Paintings and Music

One of my favorite pursuits in my retirement has been trying to increase my knowledge of art and in this musing by "art" I'm referring mostly to paintings.  SuperK and I spend the occasional few hours in art museums and both of us find this time to be immensely enjoyable.  For me it wasn't always like this.  I felt that I needed to "appreciate" a particular painting and that I needed to spend hours and hours looking at every painting in a museum.  This bored the shit out of me, temporarily ruined my back and feet, and left me a foul, metallic taste in my mouth.  In short, I was not eager to hurry back to a museum.  It was an odious chore.  I felt less than intellectually and physically exhausted.  It was not the definition of fun.

Today we like to linger in museums but only for a few hours and then we go take a walk outside, letting the feeling of the art wash over us, bubble up with impressions and recollections that needed some time to marinate before the significance and beauty became apparent.  Today we give ourselves permission to like something or to shrug our shoulders and say "meh."  I find it helpful to read a few paragraphs about the artist in question because this can provide insight as to what he or she was trying to accomplish, and then I can reflect on the piece through the filter of information that experts with more knowledge on the subject than me have.  Other than that I take what I like and leave the rest.

I'm much more knowledgeable about music than I am about art.  I like some kinds of music and some kinds I don't.  I love the blues and I can't stand country music.  I'm not suggesting that one is better than the other but that one releases endorphins into my bloodstream and one doesn't.  I can read about country music until the cows come home and still never become a country music fan.  Don't know why this and don't care.  I listen to what makes me happy.  I don't struggle with country music trying to "understand it" or to "appreciate" the artist.  It doesn't move me.  Why should I subject a painting to a more stringent analysis?