Muesums

Today I pried my routine conditioned ass out of its rut and ambled up to the Minneapolis institute of Arts. Hang on, don't leave yet.  I promise I wont rhapsodize about the brush strokes of Monet or Van Goghs use of color in an uptight snotty tone while adjusting my barret.

This isn't that kind of blog.

      I wandered around the marbleized halls, my boots clicking between eras of ancient Rome to Asia, to Renaissance Europe. I dodged small very excited and/or bored children following tour guides of varying degrees of entertainment.

      For the first hour I honestly people watched. It astounds me how many people come to museums and never really look at the paintings. They look at the brush strokes, the color, they never really step back and LOOK. Take in the carefully chosen frame. The placement of the subject. Look at the person in the painting. Their dis-ease at posing. The chemistry between the artist and the model. The wary or tired look in the eyes that maybe tells another story, the body language possibly another.

       One painting in particular showed a woman sitting for the standard portrait. Three quarters view and 2/3rd profile but her posture was... stiff.. unnatural even for a portrait. her gaze leveled at the viewer with a wary tension. Her small mouth a firm tense line, her chin tipped ever so slightly outside the natural portrait lines. Her lovely classically pale hands clenched in her lap. She looks over the artists left shoulder with a look that is not disdain but fear. Who is this lovely woman afraid of? Centuries later am I one of the few people to notice ask the question?

     This. This is why I love art. I want to delve into the story behind this awkward yet beautifully painted portrait. Its the back stories in life that have always fascinated me.

 Case in point, this one.

 What in the hell is happening here?

         I can't tell if she is the original crazy eyes or if this is the come hither look circa 1689. Seriously. Try to maintain eye contact for longer than a minute. The descriptive on this one is just a 'portrait of a lady'. Ignore the crazy eyes and look at her body language for a minute. Hunched somewhat forward, arms crossed over body, straight on to the artist. Intense face and eye contact, withdrawn and closed body posture yet with a coy finger brushing her lips. Holy Mixed signals batman!  Is she mad? Was there a liaison between her and the artist? Did she wish there to be? or did the artist make his own fantasy?

     This is the kind of random crap I think about in museums. Aside from asking why come here to act smug and look at brush strokes only while trying to out art each other. That and laughing at the various "Intellectual" poses people strike before a painting. Nothing says trying too hard like leaning to one side, crossing your arms and stroking your chin thoughtfully while frowning at a painting.

       I think about the journeys these pieces made to land here. Hundreds sometimes thousands of years of history in these pieces. Imagine all the individual homes, the studios, the wars, the storage crates.  How many real life dramas have these pieces born silent witness to? What kind of tales could they tell? see?? The back story.

Then my brain slides to how many are unknown fakes and where are the secret passage ways.