artness

"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."

This quote belongs to Pablo Picasso.

 I think it's one of the most amazing quotes I've ever come across.

Today, I went to the Barnes Foundation in Philly. Barnes is a gallery which was created to showcase the collection of Dr. Albert Barnes.

entrance, The Barnes Foundation

It was one of the most exciting things I've done in a long time, certainly the most challenging and mentally stimulating museum I've been to, the greatest number of famous paintings and not-so-famous paintings by famous artists I've seen per square meter. My tour ended (not ended in the sense that I'm done with the Foundation now, I couldn't even go up to the second floor-which, as one of the security guards told me was the most interesting section of the gallery-but in the sense that I had to leave because they were closing) three hours ago, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

 I've been thinking not just about the paintings I saw, but equally as much about Dr. Barnes. His creative ingenuity shows the role that collectors/curators/designers play in the exhibition of artworks. I've never thought about this before, because apparently no designer/curator/gallery director has urged me to think about it, but the way artwork is presented is equally (maybe sometimes even more) important as the artworks themselves. The Barnes Collection is a living, breathing proof of this.

room six, The Barnes Foundation

 As I walked around in the rooms of the gallery, I didn't feel like I was in a gallery at all. Rather, it felt like I was in the brain of some giant (like the one in "Jack and the Beanstalk") who ate all of these artists from Picasso, Matisse, Renoir, Modigliani to Cezanne, Rousseau, Van Gogh, and many, many more. It felt like I entered their minds, and seeing their works displayed next to one another stimulated things in me unlike anything I can explain.

room eleven, The Barnes Foundation

 Suddenly, everything made more sense. Art isn't just an abstract term, something that highly marginal people or "artsy" people who smoke weed and ponder the meaning of life pursue. It is real. It's as real as math, as real as economics, as real as psychology. The artist is living in each and every one of his/her paintings. All of the pieces I saw tonight were breathing life; if I could touch any one of them, I felt like I would be touching their creators. It was that real. And no other form of art or no other field can create that sensation.

There is a story behind each painting, a thought process, an emotion, an interaction among the artist and its subject, a motivation, a reason. What's great about it is that nothing is dictated. The artist doesn't tell you why he painted what he did, how he painted it, what he was thinking when he painted it, what he had eaten right before he drew the arm of the woman in the painting, whether he had any personal troubles, what the weather was like, what concerns he had about life... So it's all up to you. It is an immensely strong personal connection with the artist; its a one-on-one connection that you can form right there and then, and quite possibly, no two people will form the same connection as everyone brings a part of themselves when drawing meaning out of them.

room one, The Barnes Foundation

Even if the artist has long left this world, they are there, living and breathing a fingertip away from you.
And that's the power of art; it can withstand all barriers;  even death.

to learn more, visit: 

http://www.barnesfoundation.org/