My family was spending the morning at this art museum and today I was determined to be my best art appreciating/cultured self. We all started together and I slowly wound my way through the museum. I read all the captions. I looked for little details in the pictures. I walked with agonizing slowness from corridor to corridor. By the time I circled back to the first room, I couldn't take any more art. That is where I found my father. Still in the first room. Gazing up at a painting with tears running down his cheeks. "Have you seen this one yet?" he asked with a combination of reverence and passion. Oh dear. My art immune, barbarian status was confirmed.
Growing up in an art-loving family has exposed me to some wonderful art in my life. I've been to the British Museum twice, all the Smithsonians in D.C., the Wyeth's Brandywine Museum in PA, Norman Rockwell's museum in MA, the High Museum in Atlanta and during a study tour in college I got to see art museums in Israel, Greece and Rome. But I never was captivated by it. Art Shmart. I may have speed-viewed many priceless works. I may have rolled my eyes more than a few times.
A couple years ago, a road trip with my parents included the de Young Museum in San Francisco to see Vermeer's Girl With The Pearl earring. We had a wonderful day, and I almost felt arty. But I realized it was mostly because my parents are great company and I got to be sophisticated and urban for a change.
Then, as irony would have it, I became an art teacher this school year. Yep me. The can't-draw, can't-craft, can't appreciate girl inherited four sections of elementary art, grades K-8, once every single week. In a panic I downloaded a timeline called Art History for Dummies. Appropriate. I made a schedule and plugged in some true artist friends. And then the routine started. On Friday I would text my dad with the time period for the next week. Cave art. Egyptian art. Roman art. Byzantine art. By Monday there would a set of pictures in my inbox. I'd sneak to the library and call my dad for an art history lesson.
Week after week, in the quiet dark library, on the phone to California, I discovered that art is made up of stories and themes, of artists and countries, of inventions and influences, of talent and luck and survival. I would take dad's enthralling stories and ideas and find ways to engage my students in the excitement of it. My interest in art became sharply focused and incredibly enjoyable.
Recently our library art class time centered on early Renaissance art. I got engrossed in Giotto, an Italian painter and architect who was first in line of the renaissance artists. Dad told me about this reportedly unattractive shepherd boy who painted pictures of his sheep on the rocks in his pasture. He was discovered by a local artist passing through the field who couldn't believe how life-like the chalk drawings were.
Giotto later auditioned to work for the Pope by submitting a single, perfect circle painted in red as his best work. The Pope was impressed and hired him, wisely, as Giotto's depiction of human emotion in his paintings set him far above his contemporaries. Dad especially mentioned the emotion depicted in a painting with little angels. I thought about Giotto all through the day.
The next day I got down to business. With my scribbled notes I began to look up pictures for class. I couldn't read my handwriting. Gotto? Getto? I googled Renaissance artists and found Gatti. Italy. Renaissance. Must be it. There was nothing about him being ugly or the painted red circle or the chalk sheep. But I wasn't surprised that my dad would know way more than Wikipedia. I found some of Gatti's art. Ornate, overdone. Yes there were a few little angels - fat, gilded cherubs. Nothing there to inspire in me the wonder I'd heard in my dad's voice.
It was shades of Geneva all over again.
And then I realized that Gatti was from the 1600's. I was pretty sure the artist I was looking for was at the beginning of the Renaissance. So back to Google. 1300's. And there was Giotto. There were the sheep and the pope. Ah ha! I scrolled through some work he had done on chapels. One caught my eye. The Lamentation of Christ. It is of Jesus being taken down from the cross, mourned over and held by his mother and friends. The painting is in beautiful blues, golds and rose. But what caught my attention was the sadness on the faces of Jesus' friends. Emotion. I enlarged the picture.
And that is when I saw the baby angels. Ten of them flying to earth, filling the sky. They are horrified, heartbroken and in pain at the loss of Jesus. One is plugging his ears. One is hiding his eyes. And one little angel in the middle is skidding to a stop mid-air because he can't take in the loss of his God.
I saw all this in the second the painting filled my computer screen. I heard myself gasp and at the same time realized I was crying. I resonated with their feelings of confusion and grief. In a new way I glimpsed what a staggering loss that moment in history represented. I was touched by their heart broken hearts. I was moved.
I was moved! Those little, emotion-filled Giotto angels were the last straw that broke my art resistant back. I'd finally crossed over from philistine to aesthete -a person who is sensitive to, recognizes and values beauty in art. It only took 46 years, 65 students, 25 art classes, miles of museums, hours of patient conversations and 10 baby angels.
Gear up Dad! Impressionism is coming up, and your art-appreciating daughter can't wait to find out what I'm going to love next....
