A Few Lines on Beauty...

Study of a Girl's Head

By Thomas Eakins

Yesterday, Matt took the day off so he could join me on one of my field trips.  I wanted to see the Renoir exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  We decided to make a day of it and took the train in.  The Elizabethtown train station is getting a million dollar+ remodel.  It looks like they are keeping some of the old stone as well as introducing some long overdue changes.  A happy marriage of the old and new.  I like that.
Once in Philly we sat in the train station and had coffee and danish.  I love 30th Street Station.  It's a beautiful building with so much character and texture and light and warmth.  Matt humored me and let me take a few pictures.  We walked the 20 minutes to the museum in the warm morning sunshine.
We had a little time to walk the museum before we entered the Renoir exhibit.  I was so excited to see Mary.  I haven't visited her in so long.  She was even more mesmerizing than I remembered.  I was glad that I was still so drawn to her.
Matt and I went in to the Late Renoir exhibit and I kept waiting to be moved.  To be drawn in.  To be fascinated by his work.  For it to speak to me.  It was all very lovely.  And yet, I found myself having to agree with Matt's words after we left the exhibit.  "That was actually disappointing.  I don't think I'm a big Renoir fan."  It was true for me too.  And I was trying to pinpoint why.  Matt did say that he liked the paintings where Renoir had painted his children.  But it seemed more like the idea Matt was drawn to than even the actual paintings.
As we walked the museum, I realized that I had grown since my last visit to an Art Museum.  I found that I knew which paintings I really liked.  I knew which ones I would want on my walls.  And I even knew that I was drawn by certain artists for particular reasons.  To my surprise I really like Eakins.  I found myself drawn to his paintings all through the museum without knowing at first that they were his.  There was a special exhibit for The Gross Clinic because it has been recently restored.  I wouldn't normally be drawn to that type of scene, but I found myself so drawn to the personalities of his subjects.  He painted their character.  His subjects were rich with identity.  He knew who they were.  They seemed to know themselves.  I also really loved his wife's painting of him. She knew his lines.
There were a few others that I found myself drawn to.  Of the sacred paintings I loved a few that depicted Jesus, the disciples, and Mary in ways that felt poignant. I started to ask myself what was it that awakened that sense of magnetism in me, that made me want to take a picture, that made me want to linger.  And as I walked through the museum (which is a work of art in itself), I found that I was drawn to elements in the museum almost as much as the paintings in it. 
At about 5 PM Matt and I sat at a table above the great stair room.  A live concert was playing below us--a tribute to Nat King Cole--and we ordered something to drink.  I began to write out a list of things that moved me, drew me in, made me feel something.  Things like arches, high ceilings, domes, and pillars.  Stairs--endless repetition with shading and clean lines.  Color and Light.  Whimsy, the unexpected, things that played tricks on your eyes.  Sacred spaces, fireplaces.  Beautiful gowns.  Curtains, sheers, and beautiful windows. People who speak deeply without using words.
And this simple whisper of truth awakened in me.
 
There is power in beauty. 

In the space of that moment, I felt it was good. 
There is a question that's been quietly rising in my thoughts for some time now that sounds a little bit like this...
Can beauty heal?
 

His Lines

Photo by Bgrace