Visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art is no laughing matter. Or at least, I didn’t think it would be as my wife and I made our way across Central Park on a gorgeously sunny day.
After all, isn’t art supposed to be serious, weighed down by intent and gravitas and insight? I expected paintings so breathtaking in their approach and mastery that I’d stand slack-jawed before them. And, indeed, there were such moments – in particular, seeing one of the most striking portraits by the Spanish painter Velasquez, who I studied as a semester-long project in college.
There was even a bench so solemn, I wasn’t permitted to take a sample sitting.
I had to settle for one with a view of an earnest artist in his studio.
But I was most surprised and delighted that time and again, I peeked behind the ponderous and found touches of the playful. There was a serious sense of humor there, like the hint of a sardonic smile on a serious face.
Let me show you what I mean.
Let’s start with Degas.
In this famous pastel of ballerinas, have you ever wondered why there is a watering can? In it, can you see the echo of the pose of the girl on the right? That’s worth a chuckle.
Then there’s this delightful tribute to young love by Frans Hals. Even the informal title – “Yonker Ramp and His Sweetheart”—is suitably silly. With a name like that, he ought to be selling farm equipment in central PA.
Or Rembrandt’s Bellona in which he depicts the Roman goddess of war as a rather plain woman. How he must have loved the befuddled looks he received for this.
The little-known Lilly Martin Spencer took a stab at gender roles with her Young Husband: First Marketing, in which a newly-married man attempts to bring home groceries for the first time. Says the guy passing: "Man-up, dude!"
And finally, the one that made me actually laugh out loud – something not at all keeping with the hushed reverence of the place -- The True American, by Enoch Wood Perry. Every denizen of this porch manages to hide his face. Even the dog.
Why does this resonate with me? Recently I was in a car with a couple of colleagues who agreed that I do “cute” well. Jokingly miffed, I said, “Wait -- I can be edgy!” They laughed and said I couldn’t do edgy if I tried. In fact, I have tried. People still thought the art was rather sweet.
But my day at the Met reminded me that weightiness in art isn’t the same thing as heaviness. Delight is no shallow emotion. The laughter of a young child and his mother is as significant as any dark-hued depiction of a violent Greek myth. And perhaps it’s even harder to depict.
The next morning, on the Today show, the artist Jeff Koons – who has a supremely silly living sculpture currently installed in Rockefeller Center – said, “I don’t think art should intimidate people.”
At least for my work, I agree. Wherever the opposite of intimidating is: that’s where I create. And I’m okay about that. Even in art, it seems that laughing matters, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment