The Baltimore Museum of Art
is an easy ninety-mile trip from my house. You travel I-83 towards
York, enter Maryland a few miles south of that city, get off at Charles
Street, and in two turns you're there. I visited it once before, in
1992, with Lynn (then seven years old), when Vincent Van Gogh's
Starry Night (her favorite
painting) was on loan. In December I learned about a special exhibit of
paintings and drawings by Gauguin, Matisse, and Manet in response to
the work of Edgar Allen Poe, on display through the the first two weeks
of January. I was inspired then to take up one of my many dropped
projects -- visiting at least one museum each month to wander among the
images and objects. Such a trip clears my head, gets me moving, and
reminds me why I want to create my own art.
Most people know at least a few facts of the short (barely forty years)
and troubled life of Edgar Allen Poe, and many more know the
exaggerations. Some say that he was insane (certainly not, although he
was terribly sad over the many tragedies in his life and very likely
suffered what would be diagnosed today as clinical depression), that he
was an alcoholic (almost certainly yes, although his actual use
of alcohol was sporadic and he had long periods of abstinence), or that
he wrote while in a drug-induced haze (the variety and extent of his
use of drugs other than alcohol is uncertain, although anyone who has
ever actually
been in a
drug-induced haze probably knows that work of the complexity and
quality of Poe's does not spring fully-formed from that state).
Poe enjoyed scant acclaim and little popularity during his lifetime.
Some years after his death there developed almost a cult following of
him among the impressionist artists and symbolist poets of France. When
Stephane Mallarme sought to publish his translation of Poe's poems, he
asked his friend, the more popular and well-known artist Edouard Manet,
to do the illustrations as a way to boost sales. When Paul Gauguin left
for Tahiti, his friends threw him a going-away party that included a
group recitation of "The Raven."
The exhibit occupied only a single large room, but it was very well
put-together. There were comfortable couches to sit on and copies of
Poe-related materials stacked on coffee tables. I'd seen many of the
images before. They turn up frequently in the anthologies and textbooks
I've used over the years. Poe and his raven are also popular subjects
for
New Yorker cartoonists,
and some that I've cut out and used on assignment sheets were also on
display. Of particular interest was a case holding a variety of
portraits of Poe. One of them shows a younger, happier man than most
of us are familiar with. It brought to mind some of the questions that
sometimes arose in class: What if he hadn't compromised his health with
alcohol and poor nutrition? What if his depression had been addressed
with modern therapies? What work might he have done had he lived
another twenty or forty years? What work might he never have created
had he stayed that happier man?
I spent less than two
hours with the Poe exhibit. Then I wandered among
the rest of the museum's offerings. Two things in particular were a joy
to revisit. One was a version of Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture
The Thinker. It's huge, and as I
recall, we came upon it suddenly while moving from one room to
the next. Lynn regarded it solemnly and then said to the classmate we'd
brought along, "Is he maybe thinking
about where he put his clothes?"
A
few rooms later I came upon "Holy Family With St. Barbara and the
Infant St. John," a 1560 painting from the studio of Paolo Veronese, a
detail of which is seen at right. The girls went into uncontrollable
giggles over this, although I don't know which amused them more, the
baby Jesus holing his penis or the young St. John sucking his toes. It
remains my favorite example of the Italian Renaissance.
At length I found myself in the Poe room again. I'd spent several hours
among the lush romantic images of pre-twentieth century art. I crossed
the Poe room and opened some heavy glass doors. Suddenly I was in a
clean, uncluttered, well-lighted space and face-to-face with Andy
Warhol's famous rendering of a can of soup.
I consider myself pretty sophisticated. I know all about developments
in the arts, the breaking of barriers and the bending of forms in
literature and painting and music. I know that it is naive to label
Jackson Pollock's works as scribbles or Mark Rothko's as simple
monochromatic washes and to claim that one could do as well without the
necessity of going to art school. But I have to say this -- a lot of
modern art makes me tired.
Some of what I saw in the rooms behind the big glass doors were
"installations." One was a collection of a hundred empty clear glass
jars set on the floor in ten rows of ten jars each. Each jar was
slightly different. An explanatory paragraph under the title on the
wall label told me what the artist was trying to convey, but I forget
now what it was. Another was a sign made of neon tubing in different
colors and fashioned into the letters W-A-R. It was plugged into the
wall and the letters flashed on and off in a repeating pattern. I've
also forgotten what that was supposed to mean.
By far my favorite, though, was a shelf on which there were the rinds
of a banana, a grapefruit, and two oranges. The fruit was gone, and the
skins had been stitched back together with white thread. The
explanatory note said that one day the artist became concerned about
waste and garbage and consumerism and landfills. She'd consumed the
fruit, then stitched the skins back together. She placed them on a
shelf in her studio and watched them begin to dry out and decay. In
allowing the skins to become an object in the museum, she stipulated
that they be regarded as a "work in progress," that no effort be made
to preserve or restore them. This, the note said, was antithetical to
the usual mission of a museum, which was to take all possible measures
to keep a piece exactly as it was at the moment of creation. Honoring
the artist's wishes in this regard highlighted the tension between
preservation and progress.
No visit to a museum is complete without a stop at the gift shop. I
bought some postcards and an unusual stuffed duck toy for Lynn, who has
announced her intention to become known as the Duck Girl by filling her
dorm room next year with fuzzy yellow friends. Before I left I picked
up the calendar of future exhibits. I know I'll be back sooner than
eleven years from now, if only to see progress on the banana.