What do you do in a
museum? What do you do with all these paintings and sculptures and frescos you
are supposed to appreciate, evaluate, love? Would it not be so much easier of
they were some kind of food you could swallow and then say just how hungry you
are? The picture was good and you are sated. The picture was bad and you are
starving. (I believe I once covered this in a Russian sketch.) Really, do you
just look at them and hope that deep down you are becoming a better person?
You can of course
make notes and then never read them.
You can take photos
and then delete them.
You can try to
remember the name and the title and then happily forget both.
You can save the
leaflet and then fail to recreate.
You can trust the old
saying that ‘paintings heal’ and then die of pneumonia.
But I like the idea
expressed by Julian Barnes in one of his recent articles: ‘Art does not just
capture the thrill of life; sometimes, it is
that thrill’.
A few months ago, in
the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, I saw a
few paintings of Gabriel von Max, an Austrian artist whose most famous works
were created at the end of the 19th century. And one painting in
particular: “Die ekstatische Jungfrau Katharina Emmerich”. Katharina was a nun
from a secularized German convent who reportedly experienced stigmata every
Friday in 1813. But it was the vision that thrilled me. The grey whiteness of
her dress, the crucifix which lay spread on her legs and the burning candle
that looked so real you could almost feel the flame. Katharina’s face looked
pale and painfully unhealthy, and the quiet torment seemed both frightening and
fascinating.
There is no such question
as to what you should do in a museum. When you see something like that
painting, and your mind is bereft of all rational thinking, when you can’t
move, you know you’ve experienced it. But as soon as you can explain
what it
is, the world becomes just this much less special.
