Art and heartache

Madrid is known for three world-class art museums - the Prado, the Thyssen, and the Reina Sofia. Meggan and I had the opportunity to visit the Prado and the Reina Sofia in 2008, and we generally enjoyed those visits. However, there were moments at the Reina Sofia when we felt a bit out of our aesthetic sensibilities. To put it bluntly, some modern art is just a little too "weird" for us. One memory we often chuckle about was from a room in the museum where we couldn't quite appreciate an artist's genius in a large canvas (over 4'x6') painted plain white with a line and some dots.We weren't being obnoxious, but another woman in the room noticed our general lack of enthusiasm, and she looked straight at us, scowled, and gave us a disapproving shake of her head. We got culturally scolded!

We're not the only ones to have had similar experiences. Some "art" doesn't seem like art to everybody. However, at the Reina Sofia, it never occurred to me to consider a different kind of response to this sort of work: sympathy. One of our seminary professors called this to my attention with his blog post on Lady Gaga. Some "strange" art is the cry of an aching soul to squeeze some sort of meaning out of a painful existence.

Consider the painting above, "Landscape," by Joan Miró. Miró was 83 years old when he created it. Have you spent time with a variety of 83-year-olds lately? Some of them are still spry and very lucid; others show distinct signs of breaking down. Perhaps the woman disapproved of our response to the paintings because it betrayed an inherent lack of understanding for the challenges aging can bring. Walking the Reina Sofia you get to see the progression of some artists' work from the beginning of their careers into their last years of creating. The next time I walk the Reina Sofia, I'll be on the lookout for this very human phenomenon, and others like it. Salvador Dalí features prominently in the Reina Sofia. Now THERE'S a tortured soul for you. Lord, let his art be an opportunity for me to understand what people are going through every day in this broken world.

Requoting Francis Schaeffer, from our professor's blog:

These paintings, these poems and these demonstrations which we have been talking bout are the expression of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness. Dare we laugh at such things? Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in their art? Christians should stop laughing and take such men seriously. Then we shall have the right to speak again to our generation. These men are dying while they live, yet where is our compassion for them? There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.