For all that museums are going through at the moment—financial hardships due to covid-19 closures, reckoning with their ingrained colonialism, rewriting the art historical canon to include women and BIPOC, reckoning with a spate of questionable deaccessioning, dealing with issues of social justice and diversity both externally in programming and internally with staff composition—I still believe in the transformative power of art.

If you have been following along, you know that there have been three times in my life when my jaw dropped in response to a work of art. The first was in a college art history class looking at a slide of an Edouard Manet still life of lilacs in a vase. The second time was in the tiny garden behind Charles Demuth’s Lancaster home over which an enormous church steeple looms. I've written posts about both of these moments; hope you check them out.

The third time my jaw dropped was while standing in front of Diego Velasquez’s Las Meninas, 1656, at the Prado in Madrid. Of the three moments, this was the most surprising occurrence for me. My love for Demuth is such that I spent my senior year in college writing my thesis on him. And who doesn’t love a beautiful still life by Manet? My reaction to Las Meninas surprised me because I have no training in art of the seventeenth century, have never taken a class in Spanish art of any sort, and only know what I’ve read in the skimmiest way possible. The combination of my lack of knowledge and my reaction to it means, for me, Velasquez’s painting is the ultimate example of transformative art.

I have avoided writing about the painting because of my lack of knowledge. There’s a lot to pull apart while attempting to get at its meaning and why it is visually so spectacular. But recently a link to an article about it crossed my feed. So, here’s that article, which I encourage you to check out. Also, if you ever find yourself in Madrid, don’t miss Las Meninas at the Prado.

Diego Velasquez (Spanish, 1599-1660)
Las Meninas, 1656
Oil on canvas
318 x 276 cm (125.2 x 108.7 in)
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Once I got through Art History 101 (what a whirlwind), at the beginning of my second year at the College of Wooster I took a class in nineteenth century art (read: French) with the professor that turned me into an art history nut. Arn Lewis was a quiet and intense man whose passion for his subject viscerally came through. I don’t think I ever expected to be excited about any subject that wasn’t studio art or music (oboe, alto). And I remember thinking: finally, something I can sink my teeth into.

I was a copious note-taker. Not only did it help me stay awake in the dark classroom, but also it was clear to me that note-taking made the test-taking a whole lot easier. (Actually, I am rather nerdishly proud that I have never fallen asleep in an art history lecture.) We were exploring the oeuvre of French artist Edouard Manet one day and I was busily jotting something down when I looked up to see Bouquet of Lilacs (c. 1882) on the screen. This was my first jaw-dropping art history moment, which I have referred to several times in earlier posts.

Edouard Manet, who some think of as the father of Modernism, painted some magnificent paintings. (Please note I claim zero expertise in Manet.) In the fall of 1983, there was a blockbuster exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was my “home” museum having grown up in the NY suburbs. All the biggies were there. The Balcony (1868–69) was the mascot, if you will. It was on the cover of the catalogue and was made into a poster that I had in my dorm room throughout college and graduate school. I honestly can't recall, and don't have the catalogue handy, to know if other key works were also in the exhibition. But some of his most important paintings include: Olympia (1863), Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863), The Railway (1872–73), and A Bar at the Folies Bergère (1882). It was my first blockbuster show, and at the time I had no idea museums and curating exhibitions were going to be my career (I’ll save the story of when that lightbulb went off for another post).

Manet died at fifty-one, a year after painting A Bar at the Folies Bergère. He had contracted syphilis in his forties and was in considerable pain in his final years. He suffered from jerky, uncontrolled body movements and had his left foot amputated eleven days before he died. In that last year, Manet painted Bouquet of Lilacs and other flowers and fruit as symbols of transience, a kind of vanitas. Apparently one of his close friends, Méry Laurent, brought him flowers every day, and Manet painted them against a plain background. One assumes it was to better focus on the fragile beauty of the blooms.

What made my jaw drop in that classroom in Ohio? Part of it, I’m sure, was the scale. It was really big up on that screen--it's 21 x 16 inches in reality. Part of it was because the flowers are set against a dark background in the painting, and in that dark classroom those white blossoms really popped. But I think what really got me was the way he captured the stems in the water and the glass. How did he paint the water? We’re sure the water level is halfway up, but the way he paints the stems in and out of the water are exactly the same but not. What the heck! As a would-be artist, all I could think was: no fair, you bastard!

Edouard Manet (1832–1883)
Bouquet of Lilacs, c. 1882
Oil on canvas
54 x 42 cm. (21 ¼ x 16 ½ in.)
Nationalgalerie | Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
© Photo: Nationalgalerie der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
The Balcony, 1868–69
Oil on canvas
170 x 124.5 cm. (67 x 49 in.)
Musée d'Orsay: Gustave Caillebotte Bequest, 1894
© Musée d'Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
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