It took many more visits to the Institute to explain what change had occurred, exactly. I felt that until I had seen it, I had not understood art. The darkness of the plain, Puritan-like garb of the crowd contrasted with this lone priest, the dim though still distinct light of the sky above their heads, and the shadowy white mass of the women’s hats. Like a ghost, the figure of a man who looked to be a priest stood beside her horse in a white robe. Their emotions contrasted with the stoic serenity of a woman on horseback in their midst, holding a child in front of her as she sat silhouetted against the pale pink sky, looking out into the unseen space beyond the crowd. Many of the faces looked excited and the indistinct figures appeared to be having conversations, but the color and light were blurred, obscuring the details of their expressions, personalities, and individual identities. The foreground consisted entirely of an indistinct mass of people, crowded together, their faces illuminated by the dim light of sunset and the occasional brightness of a candle. Along with its depiction of sunset instead of daylight, it differed from everything else I had yet seen in its purposeful lack of scenery. In any case, the twilight scene struck me with its somber emotions. Perhaps it was so striking because of its contrast to the inundation of daylight my eyes had just absorbed from the others. Overwhelmed by the light of Monet, I turned toward the door to leave and was stunned to a stop by Pardon in Brittany. I liked them all I had seen most on postcards and my grandmother’s art-print purses, and so I was not left breathless, though I was impressed. I had scanned the room already, filling my eyes with the bright, mottled flecks of Monets and other Impressionists. They had hidden it on a half wall flanking the doorway through which I had entered. Visual art, after all, was something that no one really understood anyway.Ĭomfortable in this understanding, Pardon in Brittany by Gaston La Touche blindsided me completely. To me, viewing art as a layperson meant simply appreciating prettiness, the fact that I couldn’t have painted it, and the historical significance, while allowing the meaning to remain the secret of the artist. That something meaningful was the one thing I couldn’t seem to grasp in class. Something in such conversations would usually be said about feeling, and color, and line, and many other things that were meant to say that the piece communicated something meaningful. My conception of real artists and their art included a language that I could not understand, spoken while sporting berets and consistently paint-stained clothing. To a freshman college student in a beginners’ art history class, the Art Institute of Chicago seemed to represent an intellectual, artistic, and cultural achievement beyond my small understanding.
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