Just went to the National Gallery and I am so happy. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen these painting up close and I am completely overwhelmed.
It was gorgeous.
I have seen these paintings in books, on the net, on postcards and ‘what is art presentations’ but never for real and I was completely floored. It was beautiful.
These images do not do it justice. There is an incredible power when one experiences a painting first hand. The color is unbelievable. When I first saw the Van Gogh, I was shocked. I had seen this painting a million times and I’d always wondered why so many found it beautiful. But when you see the yellow he used, it was crazy. I had never seen it that way. The prints I had seen where always dark and muted. This was a luminous yellow. I had never seen a yellow like that. And the texture. No picture can show the kind of texture on the paintings. How the movement of the brush adds to the light. The center of these sunflowers he did impasto, mimicking the softness. Unbelievable.
www.nationalgallery.org.uk (Van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888)
And one of the most interesting things about the gallery is that the collection particularly filled with people was the 1700s-1900s. Upon viewing all the paintings, one is given a breath of where the movement is going. It is the movement away from representation towards experience. It is an inward movement. The artists in the mid 1200s to 1500s where obsessed with detail…with capturing what we see. Then, Da Vinci happened…and it was no longer about how we see, but how it is that we experience what we see. How the eye changes what it sees, depending on what one experiences. The light, the shadow, the depth change. And we experience something quite profound.
The image is informed by something from within, and as a viewer, one connects to it beyond the eye. This painting was unbelievable. The light seemed to emanate from the skin of the subjects.
And these paintings are humongous. This was around 4×6 feet. It is as though you are enveloped by it.
One little boy, probably not even five, ran up to this Cezanne and stared at it for a full five seconds, mouth agape, in total awe. Then he looked back at his parents who were fumbling with the stroller of his baby sister…and he had this expression of “Is anyone seeing what I’m seeing?” He kept on looking back at his parents who were too busy attending to his sister…until finally, he ran back to them. And I thought, imagine the ability to recognize beauty. It is inborn. Part of our DNA. It is something that we all know before we even think about why we know.
And it was as though, everything I learned in school was erased. You want to learn art, just go and see it. And keep walking until something grabs you beyond the chatter of your mind and makes you quiet. And you know you are moved. And you know you are changed. Beyond knowing why you know.
I am totally moved. I can only hope to achieve even just an ounce of what these masters have achieved. The ability to channel every experience they felt unto something physical. I am beyond words.
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