JUST AN ORANGE

Ben, my husband, took this picture on a visit we took to the Musee d’Orsay. Museums often abound with students of art scattered throughout, pencils or pastels in hand, sketchbooks or large drawing boards on their laps. But this was the first time I’d ever seen anyone there with their easel and paints copying someone else’s work.

Each time I come across this photograph I’m curious: who is this man? He is obviously an artist, and a very decent one at that. He’s from an older, more formal generation. He wears a blazer (what a funny word) over what is certainly a button down shirt that looks pink in my original photograph. He is wearing it to paint, with oils, I assume.

Why has he chosen to make a copy of this particular painting? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but also the best way to learn about, or become like, what one is imitating. He is still interested in learning, in perfecting his own techniques, in creating something beautiful.

I wonder, when did he start painting? Is it his life’s work? Is is something he did on the side while supporting a family with a more conventional job? Is he content with his art? Or is he rushing to fill an unrealized dream before it’s too late?

But whatever his reasons, I like that when I look at this photograph he’s there, standing before the easel, paintbrush held delicately in his right hand, placing a dot of paint carefully on the canvas, every single time.

Week 10: In class, copy from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, choosing either the head of the Delphic Sible or one of the ceiling nudes / Assignment: Self-portrait done in the Renaissance technique of their choice.*

The NYU Alumni Magazine has an article in the current issue (you’ll have to wait to read it; it’s not online yet) of a fascinating class. It’s the kind of class I would die to take –well, not actually die, because then I wouldn’t be able to participate and my family would have to cover the expense of shipping my body home from Italy and, well it’s a really cool class. I mean, Italy!

But what in Italy? The Renaissance Apprentice, a class taught by Alan Pascuzzi. The students learn how to create art with the techniques and tools available to artists back in the days of Michelangelo, etc. — such techniques “as fresco, egg tempera, and silverpoint”. Students don’t have to be any sort of artist or art scholar to participate. But the article says that the class fills up quickly. Yeah. I’d imagine so.

The article gives a brief summary of the 14 week syllabus. Skim through that after reading Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy, and you’ll be pining for acceptance into NYU and a way to get into that class and over to Florence.

I love that anyone who can get in to the class, gets in. So many great classes at Universities are limited to the students majoring in that area, which is a crying shame. I wish I could participate.

*From “The Class: Following in Michelangelo’s Footsteps” by Renee Alfuso, NYU Alumni Magazine, Spring 2008 pgs. 16-17

The week’s loose theme is art, and who better to have comment on art and life than Julie of Mental Tesserae? I always appreciate her insights as she ties together an aspect of life with a piece of art, and how both are illuminated together. I’d like to go traveling around Europe and take her with me; not just because she is a Humanities scholar, but because she is a kind, genuine person and I think we’d have fun. Thanks, Julie.

It was getting dark and my husband was late picking me up after class. For a while I leaned my head against the concrete column near the front doors. Then I sat on the bench in the lobby. And I waited. And I thought. And I thought some more. And this is why it was in the lobby of the Olmsted building on Penn State campus where I had an epiphany that helped me define my life. I did not see angels. There were no trumpet fanfares. With its converted-Air-Force base décor, the Olmsted building is about the farthest thing from a visionary space you can get. But inside my head, I had a moment of mental, if not spiritual, clarity. I processed some thoughts that seemed so right to me that I still carry them with me and use them to make sense of my life.

I had not intended to major in Humanities as an undergraduate. I was going to be a journalist. I wanted to write or perhaps be an anchor on the TV news (a most glamorous profession in my teenage mind). But then I took a few Humanities classes and discovered that they were more than a means to an end. I loved the arts. My father had directed a few Study Abroad programs in Spain when I was young so I had visited many museums and cathedrals in Europe. But I had never analyzed art, never studied it and peeled away its layers of meaning. I also loved music and architecture and literature and theater and dance. How lucky I felt to have discovered a major that did not make me choose between them; I could have them all. Of course, the question of what to do after graduation was a tricky one, but eventually I applied to graduate schools with the intention of teaching on the college level. This brought me to Penn State, which brought me to the Olmsted building, which brings me to the night of my epiphany.

I was depressed about many things and questioning my past choices. I have made mistakes in my life. I guess we all have. But there are certain themes (one being regret) that seem to run through my story like threads in a novel. And the novel was exactly the image that began to take shape in my mind. Waiting at the Olmsted, I started to see my 21 years spread out before me like the pages of a book. I studied them and I saw all the things I had been trained to see in literature: the plot, the foreshadowings, the flawed protagonist and antagonists, the losing and gaining of symbolic objects, the thresholds and conflicts and archetypal patterns. It was clear to me that my life was a work to be interpreted. And my experience as a humanities scholar and student of the arts had given me exactly the tools I needed to interpret it.

Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living. I worry sometimes that an over-examined life is not lived. But I have learned to find a somewhat reasonable balance between the two extremes. I realized that night, while waiting for my ride home, that I loved art and literature and all the forms of creative human expression because they allowed me to examine my life. They framed it and gave it meaning, gave it focus. I don’t think everyone should study humanities in order to understand why they are here and how their lives matter, but it has worked that way for me and a few others I could mention as well. Michelangelo talked about God as the “divine hammer” –one who sculpts us into who we are and polishes away our imperfections until he has managed to release the soul within each block of stone. Saint Augustine wrote about the patterns in his own life (after the fact, of course, because it’s always easier to see them in retrospect) as signs of God’s hand in the writing of his story. In Rabbi Harold Kushner’s books, he uses the metaphor of a tapestry: God is weaving his masterpiece in each of us. We only see the messy underside—the broken threads, the knots and confusing imagery. From above, the divine work that is our lives takes shape with full purpose and beauty.

I believe in the power of art to carry meaning—to express truths and feelings and ideas through words, images, notes, or gestures. I also believe in the power of art to teach us how to find meaning in our own lives. Once we follow the threads and once we respect that the hand of a creator is at work, helping us weave our own decisions and intentions and accomplishments into a larger whole, we will find something worth studying. Something worth defining. Something worth living.

The good gray guardians of art
Patrol the halls on spongy shoes,
Impartially protective, though
Perhaps suspicious of Toulouse.

Here dozes one against the wall,
Disposed upon a funeral chair.
A Degas dancer pirouettes
Upon the parting of his hair.

See how she spins! The grace is there,
But strain as well is plain to see.
Degas loved the two together:
Beauty joined to energy.

Edgar Degas purchased once
A fine El Greco, which he kept
Against the wall beside his bed
To hang his pants on while he slept.