The Quiet Beauty in Art

     I had a hard time with the title.  It doesn't really reflect what I want to talk about today so if you have a better idea please share it!  I was reading last week from Francis Mayes' sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun entitled Bella Tuscany.  In this particular chapter, "Breathing Art", she talks about the conscious recognition of art (my words, not hers).  I want to quote a few passages and then give my own thoughts.

          "Across the piazza, three boys bounce a soccer ball against the side of the Orvieto cathedral.
     The sun strikes the great, gilded facade of that stupendous, dazzling, arrogant building.  I'm just
     basking in the reflected light, sipping a mid-afternoon capuccino. . . . Inside the cathdral, I've
     already seen the stop-in-your-tracks Signorelli fresco of judgement day - when skeletons just raised
     from the dead are caught by the artist as they are about to, and just have, melded back into their
     restored bodies - bodies at their prime of health. . . . I looked up until my neck hurt.  When I
     turned away to explore the rest of the cathedral, I passed a woman praying.  Her market basket
     propped beside her was stuffed with vegetables.  She'd slipped out of her shoes and was cooling
     her feet on the tiles.  A little girl nearby braided her friend's hair.  Their dolls sat upright on a bench.
     A young priest idly turned the pages of a magazine at a table laden with Catholic family publications.
          "They are knowing that splendid place through their pores, knowing so intimately and thoroughly
     that they do not have to know at all. . . .
          "As a seven year old, I had no consciousness that included an act such as painting.  I thought
     pictures had to do with table settings because I did see my mother endlessly lavishing her attention
     on tablecloths and polished silver and flower arrangements.
          "Art meant the English hunting scene over the sofa, the pink ballet dancers in my bedroom, and
     the oil portrait of me that scared me with its likeness and crude vivacity.  . . .
          "Watching the downshifting of light on the facade at Orvieto, I begin to breath slowly, taking in
     the shouts of the boys, the man at the next table completing a crossword puzzle, two nuns in long
     white habits, the angled shadow of the cathedral crossing the piazza like the blade of a sundial.  I
     feel a grinding shift occurring in the tectonic plates in my brain.  In Italy, it would be curious to
     not be intimate with art.  You grow up here surrounded by beauty, thinking beauty is natural."

     I could include so much more of her writing on art, but I hope that will get you thinking as it did me.  I tried to remember my first conscious meeting with art - not the art you do as a child, but the centuries old art that is famous and time-tested and somehow speaks to one's spirit saying, "There are things beyond your present understanding."
     I came up with two vivid images of me as a child recognizing art as something of timeless beauty.  The first happened at my grandparents' (the Manchesters) house in Ohio where we visited every summer.  I was probably around seven years old at the time of this memory.  I always had the little second floor dormer bedroom that faced the front of the house with a view to the woods and creek.  I felt like it was something out of a fairy tale, not in the way it was decorated, as there was not much in the room besides a bed and lace curtains on the one window.  But it just had that feeling of being almost not real - a little magical perhaps in my vivid imagination.  The only thing on the wall was a painting of two small children crossing a bridge holding firmly to each other.  Above them was a beautiful angel, her arms and wings outspread to keep them safe.  I realized then how special and powerful art can be.

Guardian Angel painting

     The second memory that I have is of looking through my mom's old Bible when we were sitting in church.  Again, I was probably around seven.  You may remember the older Bibles having famous paintings of biblical scenes.  I found them fascinating and never tired of looking at them.
     I probably took art appreciation classes all through school and in college, but it wasn't until I spent part of my junior year living in the city of Reims in northeastern France that I really became aware of the power and beauty in art.  And it began, not in a museum, but in the beautifully designed and decorated cathedral of Notre Dame de Reims.  I never tired of making a stop there when I went into town.  I have wonderful memories of being the only person in the cathedral other than perhaps the cleaning woman sweeping the stone floors or the voices of an unseen male choir practicing for a service.  I still remember how enchanted I was by the stained glass windows, the way the sun made patterns on the floor shining through them, the faces of the statues of angels and saints all around me.  It was then that I began to take notice of the beauty of art.
     Francis Mayes talks about how different growing up in Europe is to growing up in the US.  The Europeans are surrounded by art everywhere they turn - on tiny streets and bustling squares, corner churches and ancient townhouses.  Sometimes we have to look very hard in the US to see art outside of a museum.  How fortunate are those who grow up in European countries!

Monet's Ponds painted by Claude Cambour

Chagall's Bouquet with Bird  (Yes, I own this!)

     So, my friends, what is your earliest recognition of art - that force beyond ourselves that makes us pause to wonder?  Yes, there is art I do not like, there is art I do not understand, there is art that I'm not sure why someone calls it "art".  But I appreciate the emotions that went into bringing something to life on a canvas or marble or bronze or glass or . . . .   I have become somewhat a collector of paintings that I have bought from auctions.  Most of them are by French artists, most of them are what I would consider "impressionism" as that is my favorite art movement.  These I will never get rid of (as I'm purging my house and closet of so many things.)  These are not "stuff", they are works of beauty that I love looking at.  I shared some of them earlier in this blog.
     I hope that you are enjoying the Summer Solstice.  Having visited Stonehenge and a few Mayan cities, I can see how powerful the movement of the sun was for ancient cultures.  We take it for granted many times.  Or we complain about how hot or how cold it is - and then we go into our temperature controlled houses and cars!
     Thank you for taking time out of your day to read my blog and to follow me around the bends - this week, the bends of my mind!  Merci!