only seen on a screen. Walking through the museum, I felt it again, that sense that I was peeking into his life and seeing its course through his work. I read his letters and fell in love with new paintings I had never seen before. I watched crowds of other people feel the same way. When we looked at his last painting, my friend and I wondered about how someone who created such beautiful work could feel so sad, sad enough to kill himself. The paintings that bring so much joy to so many people in this museum now meant a different thing for Van Gogh, whose life was marked by so much suffering.
When I look at art, I empathize with the artist almost as if in looking at their image, we are conversing or I'm hearing a story. I remember what it feels like to be human when I see a painting I enjoy, the ups and the downs. I can’t always express exactly what these rolling emotions feel like, but I recognize them when I see them.
If we can see art and translate its image into a feeling, and everyone can connect with it, why are art museums places of privilege? Works of art are passed through the hands of the wealthy and the poor are discouraged from going to art museums or exhibits because of these spaces’ elitist connotation. Museums are places for everyone, filled with work by people from many different historical periods. We often forget that although painters like Van Gogh are legendary now, many lived troubled lives of poverty. They know what suffering feels like, too.
All people deserve the opportunity to see beautiful art, like they get to read beautiful literature with a library card or hear beautiful music on the radio. It is a public service that all people should be able to tap into. Seeing prompts a feeling that reconnects someone to another's reality, and this connection makes us feel included in the universal power art has to offer us all.
