I have been a dedicated museumgoer since childhood, when I was introduced at age eight to the joys of interacting one-on-one with great art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I stood enraptured before Renoir’s Girl with a Watering Can and Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? In each of these situations (and dozens more), what really impressed me was the physicality of the works, not just the colors and textures, but their actuality. In the case of the Renoir, the painting is about 40 by 28 inches, not life-size but substantial; the Gauguin is huge, 12 feet by about 5 feet tall, covering the entire wall of the room where it’s hung.
I attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston 10 years later, and happily, our campus was basically the museum. We got to hobnob with all those immortal canvases, sculptures, collections of Egyptian and Greek, Oriental and African artifacts and artworks. We copied Rembrandts and wrote papers about the Winslow Homer watercolors, descended into the basement to peruse the archives, pulled print after print out of drawers and tried not to drool on the Durer and Goya etchings, the Hokusai woodcuts, the Kathe Kollwitz lithos, the Warhol silkscreens, so on and so forth. It was as much of an education in art appreciation as the lectures and formal studio classes we took, although those were great too.
When I visited the Prado in the early ‘70s, I was amazed by the hugeness of the Velasquez portraits, mesmerized by the gigantic El Grecos, and gaped in astonishment at the Hieronymus Bosch Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych that stretches across an expanse of space of almost 13 feet by 7 feet. Just across the corridor from the Bosch, however, was The Temptation of St. Anthony, relatively petite in comparison. I was quite taken aback by the contrast.
Anyone who has studied art history knows the difficulty of looking at slides of paintings and sculpture and trying to have an intimate relationship with the works in order to understand. Jansen’s “History of Art” is ubiquitous, and its miniscule black and white reproductions of hundreds of masterpieces were, I suppose, meant to be shorthand for students to at least have an inkling about subject matter and style. “Show me that slide, and I’ll tell you the artist and the title of the piece.” However, photographs of art works bear little resemblance to the real thing, and I maintain, having not only the experience of making art but also having spent hours and hours in museums over the decades, that the size that an artist chooses for his or her creation is crucial. It’s not random or accidental. Oversized or miniature, it matters.
This observation was recently emphasized by my visit to an outstanding exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. Called “The Birth of Impressionism,” it showcases 100 paintings by artists (who at some point in their career, at least, lived in France) from the Musée D’Orsay in Paris (now undergoing renovations). Many of the iconic works included are those we’ve all studied in our art history classes, and taking note of my desire for experiencing the authentic nature of the thing rather than a repro, I was delighted to have an up-close-and-personal encounter.
The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau towers over the gallery room, dwarfing its companions. The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas is not quite as imposing, although big enough for any ballet lover to marvel at its detail and charm. On the other hand, Berthe Morisot’s The Cradle is small and intimate, matching its subject matter. From the almost life-sized The Swing by Renoir and Whistler’s huge Arrangement in Black and Grey (commonly known as “Whistler’s Mother”) to smaller landscapes by Cezanne and Sisley, Monet and Manet, the staggering variety of dimension and style, texture and palette, subject matter and method of execution really convinced me that looking at photographs of great masterpieces in books is simply not equivalent to standing a few feet from the canvas and viscerally feeling connected in real time and with adoring eyes.
The hundreds of other spectators crowding the galleries obviously felt the same way. The place was mobbed. Thousands of aficionados have visited the DeYoung since this show’s opening on June 5th, and I have no doubt that by the time it closes September 6th, that figure might well be a million or more. Part 2 of the show, featuring Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rousseau and other masters, will begin in late September and continue through January 18. This will attract many, many more devotees of Impressionism. I’ll be one of them.
I love museums.
