On Art – Intro (The Met in NYC)

Yesterday I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC (shoutout to the Bergmans in Jersey for taking me along).

I’d never been to the Met before, and I guess I’d never really been to any art museums other than any ones they might have taken us to throughout the K-12 school years (don’t remember), and I definitely didn’t appreciate that kind of stuff back then.

You need some life experience before you can “get” art, I think. Sort of like how you need to have some base level of fitness before you can “get” weight lifting. (and even then the sheer ridiculousness of jerking around hunks of metal is pretty incomprehensible to me sometimes)

It’d be pretty absurd for me to try to tell you all the thoughts that raced through my mind as my senses were bombarded by the Met.  To keep it simple: it was a hell of an experience.

ART + PEOPLE (NYC melting pot) + BUILDING (gorgeous) = INSPIRE

I’m not sure I can properly describe to you how much I learned about art, and about life.

If you were to ask me an open-ended question like “What do you know about African art?” or something technical like “Which Impressionist painters enjoyed using broad rectangular brush strokes and heavily contrasting colors in creating the reflection off the surface of a body of water?” I’d probably be inclined to tell you to shut it.

Because that’s not what art is about, at it’s heart.

At the Met, they have guided tours at scheduled intervals during the day. Normally I’d skip this kind of thing, but we figured it wouldn’t be that long and that we’d be able to pick up a few insights if we checked it out.

It absolutely was worth it.

The tour-guide was upper-middle-aged, squat and stocky, and dressed impeccably in blue blazer, face framed in very round glasses. He looked sharp. And his pitch was sharpened to perfection. (30 years of experience can do that)

I’d never witnessed such outstanding salesmanship. He was in-your-face salesy, but he sold genuinely valuable content. I’m not sure everybody appreciated his mastery as much as I did, but I fully recognized that he was just as much a part of the museum as any of the actual art was.

To get back on track, though.

The real reason I liked him so much was because of the way he defined art – he said that art isn’t just passive observation – it’s active recreation.

At each exhibit, he’d brief us on the art at hand, but more importantly he’d find a way to remind us that we (the museum goers) were just as important a part of the museum as the art itself.

He elevated us to the level of the artist.



And he was absolutely right. The finest art in the world is worthless if it doesn’t have a “receiving consciousness.”

Art is the interplay between art and audience.



It’s what happens to you when you see it. It’s your reaction to it.

That’s what art is all about, whether it be painting, photography, poetry, music, theatre, or literature.

Or the less deliberate, more “unspectacular” art of everyday life.

That’s what art is all about. And that’s what life is all about.

There’s a lot of stuff going on in this world right now. Mindblowingly smart people are creating mindblowingly complex gadgets that can do mindblowingly ridiculous things. Business tycoons are commanding our economies with pixels sent out on their BlackBerry’s. Leaders of countries are making monumental decisions with immortal (and mortal) consequences.

And so on.

All this stuff only matters at all because of the way we respond to it, because of the way our consciences receive it – the collective conscience of humanity.

The fact that I can look at a painting created by a random person in a random place at a random time (random from my perspective) and react to it and sometimes resonate with it – that’s beautiful.

It shows that genius is universal.

And it celebrates the individual. Every individual, not just the talented individual.

This serves as a strong call to reduce inequality in this world. In the most basic of senses, we really all are equal. If you don’t trust me on this, try the business mind angle:

“Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity—reducing inequality is the highest human achievement.”

-Bill Gates, rich guy

That’s right, all human achievements – art, science, business, what have you – can serve no higher purpose than to reduce inequality.

Now try the theatre mind:

“The primary function of theater is to uplift humanity.”

-Philosophy of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in NYC

Uplifting humanity starts with uplifting yourself.



Recognize that you have enormous potential as a human being, and that you can and should and even must unleash this potential upon the world.

Recognize that in the process of lifting yourself up, you are free to (and encouraged to, by me at at least) break rules in the name of expressing yourself.

“You are remembered for the rules you break.”

-Douglas MacArthur, American general who commanded the Southwest Pacific Theatre in WWII

Do you see how much you can get out of a single visit to an art museum?

As I walked around, trying not to lose myself amidst the sensory overload, the dots started to connect for me.  One dot that stood out was a bumper sticker I once saw on a crummy white sedan:

Art saves lives.



-David

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