Occasional Paper: Trip to the Museum

This weekend I had the fortune of making a quick visit to the National Gallery in Washington DC. I was blown away with the amount of famous works our capital has in its collection. Many of them I’m familiar with because I have learned about them in various art history classes. Rococo works by Fragonard and Boucher displayed a sense of wantonness in pinks and blues. Thomas Cole captivated such beauty and detail in his allegorical Stages of Life series. Early works of Picasso showed his curiosity to break away from tradition by his descriptive use of line. Both his and Braque’s first experimentations with Cubism expressed a level of friendship and camaraderie between the two artists. Cassatt, our only American Impressionist, had the ability to display the love and affection between a mother and child like no other, except maybe Copley, a famous American colonial portraitist. 

Art tells a story. That’s always been a big thing in classic art, to tell a story, or teach a lesson. Poussin was a master painter, arranging his characters in an orderly setting, gave them gestures and expressions that told a story as if they were characters on a stage. His works were always based on some Biblical narrative or Greco-Roman history, as was the expectation of the time. These history paintings have always been a pleasure to unpack, but the history of the painting itself has always been more meaningful, in my opinion. I want to know the background of the artist, where they were living, what captivated them, what events were taking place during their lives, why they felt their subject matter was important. 

How paint is applied to the canvas is important to me too. Genius artists have learned how to take a tangible substance, pigment and oil, and make it mean something completely abstract. In the past, paint was only used to express color and light. The drawing was responsible for depicting form and depth. Now, artists experiment with how to take a static medium and create movement, weight, busyness. A Futurist painting is loaded with brushstrokes that convey a sense of briskness, energy, vibration, nervousness, to where the excitement of motion is palpable. With this quality is carried the sense of anticipation of a Machine Age, a common theme in the early 20^th century. 

I love to discuss these kinds of things while viewing art. These insights are what help to develop appreciation for a piece. But true appreciation is developed by seeing the work in person. I would love to give this to students.