Grammaticaster

Oftentimes when I come to the conclusion that the solution to my problems is to run away from them, it turns out that my problems (as a rational person might well predict) tag along with me.  So it was with my Independence Weekend trip to New York City.  That is not to say that my little road trip was a bad idea – I saw a great deal and experienced wonderful new things.  New York holds answers for me on many levels, but it had no answer on that particular weekend for emptiness and longing.  I walked the streets in the daylight and at nighttime snapping pictures, eating the street food and the posh food, poking my head into the various little Manhattan neighborhoods and exploring everything I could find to explore… but I carried my problems around my neck the whole time.  A weight greater than my camera equipment. 

It was in this condition that I happened upon the Museum of Modern Art.  “I like modern art,” I thought to myself.  So in I went.  And it turns out that my emotions were really much closer to the surface than I’d imagined.  Around every corner I found some new painting or object that someone had created, and each one affected me.  If I hadn’t been in such a crowded public space, I probably would have just leaned against a wall somewhere and wept openly.  As it was, I walked through the museum with my eyes in a constant mist of tears. 

So, here I am going to spotlight three of the works that affected me the most, and I will try to recollect as best I can the emotions that each one brought out in me.  So let’s start with Picasso, shall we?

This one is called The Charnel House.  (The photographs are mine, by the way.  Clicking on the pictures will take you to the MoMA’s site where you can read a proper description of the work.)  I’ll tell you, this painting struck me at first glance because, well, it looks like a Picasso.  From various collegiate art appreciation classes (which I never took very seriously and almost always got a mediocre grade in) I remembered the famous Guernica, which this piece resembles.  So, emotionally, I was already set up to be wowed.  But there was also something about how chaotic the composition is, and how it has an unfinished quality to it, and how beneath the heavier paint strokes you can see the fainter sketch lines.  It was like… you could see the master’s hands still at work.  It didn’t help that I will always associate Pablo Picasso with my father, as he played the artist for a couple of years in a row for an elementary school education festival back home.  He thinks he resembles Picasso and – you know what?  He does, a little.  All of that combined to form a truly haunting aura around this painting.  With everything I was trying to leave behind at home, the disorder and the seeming incompleteness and the familial resonance brought out a sadness in me that I still, obviously, have a hard time describing. 

Second is Jackson Pollock’s Number 1A.  To read the MoMA description, one would think I might have seen a beauty and a pattern within the seeming randomness of the frenetic strings of paint – but I did not.  I just saw the randomness.  It speaks to me about the limited amount of control we can impose upon the greater world.  It is insanity.  It is passion that burns out quickly.  It is a tangled mess.  Pollack’s work is beautiful because it is at once meticulous and haphazard.  Life as a fleeting obsession.  Add to that the gigantic scale that no art history book can convey.  The canvas is enormous.  Standing with your nose right in front of it, you just get lost in the pointlessness of it all.  It is a brilliant mimicry of modern life.  We strive to create order, but there is no order.  We try to create patterns – to see what we want to see.  In the end, the real meaning is lost forever.  We stab at it in the darkness. 

The real tearjerker, though, was a complete surprise.  I was familiar with the work, but I had no idea it was here.  Jasper Johns’ Flag.  I remember contemplating, when reading about it in my classes, on the question of why on earth would this be considered a great work of art.  It is, after all, merely a fairly accurate representation of the American flag.  On textbook pages there does not seem to be anything significantly artistic about it – not in any way that would make it stand out among an entire gallery of flag-inspired artworks.  Take it from me, okay, you have to see it up close.  The encaustic paint Johns utilized is, by its nature, transparent.  The flag is painted over newsprint that you can still see quite readily through the stars and stripes.  I tell you, it was like looking at a living thing. 

And, look, I know if it hadn’t been the Fourth of July weekend I probably would not have been nearly as stricken with the poignancy of the piece.  Even still, anyone who reads me or who knows my outlook on such things knows that I’m not exactly a chest-beating flag-waving weepy-eyed patriot.  I’m normally a simmering cauldron of political criticism.  There are things about this country that I outright despise.  There are people who call themselves patriots whose principles I want to stamp out and burn away.  But standing in front of this work of art I was moved to tears.  Okay – I know that, in the state I was in, a stiff breeze in Times Square could have moved me to tears, but work with me here.  The flag moved me.  That’s the point.  And it moved me all the more because I never would have expected it to move me. 

So there you have it.  Picasso.  Pollock.  Johns.  There are others I could have singled out, of course.  Matisse’s brush strokes, for one, had a particularly strong effect on me when I saw them at point-blank range.  And I’m sure Starry Night would have given me an odd chill or two if I could have gotten close enough for a proper look.  But with these three I can at least point to some of the reasons behind my emotional responses.  It is a neat feeling.  I want to go back and see if I can feel it again.  Being weepy is good.  I spend a lot of my time trying to feign stoicism – to prevent any emotions from brimming to the surface.  It was a wonderful sensation to be able to let go, in the anonymity of the crowd, and allow myself to give in – even if only a little bit – to the weight.  The weight of the art.  The weight of the present.  The weight of what I was running from and could not for the life of me escape.  And I was, in that moment, thankful for it.  It feels good to feel.