My Impressions of the Impressionists

So we went to the infamous Barnes Museum the other Sunday.  Oh, sorry, it's not a museum, it's a Foundation.   Founded by the extraordinarily curmudgeonly Dr. Albert Barnes.  Actually, that is a disservice to curmudgeons everywhere.  He was basically just pissed off at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  As is well known by now to even the most dilettante Philadelphian, the art establishment  rejected Dr Barnes's vision over 80 years ago.  He espoused a unique organizational scheme to display the art he had amassed, a codification system that would reveal commonalities in design of various artworks to even the most casual art enthusiast.  The biggest problem with abstruse art, you see, is that the casual observer rarely appreciates it.  Art, it seems, must be put in historical context to fully understand its profound nature.  If we look at a so called masterpiece painted in 1783, for example, we may think to ourselves "big deal, I saw Bob Ross paint a prettier picture on PBS television the other night and it only took him thirty minutes".  That may be true but he did not invent how to make clouds look like they are actually reflecting sunlight.  Some fifteenth century Dutch dude figured that out.  Or it might have been a sixteenth century Venetian.  I have no idea.  But that is exactly the point.  Barnes would hang a few pictures with, say, brightly highlighted clouds all in a single cluster.  Regardless of in what century they were actually painted. So a dilettante like me could put the art in historical context and easily visualize the common design elements in otherwise disparate pieces.  Or perhaps not. I really have no idea what the hell Barnes was thinking.  The various galleries, while awesome in the sheer amount of great art packed into a small space, reminded me of a cluttered refrigerator door in the home of a too proud mother of an artistically prolific six year old.  My niece, the art historian, tried to explain the hodgepodge to me, but really, I was way more interested in the other people enjoying the art that day than the art itself.  I am more anthropologist than aesthete.

When I say that the other patrons were enjoying the art, I really mean that they were merely studying it.  At least as far as I could tell.  You see, the really odd thing to me was that not a single person in the entire place was smiling.....except me.  Not a smirk, grimace, grin, frown , nor harrumph, and as far as I could tell, no movement at all of the labial commissures on anybody's face.  I don't believe I even heard a sigh nor murmur of disgust in front of one particularly galling Renoir.  I, of course, exhaled a loud "how the hell did that get in here", hoping to at least get a nod of assent from the cute bereted beatnik standing next to me but she merely pivoted and focused her attention on the Delacroix adjacent to the Manet.  Which only forced me to harrumph even louder hoping to get some reaction.  Nothing.  In fact the only time I could get a rise out of any one in the entire museum is when I dared to stick my nose too close to a Seurat to see if the painting really was made up of tiny dots.  Then a blue blazered, overly austere guard came running over and told me to please step back from the art.  That got a harrumph out of my bereted friend.  A show of enthusiasm, I guess, is taboo in a museum of world class art.  Doesn't the very nature of art demand that it evoke some emotion in the viewer?  As far as I could tell the only emotion being felt in this place was one of funereal resignation.

But, I hear you protest, one must be subdued, like in a library, so as not to disturb the ruminations of the other enthusiasts.  To which I reply, the guards never shushed me, they only told me to stand back.  And believe me, I was doing a lot of disruptive emoting.  I would turn the corner into a new gallery and be blasted by a wall crammed with the most sublime art in the world and I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.  But the other art lovers were literally standing there frozen in a posture one would only expect to see at a cemetery while their mother was being lowered into the ground.  Yet they weren't crying.  One would be at a loss to figure out what, if anything, they were feeling at all.  And in front of world class art!  I really don't get it.  No wonder most people just go to Disney World.  At least there you can loudly cheer when your six year old daughter completes her spin art painting at Mickey's Wonderful World of Spin Art booth.