Looking at Agnes Martin and More
From an art museum guard —
I hovered like a coiled jack-in-the-box ready to spring. I’d seize on the flimsiest excuse to draw you into conversation, which was part of my job description, after all. If you took a photo with flash, I’d be on you faster than the speed of light to say “Please don’t,” then ask you what drew you to that piece.
People’s responses moved me more than anything I read in the wall labels. “Looking at art is like looking into the future,” said one visitor who couldn’t tear himself away from an Agnes Martin painting of a gray grid on a white expanse.
A man stood in front of a Wojciech Fangor painting of a brilliant olive-green circle surrounded by a halo of sky blue, and I watched as his face broke into a huge smile. “Wow. Wow. Wow…It’s, like, pulling you into another dimension. It’s opening to another world,” he said.
—- “Ears that hear and eyes that see: the LORD has made them both,” says Proverbs 20:12.
And what does that then imply for imagination and understanding and creativity and…and for we ourselves today?
What do we really see, and to what and whom are we listening?
PS: In case you haven’t hit the link yet, the subtitle of that article is, “Working at the Guggenheim showed Bianca Bosker that reading labels makes it harder to see what’s actually in front of us.”
Apply as needed.
joescheets 