Experiment: Successful

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My bench.

Or at least I was happy with the result of my slow art “experiment”– 30 minutes staring at one painting. I poked around the museum a bit, and eventually chose one of Monet’s Water Lillies. This was mainly because it had the cushiest bench in front of it. So I sat in the middle, put on some music to drown out distracting conversations, and looked.


And looked.

And looked.

It was actually quite interesting. I pondered over how Monet layered the paint and what his method of working was like. I tried to imagine what time of day he painted at. I’ve been to Giverny, and I tried to imagine him on that dark green Japanese bridge staring right down at the water. He really jams the water right up in your face, and without any kind of focal point. I grew to love the yellow at the edges, and to dislike the central purple area toward the right (it doesn’t recede as I felt it should).

What I really loved about the whole experience was how peaceful it felt, as if I had all the time in the world. It was like meditating, except a hundred times easier because I had something to look at. The time went surprisingly quickly. I realized I should do this more often, and not just with art.

j

Experiment: Slow Art

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Today I’m going to MoMA with a purpose: the challenge is to really look at a work. I mentioned a Slow Art event at MoMA a while ago. It asked participants to pick one or two works and just look at them from 15 minutes to an hour. I don’t think I can handle an hour–so I’m aiming for 30 minutes.

But now I have to choose what to look at for that long? I’m tempted to choose something in the Monet’s Water Lilies exhibition, because it will be big and pretty and I don’t know that I fully appreciate Monet.


I’ve also been checking out the permanent collection. Of course, I can’t go wrong with a Picasso. The collection has a magnificent collection of Odilon Redons–but they don’t seem to be on view. I love Klimt’s The Park, but I’m afraid I would get bored with it.


Of course, maybe I should choose something less well known. If they had Cy Twombly’s Four Seasons up, I know what I would choose (it’s another absolutely beautiful set of seasonal paintings.) I have quite the penchant for landscapes this morning. A portrait would also be a nice choice, because you could make up stories about the person. Ah well, decisions, decisions.

Anybody have any ideas?

A Bruegel For All Seasons

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder‘s The Harvesters, above, is an iconic fall painting for me. This large work, bursting with golden yellow tones, illuminates the room it hangs in at the Met, more reminiscent of a Van Gogh than of the 16th c. works around it. However, Fall is nearly over.
The painting below is more appropriate for days when it gets dark at 4:30 in the afternoon. Hunters in the Snow is a rare winter landscape of Bruegel, and one the similarly captures how a season feels. It’s flat grey sky and the starkness of the trees against the white snow exude chill. Like The Harvesters, it’s a picture that looks shockingly fresh and recent.

According to the Met’s excellent Heilbrun Timeline for Bruegel, the artist was trying to capture the different seasons in a commisioned series, sic:

For the Antwerp home of the wealthy merchant Niclaes Jongelinck, who owned no less than sixteen of the artist’s works, Bruegel executed a series of paintings representing the Seasons, of which five survive: Gloomy Day, Return of the Herd, Hunters in the Snow (all Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum), Haymaking (Prague, Národní Galerie), and The Harvesters. Though rooted in the legacy of calendar scenes, Bruegel’s emphasis is not on the labors that mark each season but on the atmosphere and transformation of the landscape itself.