To Love or Not to Love. . .Certain Pieces of Art

Living in France, even the southern part (i.e. not Paris), has exposed me to some new things. I’m not just talking about the occasional topless woman at the beach either; I am talking about “real” art. I have never formally studied art, even in high school, so I still have a lot to learn on this subject. However, I have always enjoyed going to museums, and looking at art, even though my ignorance causes me to rarely appreciate exactly what I am looking at. I like how certain pieces of art make me feel. I like wondering how someone decides one piece of art is a masterpiece and another by the same artist is “less important.” Everyone has opinions on certain pieces of art, and that’s what makes it kind of fun. What some people love, others find indecent or even ugly. I love discovering what my own reactions are to art, and sometimes I surprise myself by disliking a piece I thought I was going to love (or vice versa). I can’t explain why I was underwhelmed by the Mona Lisa, but then brought to tears while looking at Michelangelo’s Pietá. 

Sure, it's a nice painting and definitely worth seeing, but what makes it deserving of the title, "THE VERY MOST FAMOUS PIECE OF ART IN THE ENTIRE WORLD THROUGHTOUT ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY?"  It's really just "alright" if you ask me.

Now this is an incredible work of art!  One of the greatest sculptures EVER CREATED.  It's underrated if anything.

See how passionate and opinionated we can get about our favorite pieces?

Because I have studied the sciences my whole life, which are mostly objective, I find looking at art to be a completely opposite experience, one that is obviously subjective. As a science teacher, when I am asked a question about why something is accepted in science, I answer conventionally. For example, “I accept ‘The Theory of Plate Tectonics’ because sufficient evidence exists which supports it.” But when I look at art and someone asks me about it, a perfectly acceptable answer can be, “I don’t know. I just like it.”

I also find learning a little about the painters themselves to be interesting. For example, I was fascinated to learn that the Dutch painter Van Gogh only sold one painting his whole life, and died thinking he was a failure, while the Spanish painter Picasso could do no wrong while he was alive, and became very rich from selling so many of his paintings, sculptures, and ceramics. Also, did you know Picasso created over 2,000 pieces of art? Leonardo Da Vinci only created about 30, including two of the most famous and recognized pieces in the world (the aforementioned “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper”), but think of what he could have created if he had had the luxury of creating art for the sake of creating art, like Picasso could. Or if he had had the artistic freedom to do anything he wanted, again, like Picasso did. Would Picasso have been successful if he had lived in the 15th century like Da Vinci? (My guess is no.) What could DaVinci have created if he had lived in the 20th century like Picasso and hardly had to worry about persecution, funding, or breaking the law and/ or the social conventions of his time?

This week Jason gave me two unique opportunities to see some pretty great art. Last Tuesday, I got to go with two of our dearest friends who were here visiting Jason, Matt Kartchner and Chris Ecalono, to Milan, Italy for the first time. We drove there in the morning, took a tour of Milan, then drove back in the evening. Even though it was entertaining to see Chris "Ecalono" discover his Italian roots, the highlight for me was being able to see DaVinci’s “The Last Supper.” I didn’t know DaVinci painted this masterpiece, which is HUGE, on a wall rather than on canvas. The building was almost destroyed in WWII, but the wall with the painting in it was miraculously saved from the bombing thanks to some simple scaffolding and sandbags. Also, I had seen many reproductions of the work like the one below, but I never would have recognized that they were touched-up copies of the real thing:

This is a very "prettified" version of the real thing.  It only vaguely resembles the actual painting if you ask me.

Here’s a closer approximation to the real thing:

This is more like it!

Notice a huge difference? It’s not just the vibrance and clarity of the colors, but Christ has no feet in the real thing!! Apparently, some moron cut a door right into “The Last Supper” about 150 years after it was painted. See the top of the door frame below Christ?  Our friend Chris made a comment that made me think. He said, “If someone was allowed to cut a door into it back then, then obviously this painting wasn’t viewed as a priceless masterpiece until much more recently in history. I wonder what changed its value.” I have no idea, but it made me wonder about that too.  I really loved seeing it.

My second opportunity to see art was yesterday. I went to the Picasso museum, which is only 20 minutes away in Antibes, BY MYSELF! Even though I couldn’t even find anyone to go with me, I still enjoyed it. I learned that Picasso lived in this area of France for most of his life, and that after WWII, he used the Grimaldi castle (of the royal family of Monaco) as a studio for several months. This same castle is now a museum dedicated to Picasso, and it contains all the pieces he created while there, some 250 pieces. Granted none of them are his “most important” works, and I didn’t recognize a single piece, but I still liked it. Some of Picasso’s art looks like a young child could have made it, and I was not impressed. Honestly, some of it was just crayon sketches of a simple lime and a squid on paper that must have taken him MAYBE 5 seconds to draw. But a few pieces, like two of his concrete sculptures, and several of his paintings were distinctly Picasso and very much worth seeing. His most famous work from this time is called “La Joie de Vivre,” which means “The Joy of Living,” and I thought it was both silly and fun. Here’s what it looks like:


No, I don't pretend to "get" this painting, but it does convey a certain joviality when you look at it, so it is appropriately named at least



One of the coolest things in the museum was a large collection of black and white photographs taken of Picasso with many of the works currently in the museum. They were very artsy-looking, but it was interesting to actually be in the same studio where he had created those exact pieces I could look at. Can you believe no one would come with me??? What’s wrong with people? Thanks to Jason for encouraging me to go, even alone.  I know he would have gone with me, but he watched the kids instead.